Slash burning creates a situation where bare soil, high sunlight, and nutrients
contribute to colonization and vigorous growth of a vast array of grasses,
forbs, shrubs, and trees. It also allows planted or naturally seeded
Douglas-fir and some other commercially valuable softwoods to thrive.
A fairly wide variety of wildlife also thrive in these early successional
stages. If there are older stands nearby, the diversity of species using
the young stages increases further. There are many good questions concerning
the number of times that we can grow crops of trees, cut them and haul them
away, and still have the necessary soil components to continue to provide for
new generations of forests and understory plants. However, slash-burning is
likely not much of a factor when to compared to the volume of organic material
(and nutrients) taken out with each crop of trees. Chris Maser once had a
traveling lecture program on this topic that was one of the more persuasive
combinations of data and theory that I have seen.

The problem with today's approach to our forests is that too much of the
landscape is devoted to young softwood plantations (and they will never be
allowed to get old). Yes, the way they are managed, their very origin
(including slash burning) makes them poorly equipped with certain valuable
habitat components like snags and down logs, but these young stands are not
sterile.

Kelly McAllister

On Sat, 20 Jan 1996 bharrison at macnet.com wrote:

> But I'm suggesting that slash burning is creating a less varied
> environment that any fires caused by nature or the native people. It is
> practically a sterile environment suitable for mono-culture mostly and
> little else.