No clear-cut answer: Killebrew says destroying forests isn’t progress
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Though areas of the county, particularly off Highway 8, have been devastated by clear cutting in recent years, some feel the movement now is toward more conservative harvesting. On the other hand, there are those who still feel Warren County’s forests are in imminent danger from wholesale harvesting.
One local resident, Rachel Killebrew, has a very personal reason for her advocacy of controlled clear cutting. Early on she became involved in writing programs for the logging industry to test machines designed to make harvesting faster and more efficient. It’s an activity she says she now regrets.
“I got the opportunity to go watch these machines in action,” Killibrew said. “That was my first realization of what these machines were going to do to the world and our forests when I watched one of these machines clear cut a one-acre square in just minutes. It opened my eyes to realize what the research dollars were going for was to be able to cut forests faster. And I realized that really, the research dollars weren’t going to find a better way of doing it, they’re going to find how to do it faster.
“It is destroying our land,” she said, “but these are very big powerful companies,” she added, “and it’s really about money. It’s not about our forests.”
Killibrew says she doesn’t consider this progress.
“If they were spending their research dollars working with a company like WastAway to say, ‘How can we make paper from the fluff, the recycled garbage?’ Well, that would be progress to me.”
Meanwhile, local resident Ben Myers of Studer Management Services in Dunlap, feels harvesting trees is a viable industry and any harm to the environment can be minimized with the right kind of harvesting techniques. And though there have been some questionable harvesting in the recent past, Warren County’s forests aren’t in any real danger for a very simple reason.
“The reason they’re not endangered,” Myers said, “is whatever we do, the forests are going to come back.”
Even so, Myers said individuals do need to take care in their harvesting practices.
“We need to worry about our forests,” he said. “Every landowner needs to worry about the forests and try to manage them well, to the best of our knowledge.”
As far as Warren County, Myers said at the beginning of the century this area was very different, much of it in grazing land rather than forest. Over the years it became a more forested region and reached the levels that exist now.
Myers also says clear cutting can have its benefits in some situations, since some hardwoods like cherry, walnut and oak need more light to flourish, and the old process of selective cutting left them in the shade and slowed their progress. Clear cutting does a better job of reestablishing these species, according to Myers.
Myers also says the much-maligned pine plantations also have their function, producing a viable money crop, with a more rapid growth cycle than hardwood forest, when landowners choose to take advantage of that quick growth potential to maximize their profits.
Myers is concerned that responsible logging companies are being lumped in with those who don’t take the kind of care needed to maintain a sustainable forest.
“The most troubling thing to me about this whole issue is the logging industry is painted as being on opposite sides from the environmental groups,” he said. “When really we should be on the same side promoting good, sound forest management and working to help landowners achieve their goals.”
But Killebrew says citizens should make their own decision on the clear cutting issue.
“Don’t just accept these stories about, ‘Oh, they’re going to be replanting this,’ or ‘Clear cutting is an acceptable solution.’ Please take the time to go deeper and find out for yourself. Because once you realize what’s really going on up there, and the damage it can do for generations to come, then nobody will have to convince you. You can see for yourself.”