ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SPREAD HYSTERIA ABOUT CHIP MILLS, BUT TIMBER COMPANIES KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING

On a recent trip to visit my family in Cape, I noticed a Sierra Club ad in the March 20 Southeast Missourian opposing chip mills in Missouri. With my background both as a native Missourian and a professional forester who has worked all across the United States, I have a perspective on the chip-mill issue that others might not have.

The issue is a complex one. The Sierra Club, the Dogwood Alliance and other groups have tried to simplify the issue by ignoring science and replacing it with emotional (but untrue) arguments such as destruction, loss of jobs and uncaring multinational corporations.

This article consists of two parts. The first is a direct rebuttal to the ad, analyzing it line by line. The rest of the article includes my account of actual visits to both chip mills in Southeast Missouri plus some basic forestry.

A forester's view of chip mills

The Sierra Club ran a blatantly misleading ad in an effort to sway public opinion against chip mills. The ad was so full of hot-button words and emotional statements -- and so short on facts -- that it is best to reprint it line by line and answer each of the wild statements as accurately as I can.

But many readers don't know what a chip mill is. Chip mills take logs of various shapes and sizes and shred them into small chips, usually about an inch square and a quarter-inch thick. These chips are then used to make paper and other products. Environmental groups across the country have decided to oppose chip mills everywhere. They do not have sound reasons for doing it, but they have devoted lots of money and energy to their effort, and they have no intention of backing down. In my analysis, quotes from the Sierra Club ad are in italics.

(Ital.)Industrial logging is coming back to the Ozarks. The Ozark forests, once destroyed by heavy clearcutting in the late 1800s, are now being targeted by international timber corporations.(Unital.)

This is a masterpiece of hot-button alarmism. The words "destroyed," "heavy clearcutting" "targeted" and "international" are all carefully chosen to fill the reader with fear and dread. In reality, logging does not destroy a forest. Bulldozing a forest for a new subdivision or shopping mall does destroy it. Logging in a professionally managed forest can bring about a drastic visual change, but a new forest will begin growing almost immediately.

(Ital.)Willamette Industries from Oregon and Canal Fibre, a Japanese consortium, have located in the southeastern Ozarks and have set up high-capacity chip mills.(Unital.)

I work for an Oregon-based company myself. Oregon has tough forest-practices laws which have been in place for nearly 30 years. The same is true of most western states. Companies such as Willamette Industries have dealt with best management practices, or BMPs, for so long that they routinely follow them, whether required by law or not. It's good news -- not bad -- that Willamette Industries has located here. As for Canal Fibre, it has locations in many parts of the country. When I phoned the local office, the phone was answered in English, not Japanese.

(Ital.)These mills can chew up 50 acres of hardwoods per day.(Unital.)

Other environmentalists say 30 acres. Whatever number is correct, it sounds terrible until you think of the large expanses of forest land in Southeast Missouri. It won't all come from one place, so you will not see clearcuts from Ozark mountain to Ozark mountain. And with proper forest practices, trees will grow back faster than they are being cut.

(Ital.)Since these chip mills are mechanized and automated, they'll employ just six persons each.(Unital.)

What's wrong with being efficient? That's the way America works.

(Ital.)They're taking your forests, your jobs, your Ozark hills and trucking them away.(Unital.)

Privately owned land is not our forest. It's the owner's forest. Within reason, the landowner should have every right to sell timber to any buyer. As for state and federal lands, they should be managed through sound science, not hysteria.

(Ital.)Small logging operations and sawmills won't be able to compete and won't have anything left.(Unital.)

The Sierra Club conveniently fails to point out that chip mills and sawmills use different kinds of wood. Sawmills utilize larger diameter logs that are straight and solid. Chip mills can use wood that is too small, crooked or rotten to go through a sawmill. In areas with diverse markets, loggers will sort trees (and pieces of trees), delivering them to sawmills, pallet mills, tie mills or paper mills. In effect, they sell each tree to the highest bidder. The difference in value between chips and lumber is so great that it would make no economic sense to grind high-quality logs into chips.

The Sierra Club ad closes with a list of "positions." They want to hobble timber companies with heavy restrictions while exempting sawmills and small landowners. It's a classic example of creating an us-against-them situation in order to gain local support. Interestingly, the environmental groups didn't even pretend to care when family sawmills closed in the West in the wake of the spotted owl lawsuits.

Damage is damage, no matter who causes it. Everyone who cuts timber should follow best management practices. Period. The Sierra Club's suggestion that we ban clearcutting is ridiculous. We do not force farmers to leave portions of their crops standing to make fields look better. Likewise, we should leave the details of forestry to the professionals, not to the politicians.

A visit to the chip mills

Not being someone who believes everything he hears, I decided to see Southeast Missouri's two chip mills for myself. First I checked out the Missouri Fibre mill at Scott City. When I arrived, a log truck was being unloaded. A machine operator transferred hardwood stems to a large pile of logs arranged in a semicircle around a crane. The mill itself was not running, but the final products were clearly visible. The trees were being turned into chips, of course, and a large pile awaited shipment to the pulp mill. A smaller pile represented the bark residues that had been ground into mulch. Nothing was wasted. There were no belching smokestacks, no vats of stinking chemicals. In other words, it was the type of industry that environmentalists should welcome. Of greatest interest to me was the log pile. These were not the logs that a sawmill would want. They were the small trees, the crooked trees, the hollow trees not fit for making boards, pallets or railroad ties.

Next I visited the Willamette chip mill at Mill Spring. The mill was larger but otherwise similar. A large deck of low-grade logs awaited chipping. A semi-trailer full of chips was being unloaded by a giant hydraulic device that stands the truck on end, allowing the chips to fall out the back door. I was puzzled, because I thought they were supposed to be selling chips, not buying them.

I drove to the scale house and introduced myself. Two Willamette employees (including the mill manager) spoke with me. Neither of them carried pitchforks or had horns sprouting from their heads. A third person was also there, an employee of a nearby sawmill. He explained that his employer welcomes the chip mill, because it uses cull logs and also buys the chips from the sawmill's waste wood. The sawmills, instead of having to haul chips to Kentucky, can now deliver them to Mill Spring. It's a win-win situation for the sawmills and for Willamette Industries.

Remember that Sierra Club ad? "Small logging operations and sawmills won't be able to compete and won't have anything left." It seems to me just the opposite is true.

As I continued my conversation in the scale house, the subject came around to logging practices. Willamette Industries requires its loggers to attend special training sessions. The training starts with best management practices. From my experience in Georgia and in other parts of the country, I know that this is standard procedure with many of the large timber companies. In the interest of public relations and conservation, these companies insist on BMP s from their loggers (most southern states do not have forest practices laws, but the industry has followed voluntary standards for decades). Why, then, does the Sierra Club demand legislation specific to the chip mills while exempting others? They seem to have this backwards too. From a practical matter, the exemption simply will not work. Let's say you're a landowner who sells your timber to a local logger. He hauls the logs a sawmill and takes everything else to the chip mill. Does the law A) exempt you because you're a local landowner, using a local logger hauling to a local sawmill, or B) throw the book at you because some of your wood goes to the chip mill? The chip mills have become an integrated part of the market. If you pass laws mandating BMPs, they must apply to everyone.

Why chip mills are good for the Ozarks: The infamous logging of the 1800s did indeed alter the Ozark landscape. Unregulated logging of vast areas caused erosion and eliminated many of the shortleaf pine forests. Many of the hardwood trees that blanket the hills originated from stump sprouts following logging. As the second-growth forests reached marketable size, sawmills sprang up all across the Ozarks. However, there was no corresponding market for low-quality wood, other than minor markets for firewood and charcoal. Landowners often sold their best trees and left the worst to grow. On lands where this has happened several times in the past 50 or so years, little is left except crooked and half-rotten trees. Chip mills provide a market for this timber. The cull trees can be sold in order to make room for vigorous young trees.

Why the logging of the 1800 s cannot happen again: Over and over again, the environmental groups raise the specter of the 1800s. For our forests, it was indeed a chilling time. Timber companies logged huge tracts of land in the Appalachians and the upper Midwest before setting their sights on the Ozarks. Trees were abundant, and reforestation was unheard of. There was always a forest farther west that could be cut when the local forests were gone.

By the end of the century, attitudes began to change. Business leaders began to accept the fact that they couldn't go on forever. Conservationists such as Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot became prominent. The first forestry school in the United States was founded in 1898 in North Carolina on timberland owned by George Vanderbilt.

Why is that so important? Today, thousands of foresters, wildlife biologists and ecologists work in the public and private sectors. Visit any field office of any timber company, and you are likely to meet someone with a forestry degree. These individuals can speak in great detail about the different species of trees, which ones grow best in a given location and when and how they should be harvested. They will be able to explain why some forests should be thinned while others should be clearcut. They will understand the effect of harvesting on streams and on wildlife. They know the best way to establish a new forest after harvesting. And they will do their best to keep the public happy at the same time.

Clearly, the timber companies of 2000 bear little resemblance to those run by the timber barons of the 1800s. The companies must plan for the long haul. Many of them own and manage huge tracts of land. Their employees are conservationists who understand the balance between using timber for our current needs and making certain that a steady supply is available in the future. This point is thoroughly misunderstood by many environmentalists. In my 25 years of forestry work, I have yet to meet anyone in the profession who believes in the 1880-style slash-and-burn logging. It's just not going to happen again.

Also, there are more landowners in the Ozarks than a century ago, meaning that the average ownership is smaller. It's unlikely everyone would all agree to sell all the timber at once. Many owners aren't willing to sell their trees at any price. When timber is cut, it will be in smaller units scattered over a large area. The visual impact, as well as the impact on streams and wildlife, will be reduced.

Why should we clearcut?

As previously mentioned, logging in the Ozarks usually means cutting the best trees while leaving everything else. From a distance, this looks good. You're taking the big trees and leaving the little ones to grow big and strong, right? Thinning is always better than clearcutting, right? Wrong. Foresters refer to this practice as high-grading. The crooked, hollow and genetically inferior trees are being left to repopulate the forest. Baby crooked trees grow up to be big crooked trees. Small hollow trees grow up to be big hollow trees. Granted, a certain number of these are good for wildlife, but you do not want an entire forest of them.

Anyone who raises animals knows that you don't save the runt of the litter to sire the next generation. The same is true of trees. Many of our Ozark forests are dominated by runts. How do we turn this around? Clearcut. The very word sends chills down people's spines and makes them grab their checkbooks and generously donate to all sorts of environmental groups. That's exactly what these groups want. They've done their job well. But let's set emotion aside and deal with cold, hard facts.

Clearcut and destroy do not mean the same thing. A managed forest can be clearcut, and it will be quickly replaced with another forest. The public has been led to believe that clearcutting a tract of land once every 50 years is a great evil. Meanwhile, we look at our farms, which get the equivalent of several clearcuts per year, and we talk about how beautiful they are. We celebrate the opening of a new church, school, or shopping mall (complete with enormous asphalt parking lots), even though a healthy forest has just been wiped off the face of the earth. That forest has been destroyed, and hardly anyone protests.

We Americans use huge quantities of wood and paper. The rest of the world wants to be just like us, which means they want to consume resources just like we do. We can either grow our own wood or buy it from other countries. Would you rather buy paper made from local managed forests or from trees bulldozed from what was once a tropical rain forest? The United States has some of the most productive forests on the planet. Our temperate lands will grow repeated crops of trees. We can and should use these resources wisely.

Bob Schumacher, a Missouri native, attended Notre Dame High School in Cape Girardeau and received a degree in forestry from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1973. He worked for a major timber company in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas from 1974 to 1985, holding various positions in land and timber management. He then joined Atterbury Consultants in Oregon. After seven years in Portland, he opened that company's Georgia office. He lives in Macon, Ga. Send e-mail comments to Schumacher at forester@hom.net.