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#1032659 - 06/21/20 01:20 PM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Carcassman]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Drifter's comments on logging are why Bob's book is some important to read. He walked the streams, he fished the streams, he snorkeled the streams, he electrofished them, and so on. He watched as floodwaters tore apart whole watersheds after logging. How pools disappeared, how channels shifted, how they became silted in.

If you don't have long-term data, whether it be fish counts, catch, flow, photos, and so on you simply don't see the changes.

I drove the same route to work for 30 years and the roadside trees dis not grow an inch. Amazing!.

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#1032664 - 06/21/20 03:34 PM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Carcassman]
Rivrguy Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 4393
Loc: Somewhere on the planet,I hope
One log loads came mostly from the OP and were not exported and usually were for show in the last 70 years or so. With the exception of cedar which ended in the 80's. The exported timber was 2nd growth and if you know the history was in the range of 60 to 80 years old, sometimes older as large trees not marketable where left standing. ( large by our standards today ) Simply the original harvest was near the bay with skid rows and worked up streams by using splash dams. When locomotives were designed to pull steep grades then the logging moved inland with companies like Schafer Bros ( Satsop valley ) which Weyco and Simpson bought out as the Schafer family did not see a future in second growth. Polson North coast and it is now RTOG holdings. Weyco local tree farm was named Clemons after the timber company that had a mainline ending at Melbourne on the river and near what is known as circle city above Oakville. If you go back in the Black Hills there is a place called Fuzz Top that is true old growth simply because geography made it not cost effective to log.

So the second growth logging simply back tracked and followed the original harvest matrix. The difference is that old logging was a slow labor intensive process and required a market for a finished ( milled ) product. Most do not know that way back early last century Grays Harbor was a ship building port. In fact after the great San Fran earthquake most of the timber to rebuild came from Grays Harbor along with the first export of raw logs in giant rafts and one raft would feed a CA mill for one year.

I worked in the woods for 38 years and unless I went to Olympic Park was never and I mean never in a FOREST. Rather I worked on tree farms which are large scale, long term, mechanized agriculture. The greatest damage to streams came after the Columbus Day storm with hundreds of thousands of acres blown down and Japan became a market for salvaged raw logs which killed the local saw mills, massively increased the acres harvested each year leading to much of the environmental damage being discussed. At that time regulators required at times loggers remove woody debris from streams and another agency did not want those nasty salmon carcasses polluting the streams.

My Grandmother came from Texas in the late 1880's by clipper ship from San Fran and up the Chehalis on a paddle wheeler to Fullers Ferry. ( Fuller Hill now ) The Hale family is buried at the Vance Cr Cemetery and had a truck farm and even won a blue ribbon at the Klondike Expo ( now U of W ) for growing vegetables. My father was born in a logging camp in the Vesta and I have a picture of Granny standing on a locomotive as she worked in a logging camp. Timber good bad or indifferent is was what built Grays Harbor but then this ...... the bloody fish survived and prospered be more than a little of a rocky road.

This problem we face with fish came about in the last 40 years with the huge population growth, the growth in mechanized marine harvest, the export of raw logs. Call it a tipping point if you will.







Edited by Rivrguy (06/21/20 04:16 PM)
_________________________
Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in

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#1032671 - 06/21/20 06:47 PM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Rivrguy]
Rivrguy Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 4393
Loc: Somewhere on the planet,I hope
Just for you old timers. How many remember the house that was carved out of a single old growth log that set beside the highway across from the Harbor Drive In? Big guy but the largest stump I came on was up Falls River and was a Fir 17 ft at the cut.The areas that became federal lands were the least valuable as the coastal rain forest trees were much bigger. After that Puget Sound had the finest stands of Douglas Fir to found in the world. Timber and fishing built Seattle.


Edited by Rivrguy (06/21/20 06:48 PM)
_________________________
Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in

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#1032699 - 06/22/20 09:20 AM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Rivrguy]
Rivrguy Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 03/03/09
Posts: 4393
Loc: Somewhere on the planet,I hope
Question in a e mail was why is a tree farm different from old time logging in a forest. Well tree farms in the PNW are generally on 40 year rotations or from planting to harvest 40 yrs. They are generally single species, generally Douglas Fir and for trees intensely managed. From old growth to second growth harvest ended up being between seventy to a hundred years so the ground and streams recovered. In this day and age there is constant activity such as harvest, thinning, and salvage so the land ( and streams ) does not just set or if you choose, recover. The way to anticipate stream impacts in the tree farms is simply look at the tree age as over 40 years it is likely to be harvested. When I retired the trees I planted in 1971 were being logged again.

Also different companies use different strategies for harvest. One I know of harvest so many acres a year regardless of volume. Another is by volume and if the volume of acres is below expectations then they log more acres.

Now the national forest are something else. When Gifford Pinchot set up harvest in the PNW federal lands it was supposed to be until the private timber lands regenerated and produced trees for harvest. What was not envisioned was that the Forest Service would operate like a corporation and the trees continuously harvested in the manner a tree farm does. Money talks in all ways in this world.



Edited by Rivrguy (06/22/20 04:02 PM)
_________________________
Dazed and confused.............the fog is closing in

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#1032700 - 06/22/20 09:46 AM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Carcassman]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
Sustainable yield forestry is a crop, basically a monoculture. Plant DF, thin, the harvest and repeat. Until you subdivide into neighborhoods.

A forest is a complex of many species of trees and undergrowth. Here on the westside there would be Red-cedar, Hemlock, and such; all of which diminish the value per acre for DF.

Because it is a crop, the trees ecosystem never develops the multi-dimensional complexity that comes with an old forest. Hence, the loss of Spotted Owls, Marbled Murrelets, and Woodland Caribou that all need the mature forest.

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#1032739 - 06/22/20 02:41 PM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Carcassman]
WDFW X 1 = 0 Offline
My Area code makes me cooler than you

Registered: 01/27/15
Posts: 4549
And Steelhead.



The last 5 posts are as revealing as some women's clothes.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

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#1032775 - 06/23/20 08:09 AM Re: Book on Steelhead [Re: Carcassman]
Carcassman Offline
River Nutrients

Registered: 11/21/07
Posts: 7411
Loc: Olema,California,Planet Earth
The book goes way beyond "just" habitat and the unraveling of a watershed post-logging post deluge. The increase in fishing pressure by recs, commercial, and subsistence. The use of boats to access stream reaches. Bob ran one of, if not the, first jet boat on Vancouver Island. Which meant he enjoyed the fruits of fishing virgin water and then saw what happened when more joined in.

The value of reading it, in my mind, is that it is a documented witness to what the collective "We" did to steelhead, and by extension salmon. If we don't try to learn from history, we will repeat it. By the same token, we need to decide if we really want to save those resources because of what we would have to give up, individually and as a society.

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