We’re TEAMS Enterprise and we work like a contractor, bidding on jobs and having to turn a “profit”, because we receive no Congressional funding. Also, we are forbidden from competing with the private forestry industry.

If it were up to the eco’s, they would “let” all our western forests “turn into” rainforests through some kind of natural “magic”. They’re convinced that more trees are ALWAYS better for the environment. Luckily, some people are seeing the light and forgetting about the forestry sins of the last millenium.

Group selection is often referred to as “silviculture” but it really isn’t. Group selection is a harvest system, and a poorly defined one at that. I have read all the textbooks, and never seen it described thoroughly.

Foresters and others need to pay attention to what is left, not what is removed (or how). When an artist carves a statue out of marble, what matters is the stone that didn’t get chipped away. The rubble removed is not important.

If you want your house painted or reroofed, or your kitchen remodeled, you must deal with the preparation, but in the end the finished product is of paramount importance.

Regulations that specify what is to be removed therefore miss the entire idea and purpose of silviculture.

In reality group selection is a uneven-age silvicultural system that is described thoroughly in Silviculture textbooks. Group selection was also described as a method to be considered for a long-term strategy in the California Spotted Owl: A Technical Assessment of its Current Status (1992) See Chapter 13, page 271.

Furthermore Group Selection silviculture has been demonstrated at the UC Blodgett Forest in El Dorado County. What silvicultural system does Backcut suggest that would permit Ponderosa pine to regenerate?

The QLG experiment has only been in place for almost 10 years and the group selection strategy has only recently been implemented in CASPO suitable habitat for the past 3 years as a result of the mitigation measure included in the HFQLG EIS and then the Sierra Nevada Framework 2001, both of which precluded implementation of the QLG Community Stability Proposal.

Believe me, I relish in the small bit of decision-making I do out in the woods with the “blue death spray”.

The vegetation has been hugely affected by resident humanity over millennia. The standard ecological theories of natural fire regimes and natural forest succession cannot explain the forests, savannas, and prairies that existed there 200 years ago. The vegetation is an anomaly, inexplicable to the old paradigm.

The old-growth conifer cohort in the Sierra Nevada was induced and maintained by anthropogenic fire. When that fact is considered, the entire paradigm of forest ecology and forest management must necessarily shift.

The “historical range of variation” was human-induced, and to achieve that goal, human inducements must be reapplied. The “desired future condition” is more than a fire-safe landscape. The vision must include stewardship interactions, tending the garden.

We need a new terminology for forestry, one unique to that endeavor, and a completely different one for tree farming.

Canopy cover is another misplaced measure. It can’t actually be measured with any precision, or defined, really. At best it is a two-dimensional simplification of a three-dimensional phenomenon. Furthermore, canopy cover has absolutely nothing to do with spotted owl habitat, the putative purpose of the reg.

Ninety-nine percent of all forests today have more than 40 perecent crown cover. There is no correlation between crown cover and spotted owl use because owls are found across the entire spectrum of existing crown covers. It is a totally BS regulation with zero scientific basis.

The canopy cover regs are profoundly unscientific, as are basal area regs, diameter limit regs, riparian buffer regs, and site potential tree height regs. They are all junk science based and they all serve to prevent good stewardship and ensure holocaust.

Don’t you feel stupid doing forestry by the BS book instead of using your own expert judgment? Don’t you feel like a peon technician instead of a true forest steward? That kind of genuflecting before the Altar of Idiocy is too humiliating for me, degrading to my profession, and tragic mismanagement of real forests.

So smirk all you want. Some of us would like to save our forests, and we see a huge need to assert professional forestry to do it.

Sorry…LOL

I always enjoy marking timber, and I do respect the power that exists in my right hand to alter the landscape for maybe hundreds of years. I prefer to call myself a “forest sculptor”, using a mix of art and science to manage our forests back to health and function.

The Plumas is also having us do canopy cover plots within the thinning units. I did several of them and found that all were within the limits of the prescription for the Pacific Fisher. We’re always eager to mark a tree growing under a bigger one because it has no effect on canopy cover. We also run into clumps of red fir and white fir, where we can take a pair or two of joined trees. We’re shooting for a 200-220 basal area and 40-50% canopy cover.

To bear bait: There’s too much money in litigation against forestry for Berkeley to pay any notice to science.