Healing Appalachia: Sustainable Living through Appropriate Technology

14. Silvicultural Practices

Few issues are more critical, or more hotly debated, than proper forest management and timber harvesting techniques. The long-term health of forests, streams, and wildlife, as well as personal and community economies, is at stake. On a personal level, a landowner may fear excessive damage to their woods by heavy equipment, sloppy logging, over-harvesting or undervaluation of their timber. These often valid concerns coupled with the fact that Kentucky has some of the most diverse, productive hardwood forests in the world, led my wife Beth and I to start Woodland Farms Modern Horselogging. As both landowners and loggers, we developed a list of common interests to satisfy our concerns for the forest’s health on the one hand, and the need to make a living on the other. Gary Anderson, horselogger, Sustainable Logging and Lumber Production Trees are a critical resource, and any action that diminishes their health and well-being is an attack on the vitality of Earth itself. Trees may appear robust on an individual basis but be part of a forested community that suffers from neglect; unsustainable harvesting practices; fragmentation through highways, development , and logging roads; introduction of invasive exotic plant species and insect pests; and private clearing. Anglo-Saxon land-use practices have influenced our forestrelated attitudes. In old England, a forest was residual land too poor to plow and cultivate. Arable lands were highly esteemed, whereas forests were regarded as wastelands. English colonists CHAPTER 14 Silvicultural Practices brought with them a bias against forested areas and saw fertile forested land as a challenge or as an enemy to be conquered with an ax. Good as well as marginal farmlands were cleared from New England to Florida and points west, with nonarable cleared land used for grazing. A haze is said to have hung over the southeastern United States from about 1810 to 1830 while the land was being cut, cleared, and burned over for growing cotton and other crops. ASPI sponsored a forest commons conference in 1994 that brought together a number of experts who addressed forest practices and the need to see forests not as being owned and managed in a laissez-faire manner by landholders but as the heritage of all people. The people collectively thrive upon the forests and should uphold them as a commons like the air we breathe. This concept is more universal than conservative private-propertyrights -oriented Americans are often willing to admit and is critical to any discussion of long-term forest preservation. I come from a family of foresters who lived in villages in the forested border area of northern Alsace and the German Pfalz. When I visited this ancestral area I observed the extent to which trees have been part of my family heritage. In northeastern France and nearby Germany, forests have been well managed for centuries, though, as in other parts of the world, their current health is threatened by air pollution and other adverse conditions. The Cradle of Forestry is a forest center operated by the U.S. Forest Service in western North Carolina. The center honors C. A. Schenck, who founded the Biltmore Forest School and taught there from 1898 to 1913. He was invited by the wealthy Vanderbilt family to bring the silvicultural experience he acquired in Germany to the United States. A conservationist philosophy had arisen during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency; the nation’s insatiable appetite for forest timber was pitted against a growing realization that forest resources are limited and could be exhausted should current uncontrolled practices continue. Schenck respected nature, the manner in which trees grow, the need for tree care and Silvicultural Practices ❖ 171 protection, proper selection and cutting practices—in short, good, scientific forest management. His goal was a healthy forest that sustainably supplied timber to meet reasonable needs. TREE SELECTION FOR PLANTING AND HARVESTING Should one select thriving native species such as tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) and pin oak (Quercus palustris), or threatened species such as red oak, Fraser fir, and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)? Before the type of native species is addressed one must know the specific site and what trees grow best there, and the purpose for which trees are being grown. The site may be a cove where hemlocks have thrived for centuries or a mountaintop on which the Fraser fir has grown well in the past. Another consideration is current threats to specific trees...