Opinion: Clear-cuts impoverish forests, economy
By Katherine K. Evatt
I spent a recent Monday on a Sierra Pacific Industries’ forest tour outside the rural Calaveras County town of West Point. Sierra Pacific has clear-cut thousands of acres in Calaveras. It has removed nearly every tree on each site, scraped off and burned the surface vegetation, deep-ripped the soil and sprayed herbicides to kill leafy plants that compete with newly planted conifers.
Sierra Pacific, California’s largest private landowner, is owned by Fortune 400 member “Red” Emmerson. The corporation owns 1.7 million acres of timberland in the state and plans to clear-cut more than a million acres. Over the last decade or so, it has received the state’s permission to clear-cut – or near-clear-cut – more than a quarter million acres of its land, nearly 391 square miles.
Much of this activity has occurred in the Mokelumne River watershed, where we took our tour.
Clear-cuts destroy existing wildlife habitat. They release massive amounts of carbon from the soil. Impacted roads release sediment into streams. And clear-cuts tear at the hearts of those of us who love the Sierra’s forests.
Katherine K. Evatt is president of the Foothill Conservancy.
I wonder what will happen if a road is built crisscrossing an area, harvesting the actual road surface area, at a later time harvested around 100 feet on one side, and then in the future harvested the same way on the other side? These roads might have huge recreation benefits such as awesome downhill mtn biking.
Perry, SPI allows public access to its land as long as its non-motorized travel. They have really good dirt roads and they are well maintained. The problem is that they keep grades at less than 10% except short skid trails that vanish as the forest regrows after about 2 years. So its great biking, but not really good downhilling.
And while this article makes it sound like SPI land is devoid of wildlife, their land offers the best hunting in the area. The clearcuts and thinning provide a lot of food and edges for wildlife to hide in. Even if you dont hunt, the wildlife viewing is incredible on their land.