Attitudes On Thinning Adapt With Industry

Federal projects may bring renewed emphasis to thinning

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Attitudes On Thinning Adapt With Industry

Federal projects may bring renewed emphasis to thinning

Mateusz Perkowski
Capital Press

Caption: Young trees grow on the foothills of Oregons Coast Range Mountains. As trees get larger, foresters face important decisions about thinning. Density management is often guided by economics as well as environmental considerations for plants and wildlife.

Major changes in the timber industry have historically affected foresters' attitudes toward thinning, and the current economic downturn will probably be no different.

At this point, competing forces are shaping the outlook for density management, according to experts at a recent workshop organized by the Western Forestry and Conservation Association.

Depressed cash flows generally force companies to cut back on thinning operations, but other factors - like biomass energy production - may increase the demand for culled trees, according to workshop participants.

Foresters must adapt silvicultural practices for maximum economic benefit, but those choices are not currently obvious, said Dave Marshall, a researcher at Weyerhaeuser.

"As managers, it's our job to find these opportunities to better meet our organization's objectives," he said.

In the past six decades, the Western timber industry's attitude toward thinning has undergone a number of shifts, Marshall said.

During the first half of the 20th century, the abundance of large trees suppressed foresters' enthusiasm for thinning, which they primarily saw as a fire prevention tool, he said.

That changed in the 1950s and 1960s, when the need to manage second-growth timber sparked interest in manipulating stand density, Marshall said.

Back then, foresters replanted stands with large numbers of trees because they assumed many would die.

Years later, that resulted in overstocked stands which needed to be thinned.

By the 1970s, improvements in tree genetics and seedling production reduced the need for overly dense plantings, and, by extension, thinning, he said.

"We really got serious about nursery management and seed stocks," said Marshall. "All those things led to increased survival."

The timber recession of the early 1980s dampened interest in thinning, but controversies over forest management later that decade revived the practice for environmental purposes, he said.

Meanwhile, logging restrictions on public lands increased the industry's reliance on private timber, so mills revamped facilities to handle smaller-diameter logs grown in shorter rotations, he said.

Those technological changes diminished the premium for large logs in the 1990s, Marshall said.

Density reduction is conducive to tree growth, so weakened demand for large trees also affected the prevalence of thinning.

Timber prices are now dismal, so the practice will probably lose popularity in the short-term, he said.

"You're cutting costs and you've got less demand, so you're not going to do some of the more expensive treatments, like thinning," Marshall said.

Nonetheless, policy-driven changes at the federal level may affect the prospects for thinning on both public and private lands.

The economic stimulus bill passed by Congress in February included $1.75 billion for public lands programs, such as habitat restoration and fire prevention, which will probably require a lot of density management.

That funding included $50 million for "wood-to-energy" projects through the U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Department of Energy also received renewable energy funds, with $800 million specifically allocated for biomass research.

Thinning operations are expensive, so it's unlikely trees would be culled solely for energy production - unless the government subsidizes such uses, said Loren Kellogg, forest engineering professor at Oregon State University.

However, if there is a greater market for biomass, it will be easier to economically justify habitat restoration and fire prevention projects, he said.

"We're not doing it just to feed the biomass plant," Kellogg said.

Alternative products, like heating pellets and animal bedding, may also become viable consumers of culled trees, he said.

Engineered wood products are also on the rise, said Eini Lowell, research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.

Whereas culled trees traditionally ended up in fiber or panel products, it's now increasingly possible to use them in conjunction with higher-grade wood for structural lumber, she said.

"Technology is moving to reduce the variation of the resource," said Lowell.

Staff writer Mateusz Perkowski is based in Salem, Ore

Additional Information

Web Site: http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=782&ArticleID=50590&TM=48566.4

Category: Forestry>Forest Stewardship

Region: All US

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