stopping logging

[TANK]

You 2 BOFF!

[forester]

if i had my way there would never be another tree cut period.the big trees are all gone.every tree we cut now our kids, there  kids, will never see a big old tree again..i plant trees every year they are all put  in the ground at a angle so they will grow crooked..they will be good for wild life but not good for the chain saw..here in  s.e.ohio there are very very few trees big enough to set your back against and be safe hunting turkey

Hate to tell you but that's not going to make a crooked tree. And BOFF and TANK you are both to be commended for having a reasonable back and forth dialog on an internet forum and it didn't turn into a pizzing match. Good for you (yall).

[Highknob]

I guess I'd have to rate clear cutting as a necessary evil. The NF does a pretty good job on the pieces i hunt in Va. 10 to 60 acre blocks of clear cut. Seems to help the deer and turkey hunting. The blocks of land set aside for wilderness seem to have the least game of any land in Va. Just my .02

[grousec]

Logging is wildlife's and a hunters best friend.  Yes, we need clearcutting because wildlife need new grouth as well as mature timber.  I wish they would cut and cut and then cut some more in kentucky.

[HogBiologist]

I guess to me, forestry is an intigral part of wildlife management.  There are things a timber company does strictly for the bottom line $.  There are ways to help wildlife by cutting timber also.  Different species need different stages of forests.  If you were to take an open field of bare dirt and let it go it would eventually (in several thousand years) be an old growth forest.  That is unless something happened to set back natural succession.  Fires, tornados, hurricanes, etc all set back succession.  Take the red cockaded wood precker.  It needs older aged (mature) pine stands with a 3 year rotational burn.  The burn is necessary to remove hardwood competition.  This also leaves a grassy understory.  This type of habitat is also great for turkeys and quail.  The old mature hardwood stands are ok for turkeys, but can be poor for deer.  Deer need thick areas to hide.  Small openings such as a tree falling of a small patch cut (.25 to .5 acres) allows spots to be reset to an early successional stage.  This provides the ground cover for deer browse and nesting habitat for turkeys.  It also provides for diversity in a stand.  This is both horizontal (differences along the ground), and vertically (structure from floor to crown).  THese "Old Growth" stands everyone refers to are usually not the best over all forest conditions.  You can see what are referred to as DFC's (desired forest conditions) for hardwood management at this link.  http://www.lmvjv.org/library/DFC%20Report%20to%20LMVJV%202007.pdf

Now my take on clearcuts:

All about the $.  Clearcuts are a boom and bust when it comes to wildlife habitat.  Here in the south this is the life of a clearcut.

year 1 the forest is cut to the ground.  this sets everything back to early succession.  you get grasses and forbs.  great for deer and good nesting habitat if there is adjacent areas to hold turkeys.

year 2 it has been planted and usually no doubt sprayed.  This reduces the quality of the habitat.  Depending on how intense the spray is, you can be left with pine trees and dirt.

for the next 10 years you go from boom to bust as the quality of the habitat degrades.  this happens as the pine thicket closes up and shades out all competition.  by 10 to 12 years you are left with pine trees and pine straw

you are SOL for the next 5 to 10 years.

year 15 to 20 you get the first thinning.  This allows light to hit the ground.  Browse and other valued plants start to come back in to the understory.  This is usually good for deer and turkeys (and other non game species).  This lasts for appx another 10 to 15 years.  Then the canopy closes back up and you are left with poor habitat again.

year 30 to 45 (time frame) it is time for either a second thinning or clearcut depending on what the company wants out of the logs.

Time to cut again.  Start this over again.

[Reloader]

Clear cutting is one of the worst things for turkeys IME.  Yes, it is good for one year of hunting and one year of nesting, but it's toast for over a decade afterwards.  I've seen it ruin our lease.  We have an 8500 acre lease that was once wrapped up in birds.  Many years ago the timber co came in and cleared everything and now 90% of that 8500 acres is nothing but dense small pines with no undergrowth or solid briar thickets.  The turkeys are nothing, not even close, to what they once were when we had large sections of large pine and oak that were open under the canopy.  Turkeys do not like thickets at all and they hate dense small pine tracts as well.  The few that remain are forced to move around each year to wherever the few cutovers or thinnings are.  It's a joke, you have maybe 3-4 small areas on that size lease holding the few birds and about 30-40guys pounding the same places over and over on top of each other.

The best turkey management(or wildlife management for that matter) here is to leave a certain percentage of hardwood, a certain percentage of large pine, control burn under the large pine on rotation, cutover a certain percentage, thin a certain percentage, plant enough food plots, etc.  Very few timber cos around here do this, they all come in a wipe out everything bigger than your leg, replant in dense qty, thin as soon as they can make a buck, and wipe it out again a few years later.  No control burns, no food plots, no large trees, and no good turkey habitat.  Private land is about the only way to manage anything the proper way.

The deer don't even care for the dense pine tracts, there's nothing to browse.

The good ole days of large timber and beatiful turkey habitat are gone in alot of areas soley due to the timber cos.

There is nothing wrong with timber operations, but there is a right way to help wildlife and a wrong way.

Have a good one,

Reloader

[TANK]

Clear cutting is one of the worst things for turkeys IME.  Yes, it is good for one year of hunting and one year of nesting, but it's toast for over a decade afterwards.  I've seen it ruin our lease.  We have an 8500 acre lease that was once wrapped up in birds.  Many years ago the timber co came in and cleared everything and now 90% of that 8500 acres is nothing but dense small pines with no undergrowth or solid briar thickets.  The turkeys are nothing, not even close, to what they once were when we had large sections of large pine and oak that were open under the canopy.  Turkeys do not like thickets at all and they hate dense small pine tracts as well.  The few that remain are forced to move around each year to wherever the few cutovers or thinnings are.  It's a joke, you have maybe 3-4 small areas on that size lease holding the few birds and about 30-40guys pounding the same places over and over on top of each other.

The best turkey management(or wildlife management for that matter) here is to leave a certain percentage of hardwood, a certain percentage of large pine, control burn under the large pine on rotation, cutover a certain percentage, thin a certain percentage, plant enough food plots, etc.  Very few timber cos around here do this, they all come in a wipe out everything bigger than your leg, replant in dense qty, thin as soon as they can make a buck, and wipe it out again a few years later.  No control burns, no food plots, no large trees, and no good turkey habitat.  Private land is about the only way to manage anything the proper way.

The deer don't even care for the dense pine tracts, there's nothing to browse.

The good ole days of large timber and beatiful turkey habitat are gone in alot of areas soley due to the timber cos.

There is nothing wrong with timber operations, but there is a right way to help wildlife and a wrong way.

Have a good one,

Reloader

I think we belong to the same club! Hey Forester, I added BOFF to my Buddy List,  thanks for your positive comment!