What if.. we agreed on a definition of clearcutting? It seems like originally it meant a practice used in even-aged regeneration of forests used (and still used in the SE) by timber industry. The impression was big openings, removal of all trees, burning broadcast or piles and replanting. During the 80’s I remember an economist from Oregon State on a field trip to Weyco’s Klamath Tree Farm, telling us that we needed to move from “pick and pluck” or Keen classification to clearcutting because it was more efficient. Yes, that was apparently the best available science at the time.
Then as I recall, (and others remember more) it was important to retain wildlife trees and snags. Then there was an effort to make clearcuts smaller. Then there was the suggestion of “Big Messy Clearcuts”. Well, I couldn’t find those words when I searched in Duck Duck Go, but I do remember them. Some Region 6 retiree should probably write a history of silvicultural terminology and practices through time.
I did find something when I searched Google Scholar. It was from a 1991 (35 ish years ago) Focus on Forestry, put out by OSU.
Franklin sees New Forestry as an alternative “to the stark choice between tree farms and total preservation”a way for real multiple-use management to occur on the same parcel of forest at the same time. “It’s a way we can integrate, not allocate, the resource among interest groups,” he says.
However, New Forestry has drawn fire from both the timber industry and environmentalist groups. Industry managers point to a host of problems associated with leaving green trees and snags fire hazard, logger safety, difficulties in regeneration, high costs, and plain ugliness”these places look like messy clearcuts,” says one critic.Environmentalists, for their part, are suspicious of any scheme that asks them to modify a fundamental tenet: preservation of intact forests. There’s no guarantee, they say, that New Forestry will really do the job of protecting the ecosystem over the long haul.
So now folks are talking about variable retention harvesting, which apparently allows openings (clumps and openings?). We know that some species require openings to regenerate. No openings means true fir success, which can compete with ponderosa and die off from bugs leaving material for a wildfire, which indeed makes openings.
I was surprised when I read that the BLM was proposing (according to Oregon Wild):
a massive logging proposal that would clearcut thousands of acres of public forest, including mature and old-growth trees.”
This was surprising to me, as in my definition, it wasn’t clearcutting. So I asked Victoria Wingell (the author) what she meant by clearcutting. I appreciate her response, as many folks do not respond to my emails.
The 42 Divide Draft EA indicates that as many as 1,040 acres would receive Variable Retention Harvest (VRH). Although BLM does not call this clearcutting, from a practical standpoint it is the equivalent, leaving behind a very small number or percentage of trees in a given stand. The 42 Divide Draft EA also indicates BLM could authorize as much as 3,919 acres of commercial thinning with up to 25% gap creation (mini-clearcuts). 25% of 3,919 is nearly 980 acres. 1,040 acres of VRH plus 980 acres of gaps is over 2,000 acres.
In other documents, BLM has acknowledged that VRH and “group selection openings” (gaps) are the equivalent of clearcutting from a watershed analysis. For example, see the Last Chance EA , pp. 86-87, found here:
Crucial to resolving the disagreements surrounding New Forestry and the other contentious issues posed by natural-resource management today is good science leading to new knowledge, says Dean George Brown. “We are fully equipped to be the center for that science. We have hundreds of studies going on, looking at everything from the biological processes of forest soils, to manipulating the vegetation to get better growth from seedlings, to finding more-efficient ways to use the wood we have. “This kind of effort is what it’s going to take.”
While I’m not sure about other parts of the country, the U.S. Forest Service 100% still clearcuts in the northern Rockies.
And while I personally think that one could make the case that Variable Retention Harvest, Regeneration Harvest, Sheltwood and Seed Tree cuts are forms of clearcutting to one extent or the other, I’m specifically saying that in the northern Rockies the U.S. Forest Service still “clearcuts.”
Dozen of recent examples from Montana and Idaho, but here’s the U.S. Forest Service’s very own Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact for the Round Star Project on the Flathead National Forest that authorizes 580 acres of “clearcut.”
See: https://usfs-public.app.box.com/v/PinyonPublic/file/1491614131090
Matthew, I think you may be making my point. The FS has a definition that Rich J. looked up for us. We can assume that the FS is using its own definition.
You can say that shelterwood and seed tree are “forms” of clearcutting but in their terminology world they’re not. That’s why I think it would be helpful if we agreed on terminology, and it would have to do with defining what trees are left in an opening, opening size, and opening placement spatially.
I agree with you that after overstory removal, a shelterwood might look like a clearcut. And a seedtree stand might look like a clearcut or maybe even have more trees in the overstory than a clearcut with residuals.
Cut none, some or all of the trees. Each can serve a valid purpose. The rest is advocacy-inspired hot air.
Absolutely, John! 👍
Sharon, I do not think Matthew’s PinyonPublic file is accessible by the public.
Even single tree forest cuttings create gaps which can be modelled and analyzed over different time and space domains. (For example, Shugart et al . 2020. Gap models across micro- to mega scales of time and space. For. Ecosyst. 7, 14 ). Impacts derived from these models could be used to define “a clearcut”. Actually, environmental impact assessments seldom assess forest impacts of cuttings while the term” clearcut” is vague enough for government standards.
When I click on the link Matthew posted the doc comes up. I usually download these docs (press tab at top) for easier reading. Could be a browser problem for you. I wonder whether running a model is overthinking, though, because it seems to me the real discussion is what trees to leave and what to take. Today we should be able to have them all mapped and then plaintiffs could argue “tree 151 is OK to take but if 152 is also taken there is too big a gap.”
Here’s one FS definition – #1 is the way I’ve always understood the concept (e.g. that the term includes shelterwood and seed-tree):
Clearcut
1. A stand in which essentially all trees have been removed in one operation to produce an even-aged stand. Depending on management objectives, a clearcut may or may not have reserve trees left to attain goals other than regeneration (see regeneration method (two-aged methods).
2. A regeneration or harvest method that removes essentially all trees in a stand.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/restoration/reforestation/glossary.shtml
And here’s a definition in the handbook, which is similar to #2 above:
Clearcutting. A regeneration harvest method that removes essentially all trees in a stand producing a fully exposed microclimate for the development of a new age class of trees. A clearcut may or may not have reserve trees left to attain goals other than regeneration.
FSH 1909..12-60.5, available here:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/regulations-policies/handbook/190912-60-forest-vegetation-resource-management
Thanks, Rich! That’s the same as my Helms Dictionary of Forestry (1998). As a silviculturist, I learned that there were even-aged systems and uneven-aged systems.Even aged regen systems included shelterwood, seed tree and clearcuts. This is my take… when other folks got interested in silviculture, we should have reviewed our definitions so that they would be communicate more understanding. Maybe a shelterwood after overstory removal looks like a clearcut.. then there’s “how many leave trees for what purpose in what spatial arrangement makes it not a clearcut?” I still think we could have done better at communicating.. oh well.
“Variable retention harvest” is a clearcut (except where it’s not).
I think it is unreasonable to expect conservation advocates to communicate with the general public using terms like “variable retention harvest” which is very easily confused with “variable density thinning,” even though these terms describe very different things.
Feel free to use these terms in your science papers, but when talking to the public using the term “clearcut” is a much more direct and clear way to describe what is proposed.
Second, I think you’re making my point. I could paraphrase what you said “VRH is not a clearcut, except where it is.” One person or even a large group doesn’t get to decide on a definition for everyone. I was simply saying if folks are going to use the word, we might try to agree on what it means.
Another point to consider is that high grading, the silvicultural opposite of clearcutting, doesn’t always turn out well either:
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/Science%20to%20Solutions%20Report%20-%20Detailing%20the%20Impact%20of%20High%20Grading.pdf
It did not go well on the Tongass:
https://forestpolicypub.com/tag/tongass-national-forest/#:~:text=Following%20decades%20of%20controversial%20logging%20involving%20%E2%80%9Chigh%20grading%E2%80%9D%20(i.e.%2C%20logging%20that%20targets%20the%20largest%20and%20most%20valuable%20old%E2%80%90growth%20trees)%20the%20remaining%20stands%20of%20very%20large%E2%80%90tree%20old%E2%80%90growth%20(class%207)%20are%20extremely%20rare.
Sharon said above:
*This is my take… when other folks got interested in silviculture, we should have reviewed our definitions so that they would be communicate more understanding.*
I agree. I might argue that overly aggressive clearcutting in the 70s and 80s, especially on the Tongass (to feed the pulp mills) and the Bitteroot (for reasons I’m not aware of but probably have something to do with the booming post-war suburban housing market) sparked a heavy backlash against the practice. A further boost to ill-advised clearcutting happened in the long 1980s, when timber pirates like Crown Pacific needed to log everything all the time to pay off their ridiculous debts. Fly to Seattle and take a window seat – much of the landscape even today still seems afflicted by mange.
IMHO, even-aged management is a perfectly legitimate silvicultural approach that has at times, on national forests, been misused for objectives largely divorced from sustainable forest management. I agree with Sharon that it would have been better if the FS more clearly communicated why it was approving various methods of clearcutting, but the agency was (as far as I can tell) under a lot of political pressure in the 80s to *not* do exactly that.
The advent of the Clinton adminstration ushered in a different but in some ways equally intractable set of difficulties. By that time “clearcutting” had become one of the boxes on the culture wars bingo card. But that’s a story for another day.
To be fair, I think “high-grading” is kind of a generic word that means different things in different places.
I remember folks using the Keen classification-ish system before clearcutting became the “best available science” on the East Side.https://duckduckgo.com/?q=keen+classification&ia=web
Then there was the Forplan idea of cutting the pine because the true fir would grow faster and produce more. Except for bugs and disease, but we didn’t get to weigh in on that.. That could be called “high grading” but wasn’t exactly.
So we might ask “why choose clearcut here and not seed tree or shelterwood for those units” and it would be helpful if that were in the EA for those projects. We might find out that the overstory is dead, or other interesting reasons. Or we could drive by the units and look if we lived nearby.
Thanks for this thread and topic- it is one that I have spent a great deal of time contemplating. I’m a career non-profit forest conservation advocate and our organization often documents (photos/video/field tours) BLM timber sale projects in SW Oregon that involve the removal of exisitng late-successional forests and then the establishment of timber plantations in those locations. The BLM terms in the NEPA documents for these projects for the silvicultural prescriptions consist of “regeneration harvesting” “gap creation” and “open seral” harvest. I understand that these are professional silicultural terms, but in a public NEPA context my opinion is that they serve as euphemisms that are intended to obscure rather than illuminate the effects and reality of the BLM’s logging prescriptions. To 95% of Americans the results of the logging are correctly and colloquially termed clearcuts. As an aside, the document that I often rely upon to distinguish between a “thinning” and a “clearcutting” prescription is the USFWS NSO Biological Opinion. When that document indicates that the BLM is “removing” Nesting Roosting and Foraging habitat one can generally be assured that the logging prescription is removing the existing old-growth forest from the site. When the BiOp concludes that the BLM is “maintaining” or “downgrading” NRF habitat one can accurately describe the logging prescription as a form of “thinning” in which some forest structure and canopy is retained following the harvest.
George, you can state that 95% of Americans think that “something” is a clearcut…but that still doesn’t help the rest of us understand what you are talking about .. late-successional, Nesting Habitat and all that.
It seems to be it’s got to be about:
size of openings
what’s left in the openings
adjacency of openings.
So can you address those three things for the BLM projects you are talking about? And which part of those openings you think are too large, or leaves too little, or too close together?
Also, can you explain what you mean by “late successional”?
Composition of trees
Age of trees
Other characteristics
Does an area have to be a certain size to be “late successional”?
How does that relate to “mature” and “old growth” that we have been talking about for the last few years.
Hi Sharon,
I’ll take a stab at those questions, wish me luck!
1) Im sticking with my contention that if 95% of people agree on a definition that it’s then fair to use the term. In this case- the total removal of trees from a site care correctly be called clearcutting.
2) The size of the clearcut is not a synomy for the existence of a clearcut. A clearcut can be large (200 acres) or small (an acre). Either way the thing that it is is not altered. A formerly forested site that contains no trees after the logging occurs.
3) Late successional is both an age (generally >80) and forest habitat structure (that allows for the presence of late-successional associated wildlife species) of a particular forest stand. I prefer the term “late-successional” to “mature” or “old-growth” but I get why people utilize the later terms. Again, I think the biological assesment and the biological opinion are good places to start for determining if late-successional habitat exists, the size and function of that habitat, and if the stand will retain those habitat values post-harvest.
-An honest try,
George
How do we know that 95% of people think that? Have you done a survey?
I wonder about “no trees”- perhaps you mean no large trees? Or trees over a certain size?
I remember people used to study this.. I’ll go look it up.
There has been a very long list of comments from certain contributors on the Smokey Wire who say things like”95% of people think that” that have never gone challenged. Why now?
95% of a certain commentator/contributors comments have been shown over and over to be agenda driven/averse to peer reviewed science and links, and then went on a comment deletion rampage.
Why pushback now to such hyperbole?
OK, please share at least some of the long list, especially those with specific percentages…
The difference to me is that “many” or “most” people is just a generic statement. The specificity of 95% sounds to me that perhaps someone actually did a survey.. (not 92% or 96.8%? who was surveyed?) so that should be included. Otherwise for accuracy, it should be more general and implies “most people I know, or have spoken with, or read on the internet.”
Dr. Richard Reynolds, of NAU was one of the researchers on GTR-310, Restoring SW Ponderosa Pine (shortened title) and was/is very astute in wildfire response to restoration prescriptions. Arizona has the largest contiguous stands of Ponderosa in the country, covering 2.5 million acres, both above and below the Mogollon Rim.
Anyway, he came up the idea of “fire-safe” zones in PP, where size of openings range 3-4 acres or larger. The idea stems from Canopy Bulk Density (Rothermel) and the displacement of needle drape, outside canopy diameters. These areas would resemble many small clearcuts, within the larger stands of thinned PP, but are not, silviculturally speaking, a clearcut. The concept resembles a “spotted dog”, but in Earl Stewart’s tales of hog hunting, we renamed it the “spotted hog” concept. 🤣
So, looks alone does not indicate what a clearcut might look like, the objectives involved better define those attributes….
A clearcut is defined as a type of regeneration harvest. The real distinction that needs to be made for most people may just be “regeneration harvest.” It’s the difference between something that retains an old patch of trees or produces a young one, and the difference between logging and thinning. And if some want to call any regeneration harvest a clearcut, I don’t think that is misleading very far. (Are there important differences from a NEPA standpoint between different types of regeneration harvest?)
When you talk about the size and distribution of openings (forest plans used to define what an opening is), you are really talking about landscape pattern, and “patches.” The forest plan should have desired conditions for landscape patterns, based on the natural range of variation for different ecosystems. The revised Flathead plan has a desired condition for landscape pattern, which is the average patch sizes for potential vegetation types.
Well said, Jon!
Jon, I don’t want to be a stickler for words, but I think it’s important when people disagree to define words clearly so we are not talking past each other.
You said “the difference between logging and thinning.” Well, thinning can occur with logging, .. it’s called commercial thinning.
Biologically or perhaps ecologically, there is a difference between clearcuts and other regen systems, just because of the amount of overstory left (more with shelterwood and seedtree). I could also imagine a seed tree having fewer leave trees than a clearcut with wildlife residuals.. The point of seed tree and shelterwood is to get the next generation of trees established using natural regen. Depending on the size of the clearcut and the nature of the surrounding stand, it might be more difficult to get natural regen. I would think that these differences (in trees and associated ecological and wildlife factors) would be mentioned in NEPA.
I’m curious, what is the NRV in the forest plan based on?
I think of what Leiberg noted when he surveyed the area..like the Little Belts 80% being less than 150 years old..https://forestpolicypub.com/2018/03/16/john-leiburgs-forest-condition-reports-1900-ish/
Commercial thinning does not create a new young stand. It may remove the kinds of larger, older trees that some people object to, but I don’t think anyone would refer to this as clearcutting. (Some might call it logging, but that doesn’t change the point that it is not clearcutting.)
I agree that there may be different ecological effects of different kinds of regeneration harvest, but are they “important,” – and I mean from the standpoint of the people who don’t like any of these kinds of “clearcuts.”
NRV was based on the best available science (of course!). And quite likely they considered Leiberg and the like (I’m sure their sources are in the record somewhere). (But the west-side, moist, mixed conifer Flathead is quite different from the east-side, dry, lodgepole Lewis and Clark, which probably would have had a lot bigger patches.)
Is it a clearcut if merely all the merchantable trees are cut? In many forests, oaks and other hardwoods are a significant part of the forest composition. I guess one could, technically, call such management “thinning” or “select cut”, too.
No, a clearcut is a “start over” action; final removals in pine (overstory removals) take all merchantable timber, leaving a young stand of small diameter trees – in theory, anyway….
When we (Ouachita NF) went into hardwood regeneration, the only things left standing were wildlife, mainly large hardwood trees. These stands were normally mixed pine/hardwood, with the pine removal taking precedence. Hardwood were regenerated by coppice, with some acorn production/regen. In many other stands, it was the same effect, but Rx burned, ripped and planted with pine.
Some species (lodgepole and Aspen) depend on disturbance regimes for regen, and these are also “all or none” in what’s left on the site.
Planted with offsite loblolly, I’m sure. That is what the timber industry did there. (personal observation)
We are not talking about the “timber industry”, as in industrial forests, we are discussing public lands. I like the loblolly seedlings better than shortleaf, and could be argued, just as the Armadillo has migrated north, so has loblolly pine!
It made too much sense to actually increase standing timber volumes so the planting of loblolly was discontinued on the Ouachita. Too many environmentalists on the planning team for their new plan, making it all happy now…..
On our private timberlands, we plant loblolly, and we are north of the Ouachita! Quick turnaround, exceptional growth and $ makers….
SAF’s position on clearcutting:
Clearcutting as a Silvicultural Practice
Purpose
Address societal concerns about clearcutting as a forest management practice and solidify the scientific foundation for clearcutting as a legitimate and sustainable regeneration and restoration tool.
Scope
Clearcutting practices are most applicable to landowners practicing even-aged silviculture with commercial species but should be available appropriately to all landowner groups across all forest types.
Position
The Society of American Foresters supports the use of clearcutting as a proven regeneration method to meet multiple forest management objectives associated with efficient utilization of commercial timber resources and prompt reforestation. Clearcutting is a particularly effective tool to regenerate shade-intolerant tree species, control spread of forest insects and pathogens, improve the timber productivity of managed even-aged forests, and provide early-seral forest wildlife habitat. Oversight by professional foresters and other natural resource specialists and adherence to contemporary forest management standards (laws and Best Management Practices) ensure that clearcutting is applied in a manner that addresses ecological, economic, and social dynamics of sustainability.
Clearcutting is not appropriate in all forest types, nor will it accomplish the desired forest management objectives for all forest owners. SAF does not endorse exclusive use of any specific silvicultural system; however, where suitable to forest types, site conditions, and forest owner objectives, and where applied carefully by skilled professionals, clearcutting is an effective silvicultural practice that can achieve a variety of forest management objectives.
Approved: April 2019
Merchantable is another not particularly useful word… where I am very little is merchantable, and there might still be “clearcuts”. Plus merchantability changes through time and space for based on various factors.
Dictionary of Forestry (SAF) is unhelpful in that size is not mentioned:
“…any timber harvest that removes most or all of the living trees.”
Even-aged management systems use clearcutting. Uneven-aged management systems use selection harvesting (single tree and/or group selection). Multi-aged management uses variable retention harvest (VRH). SAF and the forestry profession at large are behind the times and self defeating by not providing a separate definition to separate VRH/multi-aged management from clearcutting/even-aged management. Communication is ineffective if the receiver doesn’t clearly understand the message. A thought exercise; When I say clearcutting as part of an even aged management system, close your eyes and visualize the forest (i.e., few to no large trees remaining after harvest, this is common practice on private lands in western Oregon), when I say selection harvest as part of an uneven-aged management system close your eyes (i.e., a partial harvest that maintains a variable arrangement of tree cover, majority of trees retained). Ok, now think about variable retention harvest as part of a multi-aged system of management (i.e., somewhere between a clearcut and a thinning…most trees are removed, but a substantial number are retained to achieve ecological objectives and produce multi-aged stands by design). Google the three terms and/or use ChatGPT to define them and you will see why having a separate term for VRH is necessary and useful to promote clear communication. Calling a VRH or group selection opening a clearcut to me is a tactic that is used to elicit emotional reactions from the general public or the courts to increase support for those opposed to timber harvesting.