Killing Hardwoods

Back in my early days with the Forest Service on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest we had to go through a chainsaw certification class in order to fall any standing hardwood trees remaining on the clear-cut units before burning the slash.   Most these trees were tan oak, madrone, alders or maples ranging in size from 6 to 24+ inches in diameter and 10 to 40 feet in height that survived the logging operation without getting knocked down.   The first day of training was spent on safety, saw maintenance and operations.   Then we had to go out in the woods and fall hardwood trees on a logged clear-cut unit before getting our certification card.    The Forest Service had Homelite and McCulloch saws with 24 inch bars.   They were nothing like the modern lightweight saws of today and after a few hours they seem to get heavier as the day went on.  

Back in those days hardwoods were looked upon as an undesirable species.   After the clear-cut units were planted, mostly with Douglas-fir seedlings, the competing hardwood vegetation had to be eradicated within the first 5 years.  This was primarily done by aerial spraying a defoliant chemical (2-4-5-T) over a 5 year period.   In the Vietnam War this was called Agent Orange which was an orange dye put in a mixture of 2-4-5-T and 2-4-D to show the pilots where they had sprayed the jungle vegetation below.   If I remember correctly this management practice came to an end on the National Forests in 1979 due to contamination of streams and the general outrage of the public living downstream.    Shortly thereafter the forest products industry found a use for these trees as pulp for paper products, hog fuel for their cogeneration plants and other specialty wood products.    In the 1980’s when the lumber market crashed the chip market for pulp went up because the mills were not producing enough wood chips as a by-product from milling lumber.   It was these hardwoods trees that saved some mills from going under.  I can remember South Coast Lumber in Brookings throwing finished lumber into their chipper along with hardwoods to make ends meet by selling wood chips to the Menasha Pulp mill in North Bend.