In Warshington, we have laws, as does Oregon. State land requires replanting. Private landowners who have their land zoned as Timber Land get taxed at a lower rate. If they want to keep that land classified and the lower property tax, they are required to replant also. It is a certain number of trees per acre.
Out here, the Forest Service doesn't clearcut much anymore. Nothing on those shows was on Forest Service land. Equipment in a swamp!:jawdrop: :jawdrop: :jawdrop: :jawdrop: no way. Not even near. On Axmen, they would have been lectured about their high stumps, tree lengthing, and would not have been allowed to pull their cat and skidder up the hill until the specialists had a look and the soil dried out. That would take months. But, when there used to be clearcuts, there is a law that requires reforestation. Every timber sale had to make enough money to cover reforestation. That was covered by charging at least what is called Base Rates for the timber. The stumpage price could not go below that amount. I could go on and on but it is confusing about how things are paid for by selling timber on Federal land. Suffice to say that I was told that at one time, the Forest Service made the second largest amount of revenue for the country. The IRS would be number one.
There haven't been any clearcuts here on Forest Service land since 1990 something. Since then, the elk have moved down onto the private lands and towns in the valley, where there's more forage. Our area now has the game department and some local residents starting to push for a return to some clearcutting. I'd like some more because that is where the huckleberries grow. They still clearcut elsewhere, like in Wisconsin for Aspen production.
Tree planting, like logging when done right, would make for boring tv. Unless they had some of the crews from the 70s which had some women who would go topless. In fact, now, unless you spoke Spanish, you wouldn't understand the planting crews. Tree planting is extremely hard and labor intensive. You have big bags strapped around your waist. You dip the tree roots in a vermiculite and water solution, which makes them heavier, you stuff your bags as full as you can, grab your hoedad and head up or down the unit. Slam hoedad into ground, wobble a hole, insert tree brown side down, work dirt against tree, tamp with hoedad or boot and walk the spacing for the next tree, repeat. Do this all day. It is a young people's job. In some areas chainsaw augers can be used for the holes but it is still hard work.
There are some planters who can get a thousand trees a day planted. I don't know what the quality is. There are quality control inspectors who follow the planters and dig up some of the trees to make sure they are planted correctly.
If tree planters are getting paid by the tree, sometimes they bury trees instead of planting them. Sometimes they bury a lot of trees in one hole.
For tree planting, the steeper the ground, the easier it is on the back. You don't have to bend over as far when the hillside is staring you in the face.
And, like falling, you start out at daybreak. Tree planting season meant sleep deprivation for us inspectors. We had to be at the tree cooler at 0 dark thirty and load up the trees, cover them up good with an insulated tarp, and then meet the crews at daylight. If the day heated up, we'd call a halt to the planting and bury the unplanted trees under a snowbank to be planted in the morning. Planting follows the snowline.
The other thing they showed, but said it was a wildfire, was slash burning. In a clearcut, usually a slash burn is needed BEFORE the unit is planted. We burned one in the volcano salvage that had been planted. Slash in clearcuts can be 4 feet deep or more. It needs to be burned to reduce fire danger and make openings for the trees to be planted. But at the same time, you don't want to fry the soil (burning too hot) or burn up the cull logs that might have been left. So, they started burning in the Spring around here and would go until it got too dry. Then since burning was done in the Spring, the areas had to be checked for any smokes popping up all Summer long. It is amazing how long a root can smolder for.
There's a lot they didn't cover on those shows, and they'd be boring if they did. Except broadcast burning got exciting at times when the sparks would drift across the drainage and torch off another unit that we hadn't planned on burning. Then we'd here, "We're going to go to plan C, grab your torches and head across the canyon and start lighting." Our one unit plan, which we planned to have done by evening, would turn into a double or more unit plan and we'd be out all night. Then we'd be expected to show up in the morning for our "real" jobs. Another job for young people. Go home black, shower, have a beer, catch some zzzzzs and get up and go out and cruise timber, repeat. Nobody ever got killed so we must've done something right. We got a couple people bruised when they got hit by rocks, and then there was run for your life from rolling rootwads....clearcuts are lit by lighting strips back and forth across the hillside, working from the TOP down. There were hose belays.
We'd always have a rock bluff in the unit so you'd slide down the firehose and hope it was still hooked up to something.
All this extra work provided additional employment for non-loggers. It doesn't exist much around here anymore. See, I hope I didn't bore you. It would bore the TV viewers.
