Experiment in harvesting seeks clear-cut answer to logging eyesores

By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

TUMWATER — Robert Curtis tromps through a thicket of brush surrounded by a dense stand of 120-foot Douglas firs before crossing into a scarred, open landscape dotted with rotting stumps and piles of decaying timber.
Here, in the space of a mile, the retired federal forester has passed through treed landscapes on a sliding scale from lovely to downright ugly.

Or so people tell him.

Curtis is one of the overseers of a 250-acre timbered knob at the Capitol State Forest known as the Blue Ridge installation, an odd science project intended, in part, to address a question whose answer isn't particularly elusive: What type of logging do people find unattractive?

The answer, thus far, could hardly be called a surprise: the fewer trees cut, it seems, the prettier people think it looks.

"The clear-cut is the one you get the most negative response to," said University of Washington professor Gordon Bradley, who is involved with the project and an expert in designing timber harvests.

"It's kind of intuitive. The more trees you leave, the less disturbance you see ... those are the things people like."

But clear-cuts are fast, easy and profitable. So, since the late 1990s, the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have carved off 30- to 40-acre sections here to demonstrate five different timber-harvest methods, catalog their profitability and quiz experts and novices about their relative beauty.

The idea is to gauge which type people find most appealing and measure how much it costs to have logging look good.

The demonstration takes place on state land, retired forester Dean DeBell said, because researchers fear public opposition on federal land would lead to lengthy appeals.

He estimates the state has funneled more than $1 million into designing and preparing timber sales for this project. They hope land managers and timber companies will use their research to more often apply methods other than clear-cuts on visually sensitive land.

"Whether it's looking at a harvest that's a little scattered on the landscape or your mom looking at your messy room — it's all the same thing: The response is always, 'Can't you clean that up?' " Bradley said.

It's all about the view

Forget, for the moment, controversies over wildlife and other environmental issues. For 30 years, timber companies and land managers also have battled the unsightliness of the clear-cut.

With protruding stumps and mowed-down appearance, it can resemble a bad buzz cut on Mother Nature's scalp.

Over time, foresters have tried hiding clear-cuts by leaving rows of trees along roadsides — a concept DeBell dismissed as the "fool 'em strip." Timber companies and federal land managers have used landscapers and architects and computer models to find ways to leave less visible scars.

But with national forest logging down, clear-cut wars have moved to private and state land. There, much of the aesthetic issues are unregulated.

Two years ago, environmentalists and The Mountaineers urged the state's Forest Practices Board to adopt stricter rules to protect views along popular scenic trails and roads. The board declined, pointing out that it has some guidelines, and that landowners do much voluntarily.

In the past decade, computer simulation has helped timber companies see how land will look after it's cut. Bradley and others have offered seminars to groups like the Washington Forest Protection Association, a trade group of forest landowners, on designing better-looking logging projects.

Big companies such as Weyerhaeuser and Plum Creek sometimes go lighter on the land in areas that abut residences, roads or trails.

But the view wars continue.

Fresh clear-cuts near the Columbia River last year angered hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail. A proposed harvest on Plum Creek land along the Carbon River near the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park prompted an appeal last year by environmentalists who argued the state should have to consider its impact on views in conjunction with nearly two dozen existing Plum Creek clear-cuts.

Last month, the state's Forest Practices Appeals Board issued an unusual ruling: Loggers don't have to consider the visual impact one new clear-cut will have in conjunction with others nearby, unless they are all linked together as part of one operation. To do otherwise would be impractical, the board ruled.

"Just because you can stand on a road and look up at cuts on Plum Creek and Farmer Ted's land and see them both doesn't mean they are — or should be — part of one proposal," said Cheryl Nielson, the attorney who represented the state in the appeal.

Peter Goldman, attorney with the Washington Forest Law Center who filed the claim, scoffed. He said that, in this case, Plum Creek owned all the land, and the board's decision encouraged not thinking cumulatively about impacts.

"The irony of this rule is it encourages people to be crafty," he said.

Still, shortly after the filing of that appeal, Plum Creek so carefully logged the 28-acre tract that even the opponents had few complaints.

Goldman suggested the company did so because it was the focus of such attention.

Precision tracking

It's precisely because of battles like those that the Blue Ridge installation exists, Bradley said. He helped design the Plum Creek cut and has put his design work to use here.

"In most cases, companies aren't willing to forgo a lot of commodity for a visual amenity," he said. "So we have to find balance."

Curtis and DeBell and others scale every piece of wood, and weigh every truck. They use global-positioning systems, stopwatches and clipboards to track every movement of equipment and determine precisely what each minute of harvest costs. They've taken photographs and conducted surveys and given tours.

Their final tally is years away. They want to track how each of their five harvest methods regenerates and what that does visually and monetarily over time.

So far, each of their harvest methods has pluses and minuses. Clear-cuts are ugly but profitable. Simple thinning, they maintain, makes money and allows remaining trees to grow taller and thicker, but doesn't provide enough light for a simple Douglas fir forest to regenerate thickly and quickly.

Two mixes of thinning and small-patch clear-cutting seem to show promise, the men said. One called "patch cutting" — where loggers clear-cut three or four sections of 1.5 to 5 acres each within a 40-acre stand — shows the most promise.

It's reasonably profitable, visually appealing and 20 percent of the stand regenerates over 15-year intervals. The other uses smaller clear-cuts of up to 1.5 acres.

"There have been a lot of things done in the name of aesthetics that people would say short-changes people in the future," DeBell said.

A mix of small clear-cuts and thinning could profit companies without leaving a landscape that draws criticism.

Still, Curtis said, none of these alternative harvests is a silver bullet.

"We've tended to deal with a problem by coming up with one solution and applying it across the landscape," Curtis said. "We need alternatives."

In other words, the clear-cut is not, they said, on its way out.

"It's a tool — and it's probably here to stay," Bradley said.

Craig Welch can be reached at 206-464-2093.

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