The Douglas Fir is one of the trees that requires a fire to open its cones. In the 60s, the practice of slash burning was very common; mainly to get rid of the debris left in the clear cut as a method of fire control. But as a rule, these fire burned much hotter than a natural wild fire and would often burn the thin layer of top soil that clings to these steep side hills. Also the technology of yarding the logs has also changed. In the days of men manually setting a choker around each individual log, very little brush was yarded to the roadside with the log. When the choker was replaced by a grapple, much more debris arrived at the road side and now in many areas, big backhoes on tracks forward the logs to the road side breaking up the limbs. So the need to burn the whole area has been diminished. Just the areas by the roads where the greatest accumulation of the debris is stacked is burnt when the surrounding area is wet, usually in Nov.
This one of the roadside debris piles that a friend of mine is having some fun getting a firewood log to the splitter.
My dad was with a group of owners that refused to clear cut. Times have changed and money rules. I still get the Healthy Forest lecture once a year.
On the steep side hills pictured across the valley, it is some very good size timber with very little understory trees. If you were to try and selective log that ground, at the end of 50 years of selective logging, you would end up with a clear cut. Those big trees when they hit the ground, they will not stay in one spot on ground that steep.
There are places, if the wood is high quality, they will single stem log with a helicopter. A faller goes a measured distance up the tree and takes the top off and then goes to the bottom of the tree and leaves just enough wood holding that the tree still stands but when the chopper gets a hold of the tree with the grapple, it will break off at the stump and be flown to a landing.
The area across the valley is hemlock and balsam fir which is a low grade wood and would not pay the cost of the chopper.
Next time I'm up in that area, I will take some pictures for you.
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