& talbot sawmill at port gamble. - kitsap sun

Hugelogs from theshores of blood Canaloncekept -workers scrambling at thePope

& Talbot sawmill at Port Gamble.

Majestic evergreens, towering250 feet into the sky, musthave provided an awe-inspiring greeting to earlyexplorers who entered HoodCanal in their sailing ships.

Some men dared to dream of houses and

villages, but years would pass before thehand of civilization would disfigure thenatural wonderland. Something capturedCapt. George Vancouver's imagination inMay of 1792 as he sailed past rugged, snow

capped peaks and approached the long,narrow channel he named Hood's Canal.

The English explorer had been senthere to solidify his country's claim on thelonely wilderness, known to contain vastriches in furs, timber and marine life.Spanish explorers had sailed inland, but notthis far. Only a very young nation — theUnited States — maintained a defendable

claim to the region.After sailing for more than a year —

with stops in Tahiti and Hawaii —

•59

Chapter

6

Logging

Section 1

Rising from

Toppled

Trees

ByChristopherDunagan

60 • Using the Resource

"The timber

was so close to

the water's

edge thatnearly anyonewith a team ofoxen couldgetout a boom oflogs in a short

time."

—Eva Luella

Buchanan,Economic HistoryofKitsap County.

Vancouver was not disappointed with thesights and sounds of this untamed land. Yeton the morning of May 12,1792,the worldseemed to hold its breath as Vancouver's

ship followed the western shore of HoodCanal.

"Animated nature," Vancouver wrote,"seemed nearly exhausted, and her awfulsilence was only now and then interruptedby the croaking of a raven, the breathing of aseal or the scream of an eagle."

Vancouver sailed southward into

Hood Canal and met with a friendly band ofIndians near the Skokomish River, which hedescribed as "the finest stream of fresh water

we had yet seen.""Early on Sunday morning, May 13,

1792,we again embarked," Vancouverwrote, "directing our route down the inlet,which, after the Right Honorable Lord Hood,I called Hood's Channel."

There is some confusion about the

name, variously Hood's "channel" and"canal." As Edmond S.Meany explains inhis book Vancouver's Discovery ofPugetSound, "It is a curious fact that Vancouvernamed many places 'channels' in his journal,but wrote them down as 'canal' on his

excellent charts. This was the case with

Hood's Canal."

The name, formalized by the U.S.government, will forever remain linked toone Samuel Hood, an admiral in the BritishNavy who became famous for his victoriesagainst the United States during the Revolutionary War.

Fifty years after Vancouver namedHood Canal, the United States had strengthened its claim to the area. Still,only ahandful of white settlers could be counted.

Trappers and traders in sparse numbers mayhave visited the shores of the canal, yet itremained largely the domain of Indians.

To encourage settlement, the UnitedStates in 1844began offering homesteads ofup to 640acres. Homesteading had barelybegun by 1848,when gold was discovered inCalifornia.

Gold mines would need heavy timbers,and homes would need lumber. Ships wouldbe needed to maintain the flow of commerce.

Gold dust would power the Northwesteconomy for years.

Some folks came to Hood Canal

country just for the timber, homesteadinglong enough to claim the giant trees, notedEva Luella Buchanan in her Economic History

ofKitsap County. 'The timber was so close tothe water's edge that nearly anyone with ateam of oxen could get out a boom of logs ina short time."

Skippers would pay 8 cents a linealfoot for the huge logs, delivered alongsidetheir vessels.They would sell them to millsin San Francisco for $1 a foot, said Mrs.Buchanan.

It didn't take long for wealthy lumbermen to realize the potential of sawmillscloserto the woods. Andrew JacksonPopeand Frederic Talbot were sons of timber and

shipbuilding families. Together with Capt.J.P. Keller and shipbuilder Charles Foster,they started Puget Mill Company at PortGamble on Hood Canal, the heart of Indiancountry.

In September 1853,the Port Gamblemill — the first steam-powered mill inWashington territory — came on line.

Three years later, Marshall Blinn andWilliam J. Adams financed a new mill atSeabeck, a picturesque town on Hood Canalthat outgrew Seattle for a time.

By 1857,the Port Gamble mill was thegreatest lumber manufacturing plant onPuget Sound, and two or three schooners

xmight be seen in port at one time, theirlumber bound for San Francisco and the

Orient.

That same year, when Kitsap firstbecame a county, four major sawmills wereoperating in the area. Settlements werespringing up, and Kitsap County had thehighest assessed valuation of any county inthe territory.

In addition to mills at Port Gamble and

Seabeck, there were two on BainbridgeIsland. The world seemed hungry for timber,and the industry found new and faster waysof cutting trees and making lumber.

A new "circular mill," installed at PortGamble in 1858,was the biggest in the West.It could handle logs 9 feet thick and turn outplanks up to 60 feet long.

Bigaxes, used by early loggers, gaveway to felling saws, first used in the redwood forests of California. Oxen gave way tosteam donkeys and railroads.

There seemed to be no end to the

demand for lumber. Dozens of loggingcamps in the Hood Canal area sprang up tosupply the big mills, which grew and addedshipbuilding operations. Small, independentmill owners also carved out a niche amongthe trees.

Timber was king, and every community had ties to the forests, while agricultureand fishing helped feed the hungry loggersand maintain the local economy.

Seabeck and Port Gamble grew intobustling mill towns. In 1876, Seabeck,population 400,had a store, two hotels andfour saloons. One newspaperaccount called it the "liveli

est" place of its size on PugetSound.

Mill towns were the

most obvious stops for earlysteamships carrying passengers, supplies and mail. Withfew roads, the growing"mosquito fleet" of boatsbecame the principal linkbetween the communities of

Port Gamble, Bangor,Seabeck, Brinnon, Quilcene,Duckabush, Nellita, Holly,Dewatto, Hoodsport,Potlatch and Union City.

"Union City," wroteMurray Morgan in The LastWilderness,was the "Veniceof the Pacific, on the narrowstretch of land connecting theOlympic and Kitsap peninsulas..."

The town, which beganas a trading post on the southshore of Hood Canal in 1857,was platted in 1890amid aflourish of land sales.

Rumors were wild that the

town would become a

crossroads of several rail

roads. For a time, landspeculators were paying the whopping priceof $1,000for a single building lot.

Meanwhile, Quilcene, a single homestead in 1860, was even more blessed. PortTownsend was booming with internationaltrade, and local entrepreneurs were convinced that the world would beat a path totheir door if only they could obtain a railconnection to Portland, Ore.

With a local donation of $100,000, theOregon Improvement Company (a subsidiary of Union Pacific)agreed to begin thelong track. Some 1,500 workers laid the railsfrom Port Townsend to Quilcene, but that'sas far as they got.

The country's economic panic of 1893dashed the hopes of Quilcene and other

towns along the western shore of HoodCanal. The folks of Union City quicklydropped the "City."

Down toward the very tip of HoodCanal, the town of Clifton was growing. Oneof the early roads in KitsapCounty linkedSeabeck to the head of Hood Canal alongLynch Cove.

Later, Clifton wouldbecome a crossroads when a

new road to Sidney (nowPort Orchard) was built. Theroute is still referred to as the

Old Clifton Road. In 1925, thename "Clifton" was changedto "Belfair." Belfair has had

but moderate growth overthe years, but today it standsas one of the fastest growingcommunities around Hood

Canal.

Demand for Northwest

lumber continued to increase

as the 20th century drew to aclose, and Washington'smills were expanding. Thebillion board feet of production in 1888 had doubled to 2

billion by 1895and tripled to3 billion by 1902. By 1905,with 3.5 billion board feet a

year coming from its mills,Washington produced morelumber than any other statein the nation.

Unlike many sawmillcompanies, however, theowners of the Port Gamble

mill bought their own landand saved it for the future.

While others exhausted their timber supplies, the Puget Mill bought raw logs fromother people's land. Eventually, the dwindling supply forced Pope and Talbot to cutits own magnificent trees around HoodCanal.

Today, Pope Resources,a spinoff of thecompany, remains the largest privatetimberland owner in Kitsap County and hasfound success in developing lands forhousing.

Conservationists had been arguingabout protecting a portion of the ancientOlympic Peninsula forests ever sincenaturalist John Muir first visited the area in1889.

President Grover Cleveland, as one of

Seabeck

There1s not muchleft today, beyond aplaque, to indicate

that the tinycommunity of

Seabeck once washome to a bustlinglumber mill, one of

thefirst in thePuget Sound

region.

Logging • 61

Seabeck and

Port Gamble

grew intobustling mill

towns. In 1867,Seabeck,

population400, had astore, two

hotels and foursaloons. One

newspaper

account called

it the

"liveliesf'

place of its sizeon Puget

Sound.


Unlikemanysawmill

companies atthe turn of thecentury,Pope

& Talbot

bought theirown land and

saved it for thefuture. Today,

PopeResources, aspinoffof the

company,

remains the

largestprivatetimberland

owner in

Kitsap County.

his last official acts, created the 2.2-million-acre Olympic Forest Reserve in 1897.But thatonly intensified the debate. U.S. presidentswould push and pull public acreage in andout of protected status throughout this entirecentury. The question is always the same:how much acreage should be saved for"natural values" and how much acreageshould be used for "human values."

On June 29,1938, President FranklinRoosevelt signed a bill setting aside OlympicNational Park for future generations.

Today, as a century ago, Hood Canalreceives much of its water from high in theOlympic Mountains, now protected foreternity. Streams flow through wildernessareas, logged-off lands and even placeswhere timber refuses to grow. They flowthrough National Forest lands that timbercompanies have come to depend on for rawmaterials. But those forest lands are now

being set aside to protect the northernspotted owl, a species that depends onhealthy old-growth ecosystems for itssurvival.

And the tug of war between use of theresource and preservation continues; theclash of values, whether trees are worthmore standing or cut, remains unresolved.

"As long as the great trees remain inthe park," proclaims Murray Morgan, "therewill be men willing to cut them down, sawthem up and ship them away to all parts ofthe country. And there will be others — Isuspect a majority — who would rathercome to see them than have them sent."

A Company Town GrowsAround a Sawmill

More than a century ago, whenthe S'Klallams plied the watersof Hood Canal in canoes and

dense forestshugged its shores,greatlumbermen staked their claimat a spotcalled Teekalet.Mills sprouted alongthe canal like mushrooms but none

quite so fine as the Puget Mill Company, founded in the mid-1800s byAndrew Pope and Frederic Talbot inthe deep-water port later known asPort Gamble.

Over the years hundreds ofworkers flocked to the fledglingcommunity, challengedby Douglas firsso mighty they dwarfed husky lumberjacks eager to earn a living.

Among them was the father ofIda Faler and Chuck Hirschi of

Poulsbo, who came from Canadasearchingfor work to feed his family.

He tried Skid Road in Seattle, butwas told his best bet was the mill at

Port Gamble.

"He didn't know where Port

Gamble was," Hirschi said, "but heboarded a little boat and went there.

While he was gone, our house burnedand we lost everything. He had towork awhile before he had enoughmoney to send for us/'

It was 1917 when Ida, 7, and*Chuck, 9, stepped off the boat in PortGamble with their mother, foursiblings and all their worldly possessions. Little did they realize this tinycommunity would provide the framework for their adult lives.

Pope &Talbot, perhaps a bithomesick for their native East Machias,Maine, built a mill town that reflectedNew England tastes and rented thehomes to workers and their families.

"We paid $15 a month for thehouse in those days, including theelectricityfor lights," Hirschi said.

"We loved it," Faler said. "Mymother thought it was wonderful. Itwasn't too modern, but it was moremodern than what we had before."

The family settled in a house

behind the community's steepled church. Poulsbo, which was the nearest thing to aThey lived 42years in the same house, big city,was too far if you didn't have awhich still stands today. car.

Photos of the town's early years Hirschi, now 83, worked for the millshow muddy streets, wooden sidewalks 50years before retiring in 1973, the onlyand bleak, severe houses. There were Pope &Talbot employee to work 50 yearsvegetablegardens in abundance as thrifty in the same location. Brother Fred also

housewives raised produce for their spent 50years with the company, altables, augmenting the groceries pur though he relocated to the Oak Ridge,chased at the company store. Ore., plant.

But there wasn't much time for Faler retired in 1971 after 42 years.flowergardens or fancylandscaping, a "It was a wonderful place to work," shehallmark of the carefully restored town recalled. "I have never regretted it."today. The pigs running loose in the Many of the homes now are gone.community probably would have rooted The once-proud Puget Hotel fell victim toin the flowerbeds. the Columbus Day storm of 1962,and the

"Well, it was tough at first, not old schoolhouse was demolished after

speaking English, you know," Hirschi David Wolfle School was built. The

said, "but we got along and made friends. hospital,where generations of PortIt became our home." Their first language Gamble babies were born, also is ahad been Swiss. memory.

There were probably 600people But Port Gamble remains a com

livingin the town during those years, pany town. The 137-year-old sawmill, theHirschi said, all of them working for the oldest continuously operating one inmill. Workers poured into the logging North America, has undergone manycamps, and there were times when the renovations. It continues to operate, butwhiskey got the better of them. But,for has been buffeted by national recessionthe most part, Port Gamble was a family and the uncertainties caused by thetown. spotted owl.

"I went to work at the mill when I The once-bleak buildings have beenwas 16because we needed money," lovinglyrestored by the descendants ofHirschi said. "Two years later my father the originalfounders, and when the 4died of cancer and I helped support the o'clock whistle blows, many workers arefamily. I worked for 35 cents an hour, 10- just a few steps away from home. Thehour days, sometimes even longer. company store (next to the office) recentlySometimes those days stretched to 12 has been updated, but folks still stop byhours. But I was glad to have the work. I for bread and milk between trips tostarted by tying lumber bundles then kept Poulsbo, now just minutes away by car.changing jobs.Most of my life I graded Down the road a piece, near thelumber." picturesque church, sits the Thompson

The social life was simple, but busy. house, the oldest continuously occupied"The Thompsons ran the little home in the state of Washington. James

theater there, and there were matinees for Thompson came to Port Gamble on thethose who worked the night shift," Faler schooner Towana and his descendants

said. "There were dances and an outdoor lived in the house more than 99 years.pavilion outside the post office. At And on the hill, carefully tended andChristmas there was a big party and every enclosed with a fence, is the quiet gravechild in town received a present from the yard where generations of families aremill owners." buried.

"People knew everyone in town, These were the men and women

and there was a lot of visiting," Hirschi who toiled in the mills and helped build asaid. lumber empire that left an indelible mark

In those days travel was difficult. on Hood Canal.

Seattlewas some distance by boat, andByJoAnne Marez

Logging • 63

In 1857 the

Port Gamble

mill was the

greatestlumber

manufacturingplant on Puget

Sound, andtwo or three

schooners

might be seenin port at one

time, theirlumber bound

for SanFrancisco and

ports in theOrient.


Section 2

A Log's

Long

Journey


Logger Chuck Stewartfells a 75-year-old tree

that wasto become partoftoglotCU-25.

Sept. 24,1990: Deep in the woodsnear the tip of the ToandosPeninsula, a logging crew has beenfelling timber since daybreak.Damp winds have erased thewarm days of summer in forested

lands east of Dabob Bay. Although cloudsthreaten to turn the dry soil to mud, only afew drops have fallen so far this day.

10:11 a.m.: Chuck Stewart Jr., a skilledtimber cutter, sizes up one of the larger

Douglas firs on this 45-acre tract of statetimberland. Observing more limbs on oneside of the trunk, Stewart quickly calculatesthe face cut he'll need to make the tree fall

cleanly to the ground.He revs up his chain saw, a 36-inch

Husqvarna, and guides it carefully towardthe tree. The surging teeth slash throughbark and into the sapwood of this 75-year-old tree.

Stewart, who lives near Hadlock, and

hundreds of others who work the woods

around Hood Canal are members of an

ancient and proud profession. It was theirpredecessors who opened Hood Canal tocivilization even before the first mill was

built at Port Gamble in 1853.

Today's powerful saws complete thework faster and with fewer workers than

ever before. As they did 100years ago,logging tools help transform trees intohouses, bridges, ships, docks — even thebook you're reading.

Despite improvements in safety,logging remains the most dangerous job inthe state, according to the Department ofLabor and Industries. More than a few

loggers have been surprised by snappingtree trunks, falling limbs and whippingsaplings. Next to a towering fir tree, a humanbeing looks fragile.

The danger, says Stewart, is part of theexcitement: "You have to stay on your toes."

10:12 a.m.: Stewart completes the firstof two cuts that will form a notch. The notch

is critical in aiming the tree. A miscalculationcould leave the tree hung up in others orbroken, with little value.

The logger begins his second cut belowthe first, angling the blade upwards. Afterthe notch falls out, Stewart visualizes howthe tree will fall, then uses his saw to slice alittle more wood from one edge of the notch.

The saw still roaring, Stewart beginshis "back cut." Sawdust flies, and secondslater the wood begins to crackle loudly. Themassive tree leans, as if on a hinge. It falls,faster and faster. Then, with a thunderingcrunch, the tree crushes limbs and underbrush as it strikes the ground, dead ontarget.

Stewart quickly shears the limbs fromthe tree. Knowing the requirements of Pope&Talbot, he uses a steel tape measure tomark the fallen tree and bucks it into logs.One 36-footlog is 40 inches across at one end— the largest diameter that can go throughthe mill.

11:03 a.m.: Erick "Pete" Peterson steers

his John Deere skidder toward the hefty logcut by Stewart. The machine grabs the logand hoists one end off the ground. With aloud roar, the skidder rushes off,draggingthe log uphill and leaving a cloud of dust.

In days gone by, the primary concernwas to cut the logs and get them out of thewoods as cheaply as possible. Teams ofhorseswere used. Then came logging

railroads. When possible, rivers were used tomove logs to open water.

It didn't much matter whether streams

were filled with dirt, smothering salmonspawning areas, or if baby birds were left todie on the bare ground.

Personal accounts of those days arefilled with the romantic side of logging life— and death. Discussions about "the

environment" were left for future years.Today, more care is required to protect

the natural elements, even on private land. Agrowing awareness of natural systems hasbrought changes in logging practices andland management — and the change is farfrom over.

11:20 a.m.: Gary Hintz, 31, the owner ofthis logging company, pushes and pulls atcontrols that maneuver the powerful loaderunder him. The machine picks up logsbrought to the landing by skidders, thenspins around, loading the trimmed treesonto logging trucks.

Individual logs sometimes sit at thelanding for hours or even days, but today theautomatic de-limber, a relatively newmachine that strips the limbs from smallerlogs, is out of service. The log that Stewartcut and bucked earlier is picked up rightaway.

Hintz, a Seabeck resident, learned thelogging business from his father, Carl.Starting at age 15,Gary worked every job inthe woods before taking over the companyseven years ago.

His son Brandon, 7, sometimes sits atthe controls, moving the heavy machine asHintz watches closely. Brandon wants to bea logger, too, said Hintz.

"I tell him 'no, no — think banker,football player, anything...' But momentslater, while talking about this piece of stateland and how it will be replanted withseedlings, Hintz comments, "By the timeBrandon grows up, he will thin this."

11:29 a.m.: Truck driver BifCorey ofPoulsbo keeps his eye on the truck's weightscale(justinside the driver's door) as the logsare loaded. When the digital numbers tickoff 80,100pounds, he calls for Hintz to stoploading.

The load is 26 3A tons of raw timber.Corey grabs a hammer and climbs withinreach of the logs. He strikes the butt end ofeach one, leaving the brand "CU-25." Now,anyone can figure out where these logs camefrom.

Logging • 65

With modern

technology, ittakes a little

less than fiveminutes to fella 75-year-oldDouglas fir

with a trunk 40

inches across.


It takes one

100-foot-talltree to providethe wood and

paper productsused annuallyby the average

American.

Corey throws one end of a steel cable(a "wrapper") over the pile of logs andbrings it up tight. For a load this size, statelaw requires three wrappers.

11:32a.m.: Corey shifts his truck intogear and pulls out of the landing area. Heheads downhill toward Port Ludlow, 15miles away.

12:14p.m.: The truckpulls up next to a longwooden dock at the scalingstation in Port Ludlow. Scaler

Tom Kegley, 58, of Poulsbomeasures the width of each

log and figures the lengthfrom marks on the dock. He

keeps track of the volume oftimber with a handheld

computer. Then he marks thebundle with a yellow tagbearing the number 9395.

12:23 p.m.: The truckarrives at Pope & Talbot's logdump at Port Ludlow, wherethe load will become part of alog raft destined for PortGamble. Mel Morgenson, 39,and Don Tuson, 62, are incharge here. The two replacethe cable wrappers with steel"bands," designed to holdthe logs together throughouttheir voyage. Five minuteslater, a huge "log stacker" —larger than the logging truckitself—grabs the entirebundle of logs off the truckand heads toward the water.

At the controls is Morgenson,who has worked for Pope &Talbot 15 years.

This is a heavy load,weighing 40 percent more than most. Atwater's edge, Morgenson drops the bundleinto the water. Unexpectedly, the bandssnap, probably due to the weight and angleof fall. These logs will have to float free in thelog raft, formed by 60 truckloads of timbertransported out of the woods.

Uct 4, about 3p.m.: The log Stewartcut in the woods more than a week earlier is

still waiting to be towed to the Pope & Talbotsawmill. Resident manager Jerry Clarkstands before his mill crew in Port Gamble.

He has some particularly bad news. The millwill shut down for 30 days.

The housing market in SouthernCalifornia — where most of Pope & Talbot's"green" (not kiln-dried) lumber is sold —won't support the mill's output of 13 millionboard feet of lumber each month.

Forty-eight employees will remain invarious positions at the mill, while 125workers will have to do without a paycheck

for at least a month. Saw

motors are switched off, oneby one.

Oct 10,2 p.m.: No logshave moved from Port

Ludlow. The mill at Port

Gamble stands quiet exceptfor a low hum coming from asawdust blower at the

planing building. There, 15members of the planing creware still on the job, smoothingthe rough boards producedbefore the mill closed down.

Usually 25 people work inthat building.

Plant manager BradFountain stands near the

"head rig," looking out uponthe water. In normal times,he would see workers pushfloating logs toward thesawmill. And, normally, hisvoice couldn't be heard

above the noise of that first

big saw."Ifs an eerie silence,

almost a silence of suffering,"says Fountain. "This is one ofthe finest mills on the West

Coast and to see it sitting idleis pretty devastating."

The lumber industry isfamiliar with economic cycles

tied to housing construction, interest ratesand the national economy. This mill was lastshut down during the recession of 1982.Butthere's a different feeling this time. Peopleare thinking about issues such as the northern spotted owl, which has been declaredthreatened under the Endangered SpeciesAct. A shortage of timber on federal lands,competition from overseas markets andincreasing environmental regulations couldput a severe squeeze on mills like Pope &Talbot.

"We can't expect to have the kind ofindustry we've had for the past decade,"says Fountain.

ToandosPeninsula

With nationalforest land being

restricted tologging more and

more, timbercutters are being

forced to depend onsecond growth treeson state and private

lands in the HoodCanal watershed.

Oct. 25,2:45 p.m.: Bruce Bell, a39-year-old saw filer, removes a load of clothesfrom the washing machine at his home inPort Gamble. Bell has been out of work since

the mill shut down three weeks ago.Normally, he'd be at the mill, operating

equipment that sharpens the huge bandsaws, which now lie quietly on the woodenfloor of the filing room.

Since he has been out of work, Bell hasrepaired his pickup truck and looked forother jobs. He doesn't see much future in hiscareer.

"I enjoy it, but I don't see how it will

keep going," he explained.Congress recently approved, and the

president signed, a bill that would limitexports of raw logs from state lands. Theaction was designed to preserve Northwestsawmill jobs as the timber supply growstighter.

Competition may drive mills out ofbusiness, but Clark hopes the waterfrontlocation of the Pope & Talbot mill willprovide a competitive edge in transportationcosts.

Oct 29,7:03 a.m.: David Olson reaches

Pope Resources a Major Canal Player

The largest owner of private timber-land around Hood Canal didn't

exist five years ago.Pope Resources in Poulsbo was

created in December of 1985 to own and

manage the extensive land holdings ofPope & Talbot in western Puget Sound. Itbought the 80,000-plusacres under Pope& Talbofs control, most of it in the HoodCanal watershed.

Management of the 65,000 acres oftimberland hasn't much changed fromwhen Pope & Talbot owned them, saysGeorge Folquet, Pope Resources president. Pope Resources has stepped up thepace of development of properties closeenough to major population areas tobecome housing.

It has sold all but one small portionof the BucklinHill ridgetop overlookingSilverdale. Ifs winning awards for itsNew Port Ludlow development inJeffersonCounty, and hoping to create amajor housing development around anew golf course it plans to build nearKingston.

The logging of acreage near GigHarbor is being done selectively, leavingthose trees that will add value to the land

as housing. And a land trade withBremerton may enable Pope Resources tocreate the largest housing development inthe city's history in the Sinclair Heightsarea.

But little of the development hasbeen in the Hood Canal basin. PopeResources acreage along Paradise BayRoad from the Hood Canal FloatingBridge north has been sold in large lots.

And the company is trying to satisfy stateand county requirements to convert 185acres near Seabeck (a relatively smallparcel by Pope Resources standards) tohousing.

In 1985, the board of directors ofPope &Talbot was nervous about corporate raiders. So the company reorganized,creatinga limited partnership it calledPope Resources. In addition to making ahostile takeover more difficult, saidFolquet, it enabled the company to claimfull value of its land holdings. And itavoided the double taxationthat corporations and their stockholders then faced —

once when the corporation makes theprofit, and again when it distributesdividends.

Pope Resources has become aprofitable operation, but the realignmenthad its costs, said Folquet. Because PopeResources bought the land from Pope &Talbot, it paid a substantial real estatetransactions tax.

"It was always presumed that a millneeded its own land and timber base,"Folquet said. "But I think ifs quite thecontrary, the mill (at Port Gamble) hasoperated very satisfactorily."

Sawmill manger Jerry Clark said ofthe reorganization, "We had to become alot smarter about how we purchased logson the open market. From that standpoint,it has been a difficult transition, but Ithink we have the people here who arecapable of doing the job."

ByTravis Baker

Logging • 67

Theaveragenew single-

family homeuses about

13,000 boardfeet of

softwoodlumber and

9,500 squarefeet of wood

panels.


over the stern of tugboat P&TPioneer andshackles the boat to 11.2million pounds offloating cellulose — an estimated 8,400individual Douglas fir logs.

Among these logs is broken bundle9395, which contains the tree cut by Stewartmore than a month earlier.

At the wheel of the 60-foot Pioneer

stands Doug Vondersmith, 57,an employeeof Pope &Talbot for 22 years. The boat edgesforward, playing out 1,000 feet of tow cable.That's enough distance to reduce drag fromthe wash of the tug's propeller.

The boat emits a low, grumbling noise.The cable grows taut. The giant woodenrectangle begins to move.

Today's tow is four complete log rafts,840feet long and 140feet wide. That's nearlythe length of three football fields, though notquite the width of one.

11:55 a.m.: The log tow passes the maindock at the Port Gamble mill and proceedstoward the storage area beyond the mill.

Here it will stay until the saws are spinningagain.

JN ov. 1:Just three weeks beforeThanksgiving, mill manager Jerry Clark hasgood news and bad news for his crews. Themill will reopen Nov. 12,but with one shiftinstead of two. Sixty-eight hourly employeeswill not come back. In addition, 15supervisors will be removed from the payroll.

"I thought I had the toughest job of mylifewhen I faced those guys a month ago,"said Clark. "Now I have to do it over again,and there's some permanency this time."

A feeling of uncertainty has seepedinto the souls of the men and women who

depend on trees for a living.Times are changing. Nobody wants the

Hood Canal region to stop growing trees,but the issue is complicated. The region is nolonger dominated by a single-mindedindustry. In Hood Canal, the days of endlesstimber are coming to an end.

Steepgrades in the 'watershed makeclearcutting the most economical method for

commercial timber harvesting.

MikeHandly nudges thecontrol knob gently with hisright hand and 500 board feetof prime Douglas fir nestlesinto place on the back of thelogging truck below him.

Suddenly the big dieselengine powering hisloader begins to chortle and cough, thenchugs to a halt.

Cussing a blue streak, Handly swingsout of the big loader.

"Ran out of (expletive deleted) fuel,"he yells to the truck driver, asking him topull his rig forward. Then Handly sprints upthe road to a battered pickup carrying a tankof diesel fuel. Another vehicle is blocking theroad. Handly swears some more and sprints

off to find the driver and his keys."This is the way logging is," he yells

over his shoulder. "It's a full-bore-typeoccupation!"

The break in routine is rare for Handlyand his crew. They get no breaks. No lunchbreak, no potty break, no coffee break. Fromdawn to dusk, they don't stop unlesssomething forces them.

Handly has been a logger all of his life.So has his dad, Pat Handly, who also lives inQuilcene.

"I've been doing this since I was bigenough to go out and set chokers," he laughsin a deep whiskey baritone. He was 12 at thetime. At age 25, he got together enoughequipment and a crew to go into business for

Logging • 69

Section

3

The

Economics

of a

Clear Cut

Byjack Swanson


Handly andhis crew don't

have time to

stop anddebate the

wisdom ofclearcuts or

spotted owlhabitat. That's

something theland owner

has to worryabout.

himself. That was in 1983.

Handly is a barrel-chested 6-footerwith a grizzled beard. Two centuries ago, hewould have been a pirate. A century ago, atrapper, miner —or logger,probablyrighthere on the frontier. He is single. Loggingdoesn't leave a lot of time for long-termrelationships, he says.

Handly and his men are just finishing a90-acreclearcut high above Hood Canal.Theland is steep hillside overlooking theDosewallips Riverabout 2,000 feetabove sealevel.

Because the land is so steep,clearcutting is the only practical way to log.That was decided by the property owner, notHandly. If the land had been more level, itcould have been logged selectively,using atractor or other equipment to skid the logsout to where they could be loaded ontotrucks.

But in this case, Handly has to use adevice called a "yarder," a tall pole attachedto a truck bed, fastened to the ground withheavy cables.Atop the pole is a 2,000-foot-long loop of steel cable that stretchesdownthe hill and is attached to a pulley hooked toa tree.

One of Handly's crewmen operates theyarder from a cab at the base of the pole.Four 20-foot-longcables called "chokers"dangle from the middle of the long wire.Half a mile down the hillside where freshlycut logs lie like matchsticks, three chokermenwait for the dangling cables.

Tim Love, Handly's rigging slinger,presses a button on a radio-control deviceattached to his belt, which sets off a series ofblasts on an air horn atop the yarder. That'sthe signal for the cableoperator to send thechokers downhill to the men. They grab thechokers and wrap them round the butt endof the logs, then Lovesignalsagain and theyarder engineer winches them up the hill,depositing them in a pile besideHandly'sloader.

Another chokerman working next tothe loader releases the cables, then dances

nimbly along the logs, cutting them toproper length with a chainsaw.

Handly and his crew of seven havespent the last four months logging this pieceof land. They have a couple more weeks tofinishpulling the logsout and getting theland ready for replanting.

Then he will move his equipment out,

repair the roads and culverts behind himand move on to the next job — if there is one.

Handly has no job to move on to. Thebottom has dropped out of the lumbermarket because of the nationwide slowdown

in home construction. Mills are closing.Hundreds of independent loggers likeHandly are out of work, and the usedequipment market is flooded with loaders,tractors and other rigs.

It's not the spotted owl that's causingproblems for Handly. It's not the debate overcutting old-growth forests. Ifs the economy.People aren't buying houses anymore.

During a brief break, Handly chatswith two young hikers who ask how to getto a hiking trail above where his crew isworking. He explains they can't get past hisrig on the road right now and that heinformed the Forest Service he would be

working in the area.The hikers aren't very nice about it,

and one of them makes a snide remark about

how many spotted owls Mike and his crewkilled that day. Handly scowls but keeps hiscool, remarking that this isn't a very goodspot to pick a fight with a bunch of loggers.

He asks them what they do for a livingand they say they work at Puget SoundNaval Shipyard on nuclear weapon systems.After the hikers drive off in search of another

trail, he makes it clear how he feels aboutpeople who work on nuclear weapons thenclimbs back into his rig.

Any visitor to the area Handly isclearcutting would be struck by the beautyof it. The hills, covered by the patchwork ofother clearcuts, drop down to Hood Canal inthe distance, and on a clear day you can seeSeattle's skyscrapers. The air is clean andcarries the pungent aroma of diesel exhaustand crushed fir needles.

The visitor has time to take in the

scenery. Handly's crew seems oblivious to itall. They're too busy keeping alive.

Handly and his crew are typical.Theydon't have time to stop and debate thewisdom of clearcuts or spotted owl habitat.That's something the land owner has toworry about.

Handly has other things he has toworry about: keeping his equipment running, moving out 15to 20loads of logs a day,seeing that none of his men gets hurt andmaking sure everybody gets paid.

When Handly is finished, the 90 acresof 90-year-old trees will have provided 13

people with jobs for between two and fourmonths, depending on the work they weredoing. That crew consisted of two sawyers,four chokermen, a yarder engineer, fivetruck drivers and Handly, who operates thelog loader.

Only five of the men actually workdirectly for Handly on the site. The sawyersare independent contractors whose work isdone when the last tree hits the dirt. The

truck drivers work for the truck owners, whorent their rigs out to Handly by the load orby the day.

Each working day Handly and his menfill those five trucks three or four times with

between 50,000 and 75,000 pounds of wood— 20 to 25 logs containing about 5,000boardfeet of raw lumber.

In all, Handly expects the 90 acres toyield up about 3.7 million board feet oftimber. At a market price of between $450and $500 a thousand board feet, that timberis probably worth in the neighborhood of$1.5 million. Handly ends up only with asmall percentage of the total.

Ihe world oflogging economics ispretty complex. According to John Walter,timber lands vice president of Pope Resources, Pope bought the property severalyears ago as part of a 1,200-acrepurchase. Ithad previously been Crown Zellerbach land.

The parcel had been logged around theturn of the century but was not replanted.The natural regrowth was extremely denseand full of debris that needed to be cleaned

out, Walter said. About two years ago, Popesold the "stumpage" or the right to cut thetrees, to ITT-Rayonier.

Under the contract, Pope continued toown the logs until they were cut. Aftercutting ITT had to pay Pope a certain fixedprice for the timber. If the market price ishigher now than the price Pope sold it for,ITTmakes money. If it's lower than the fixedprice, Pope makes more than it would haveif it had harvested the trees itself.

'That's why, at times, timber sales likethese can be a very advantageous tool,"Walter said. "If the market is low, people arewilling to speculate that the market will goup later on. On the other hand, the marketcan work against you."

The contract specifies that the trees hadto be cut by March 1991 or ownership wouldreturn to Pope. ITTsold the Douglas fir logs

to Pope &Talbot (P&Tand Pope used to beone company) and decided to keep thehemlock taken from the property. ITT soldthe pulpwood to a Port Angeles firm.Handly was hired by ITTto do the logging.

When the trucks leave the mountain,Handly never sees the logs again. They aremeasured at a scaling yard, where a computer estimates the board feet contained ineach log. It spits out a ticket that shows thecredits that are added to ITT's account. The

trucker takes the logs to Pope & Talbot'sholding pond near Port Ludlow, where theyare dumped into the water and stored forlater processing.

Handly gets roughly one-third of theproceeds from each load. Figure a truckholds 5,000 board feet at $450per thousand,that's $2,250 per load. He has five trucks andeach makes three trips a day, so that's$33,750 and his one-third comes to $11,250per day.

But he has to pay the truck owner $130per load in rent and each of his men around$120per day plus benefits. And his fuel billcomes to around $3,500per day.

"I figure I've gotta have at least $2,300a day after expenses to pay for all of the menand the state industrial insurance," Handlysaid. "And diesel fuel just went up another30 cents a gallon. So that doesn't leavemuch."

Out of what's left over, Handly has topay for the equipment, repairs and maintenance. He figures he has more than $100,000invested in equipment. Add everything upand Handly figures his company will show agross income of more than $100,000 thisyear, but he personally will end up withabout the same amount his men make.

"It all depends on how good a loggeryou are," he says. "It's a matter of production. You gotta get the wood out."

There's one big difference, however,between Mike and his men. When they getlaid off, they can apply for unemploymentcompensation. If Handly can't come up withanother logging contract, he will have to goto work for somebody else — if he can findsomeone who is hiring. If he couldn't log,what would he do?

"What I really want to do is all I'veever done," he said. "I wish we could keeplogging. If I can't do that, I guess I'd want towork with equipment of some kind. But Ijust don't know what else I would do."

Logging • 71

Handly has toworry aboutkeepinghisequipmentrunning,

moving out 15to 20 loads of

logs a day,seeing thatnone of his

mengets hurtand making

sure everybodygets paid.


Each workingday Handlyand his men

fill five trucksthree orfour

times with 20

to 25 logscontainingabout 5,000boardfeet ofraw lumber.

Timber related jobsin Hood Canal counties

Mason

County

Population 36,800Total employment 12,130Timber-related 14.6%

Jefferson County

Population 18,600Total employment 7,600Timber-related 7.5 %

KitsapCounty

Population "" 177,300Total employment 71,500Timber-related 0.4%

4

Major firms

Simpson TimberHiawatha Inc.

Manke Lumber

Skookum Lumber

ITT RayonierOlympia Wood ProductsOther sawmills

Port Townsend PaperAllen LogGary Phillips LoggingHalco Fence

Pope and Talbot

Product Jobs

Timber 915

Wholesale evergreen 225Logging and hauling 120Lumber, siding 120Wood research 80

Lumber 55

Lumber (seasoned) 250

Paper, pulp 397Lumber, chips, logs 100Contract logging 54Lumber 16

Forest products 275

Source: Washington Department ofTrade and Economic Development,1988figures

Logging Is Region's Bread and Butter

Asa region, the area west of HoodCanal produces more timber thanany other similar-sized area in the

state except for Lewisand Cowlitzcounties to the south.

Mason and Jefferson counties ranksixthand eighth, respectively, among the19 counties west of the Cascades in

amount of timber harvested in 1989.

JeffersonCounty produced more timberfromstate-owned land lastyear than anyother county in the state.

Kitsap County, which forms thecanal's eastern border, is at the bottom ofthe list in timber production, however. Itranks 17thand produced less than 1percent of Western Washington's 1989harvest

Nevertheless, it is home to one ofHood Canal's oldest and most productivemills,Pope &Talbot in Port Gamble at thehead of the canal.

Pope Resources, a timber and landdevelopment company with headquartersin Poulsbo, is one of the major landowners on the canal.

Lookingat the three-county area asa whole, officials say one of every fourpersons owes his livelihood to the timberindustry. Dependence on timber isheaviest in Mason County where timber-related firms are seven of the top 10employers and provide more than 1,700

jobs.Nearly 15percent of those who holdjobs in Mason County work for timber-related firms.

In Jefferson County, nearly 8 percentof the work force is employed in timberproduction or processing.

No one tracks timber and jobs justfor the Hood Canal watershed, butofficials say they believethe dependenceon timber-relatedjobsis somewhat higherin the small towns that ring the canal thanoverall county figures suggest.

Towns like Hoodsport and Quilcenehave dozens — perhaps even hundreds— of small,independent "gypo" loggers.Many familiessubsist on the income of asingle logging truck or bulldozer. Countlessothers work sporadicallyas chokersetters and sawyers for independentloggers.

As a result, officials say the numberof persons around Hood Canal whodepend on the timber industry for jobscould be as high as 50 percent

For the Olympic Peninsula as awhole,more than 11,000 persons receivedmore than $305 million in direct wagesfrom the timber industry and more than46,000 persons benefitted indirectly. Totaldirect and indirect benefits to the region'seconomy amounted to more than $1.3billion,accordingto a recent studyconducted by industry and state agencies.

ByJack Swanson

Logging • 73

"It all dependson how good aloggeryou are.It's a matter of

production.Yougotta get

the wood out"—Mike Handly,

Quilcene


Section 4

Who Owns

the Canal

Watershed

ByTravis Baker

Timber is a game played withthousand-acre chips, and in theHood Canal basin, Pope Resources is the private operatorwith the biggest stack.

Its stack still is smaller than

that held by the federal government. Butamong private owners, no one rivals Pope'sapproximately 60,000 acres in the watershed.

That private ownership has been in fluxin Jefferson and Kitsap County, but relativelystable in Mason, where Simpson Timber Co.is king. While only 8,000 of Simpson's 170,000acres in Mason County are on the slopesdraining into the canal,Simpson is still thesecond largest private timberland owner inthe watershed.

Current Hood Canal timberland

ownership includes three companies withexperience in residential and commercialdevelopment, plus a major insurance company. But there appear to be no activeplansto convert any substantial amount of canalforestland to any other use.

Only one company, Christmas treegrower G.R.Kirk in Mason County, sees ashort-range likelihoodof conversion fromtimberland.

Jefferson County has seen the mostactive trading in timberland.

Pope is the big player there, but othersinclude a real estate arm of Traveler's

Insurance, with 4,600 acres in the watershed,and about 12,000 total in eastern Jefferson;PacificFunding Corp. of Lynnwood withabout 3,000acres; and ANE Forests of PugetSound, owned by a Dane, Sorn Nymark, andholder of 4,600 canal acres. Manke & Sons ofTacoma has only 660acres in Jefferson,butmore in Kitsap and Mason, and TrilliumCorp. of Bellingham has recently acquired630 acres of canal timberland.

Pope Resources,PacificFunding andTrillium are the three who have ties to

development. Pope has thousands of acresconverted to housing or about to be, butalmost none of it is in the canal watershed.

PacificFunding is owned by some of thesame people who own First Western Development, which builds and owns shoppingcenters. Mile Hill Plaza, Target Plaza andWinslow Village in Kitsap County are FirstWestern projects.Trillium is part owner ofthe Semiahmoo Resort in Whatcom County,and BellesFaire Mall in Bellingham is onland it put together.

Timberlands

ofHoodCanal

PopeResources mSimpson Timber *Publicly heldlands uOtherprivate lands

Others

Trillium Corp. (tc)Pacific Funding

®

Travelers Ins. (m)ANE Forests @)G.R. Kirk CiOOverton Family C5)Manke & Sons (m)/. Hofert Co. (IT)

Logging • 75

The timber lands

surrounding HoodCanal are controlled

bya diverse setofstewards. Largetimber companies likeSimpson and Pope andTalbot rub elbowswith smaller timber

companies. They allrub elbows with the

state andfederallycontrolled timber

lands.


No privatelandowner

rivals Pope'sapproximately60,000 acres in

the Hood

Canal

watershed.

The corporate raid of CrownZellerbachby BritisherSirJamesGoldsmithled to liquidation by his company,Cavenham, of its Jefferson County timberland, which has been bought by various newowners.

John Calhoun, the Olympic Regionmanagerfor the stateDepartment ofNaturalResources, called the buy-log-and-sellpractices ofCavenham"despicable forestry."But DNRwas unable to require any more ofCavenham than that it replant the loggedacreageas demanded by state law.Though ittook longer than DNR would have liked, ifsnow all replanted, said Calhoun.

Travelers, ANE and Pope Resourcesare among thosewho own someof the landnow.

Pacific Funding traded some of its landwith Pope Resources and acquiredmostofthe rest from a Taiwanese owner calledGolden Springs.LikeCavenham,GoldenSpringswas slow to replant afterloggingand paid littleattention to the long-termwelfare of the land, said Calhoun.

John Walter, vice president for timber-lands at Pope Resources, says up to 45percent of the young treeson a parcel itacquiredfromGoldenSpringswillhave tobe replaced.The replanting was done toolong after logging,he said.

Trillium picked up its Jefferson Countyland from Georgia Pacific.

In Mason County, the major canalowners other than Simpson are Los Angeles-based J. Hofert Co. and G.R. Kirk Co. ofTacoma. Both are Christmas tree growerswho have been in the county for decades.ScottScott, a Hofert vice president, estimatesit has 2,000 acres in the canal watershed. RickKirk of the Tacoma firm said 3,500 acres onthe Tahuya Peninsula are the bulk of itsholdings.

Pope far exceedsany other owner intimberland in KitsapCounty.Thereare fewother largeblocks ofownershipin thecanalwatershed. Manke & Sons of Tacoma

appears to be the only one with more than athousand acres. The Overton family ofOlympiaownsa lotof land westofBremerton National Airport, but only a fewhundred acres drain toward Hood Canal,said Peter Overton.

Policieson management of the landand its harvesting vary among the companies.SincePope and Simpsonhave the most

land, their policies have the most to sayabout the future of the canal.

Bothlog annually, aiming for what isessentially an industry standard of harvesting 1 V2 - 2 percent of their lands each year.That allows a 50-to-60-yearcycle in whichpart of their timberis reaching maturityallthe time. But both emphasize that marketfluctuations increase and decrease any year'sharvest as they try to get the best price forthe timber.

Both Pope and Simpson are trying to"block up" their holdings, consolidatingthem in a few areas through trades withother owners so they can avoid trying tomanage widely spread parcels.Pope surrendered 6,000 acres south of Hood Canal inMason County in a three-way trade underwhich it acquired timber on state land,Simpson blocked up its Mason Countyholdings and the state got some Simpsonland.

Aside from that trade, said GeorgeFolquet,president of Pope Resources, hiscompany is seeking to increaseits land base.

All timberland owners who log useclearcuttingin mature stands. Nearly all alsodo commercial thinning, in which selectedtrees are taken. That makes room for the

remaining trees to grow while generatingrevenue from sale of the trees taken.

Some are logging very little.BuyersofCavenham and Golden Springs land weren'tleftmuch to log. ANE Forests, for example,logged three of its JeffersonCounty acres in1990, PacificFunding an estimated 50acres,Trillium none and Travelers almost none. All

have larger holdings in other parts of thestate or nation they will log while waiting fortheir Jefferson trees to grow, they say.

Only Kirkforesees subdivision of itsproductive land in the near future. PresidentRick Kirk said the trend in Christmas trees is

toward sheared trees grown on fertile landsuch as the company owns in ThurstonCounty. That is making its 3,500acres inMason County more and more marginal. Itsrural location, however, would dictatesubdivision into only large lots if that is whatthe company decides to do with it in thefuture.

As poor as it is, the Tahuya Peninsulaland produced 120,000 cut trees last Christmas, about 10 percent of Kirk's production,he said.

Tax Structure Seeks Commitment to the Land

Taxation of timberland in Washington state has followed a basicpremisefor nearly two decades.Thepremise is that the owner,

governmentand publicbenefitwhentimber is taxed at cutting rather thanannually as it grows.

Prior to 1971, timberland was taxedas any other real property — each year,basedon the countyassessor'sestimateofits value with the timber included, saidBillDerkland, forest property tax program managerfor the state DepartmentofRevenue.

Annual taxation created an incen

tive to cut the timber,elirninatingforest-land, said Derkland. Byharvesting, theland owner reduced his property taxesand took the revenue represented by thetrees.

In 1971,the Legislature moved toreduce that incentive.The biggest tax bite,it decided, should come when the treesare cut.

Annual property taxeswere greatlyreduced. The state Department of Revenue establisheda 29-category ranking oftimber land, based on its productivity andthe ease of logging it

Each year since, the state hasestablisheda value per acre for each of the29 categories.

Those values are much lower than

under the "highest and best use" standardthat county assessors apply to other land.Kitsap County Assessor Carol Belasestimates them to be only 3 percent ofnormal value, on average. On an 885-acreparcelon BainbridgeIsland, it was closerto 1 percent

And no annual tax is paid on thetimber on the land.

Statewide,the designated values oftimberland range from $1 to $135per acrethis year. Most timberland in Mason,

Kitsap and Jefferson countiesis in amedium categoryvalued by the state atbetween $70 and $100 per acre.

In return for the niinimal valuations,

the state collectsa 5 percent excise tax onthe timber when ifs cut.

And, if the owner removes landfromthe forestryclassification, the statecharges a rollback tax that is greater thanthe owner would have paid over 10yearshad the land not been designated forforestry.

Four-fifths of the 5 percent tax fromlogging on privateland goesto thecounties. All5 percent from logging ongovernmentland goesto the state.

Thepayments are made to the statequarterly.Much like federal income tax,payments are on thehonorsystem, withpenaltiesof up to 50percent,plus interest,for inaccurate reporting, when it iscaught.

A 10-year rollback of taxeson landbeingwithdrawn fromtimberclassification can be a windfall for counties and

other localgovernmentsif the land is inan area with escalatingproperty values,said Derkland.

When land is withdrawn from

forestry taxation, the county assessorcalculates its current value, subtracts itsforest land value, and the county thenappliesthe current tax rate to that value.Tne result is multiplied times 10,and theland owner must pay that amount.

If land values in that area have, say,doubled in those 10years, the rollbackamount paid for each of the 10yearscould be as much as double what the

company actuallywould have paid hadthe land not been taxed as timberland.

There have been no recent conver

sionsof timberland in Kitsap's portion ofthe Hood Canal basin, Belas said.

ByTravis Baker

Logging • 77

Both Pope andSimpson log

annually,havesting

172-2

percent of theirlands each

year. Thatallows a 50-

to-60-yeargrowth cycle.


Section 5

Logging

andiheOwl:

Three

Perspectives

Cut Out of the Future?

Quilcene logger DickPederson has hisshare of bumps, bruises, cuts, andstitches to show for a steady 21 yearsof work in the woods.

"I cut it right down to the bone; theonly thing that stopped the bladewasmyknuckle," Pedersonsays,pointingto a scaron his hand. "And the time I had 37 stitchesin my neckwhen I fell down and the sharpteeth of the saw ripped into me."

Pederson's experiences would notdispute Department of Labor and Industriesstatistics that say logging is the mostdangerous occupation in the state. A total of 163loggers lost their lives in the woods between1980 and 1990.

It is a measure of the people who dothe work that they continue despite thesestatistics, and despite an increasingcrunchon the number of loggingjobsavailableinWashington generally, and in the HoodCanal watershed in particular.

It's not that there aren't rewards.

Pederson earns between $150 and $200a day cutting trees, and wonders where elsea 42-year-old with no high school diplomacan get a job with that kind of pay.

Logging is what he knows, what hefeels comfortable with.He can't picturehimself in an officejob. But he sees thatthere'slittle futurein logging and he hopeshe'll be able to stick with it for another fiveyears, long enough to pay for his new truck.

"If there is a normal job that someonewould train me for,... I'll takeit," he says.

After his current job,a clearcut onForestServiceland in the Dungenesswatershed, there isn't another one in theforeseeable future. The jobis supposed tokeep him busy for eight months, but thereare no more timber salespending. And thereis always the threat that the Forest Servicemight revoke the cutting permit if spottedowls are located in the area.

"I won't take my kids out in thewoods," Pederson says as he sights the leanof a second-growth Douglas fir he preparesto fellnear SlabCamp south of Sequim.Hedoesn't want them to get hooked on it like hedid as a kid. "There's not much of a future

left in this business," he sighs.The stocky Pederson is a proud man

who moved to Quilcene when he was 3. Hebegan working in the woods as a teenager,

joiningwith his father, Harold, who hadbeen logging for 37 years.

Pederson began first by running theheavy equipment cat, then moved up to theskidders, and on to cutting standing timber.

While he takes pride in his work, hiswife Celine hesitates to mention in publicwhat her husband does for a living. Somepeople have confronted them and called hima tree killer, Pederson says.

His typical day begins at 5 a.m. Hedresses in a worn plaid shirt and ankle-length logging jeans that are held up bytypical red suspenders. After grabbing aquick breakfast, he carpools with two fellowloggers to the logging site.

"It's dark when I leave in the morningand dark when I get home," he says.Twelve-hour days are not unusual for alogger.

As a light rain falls at the logging site,the three men part to go to their respectivejobs.Pederson heads to the woods, whileKen Akerman from Quilcene jumps into theskidder, and Bud Smith of Brinnon starts

bucking fallen timber.Pederson moves from tree to tree.

In each case, he first decides which

way he wants it to fall. He then yanks thestarter pull on his chainsaw and begins tofashion the notch that directs the tree's

descent.

With the wood from the notch re

moved, Pederson cuts from the opposite sideof the tree along the plane set by the top cutof the notch. Using a bright orange axe, hehammers in a plastic wedge that keeps theweight of the tree from binding the saw bar.

Before the backcut reaches the notch,

the tree begins to creak. The fall beginsslowly as the wood fibers that still hold thetrunk upright begin to crack, but thenaccelerates quickly as the weight of the treepulls it off the stump.

The cut continues as the tree begins itsdescent, one last opportunity to alter thedirection of the fall.

As soon as it's down, Pederson jumpsup on the tree in his cork boots, measuresand marks the tree for log lengths.

The process is repeated 39 times inPederson's typical day in the woods.

L-eline, Dick's wife ofoneyear, isbusyin the kitchen of their home on the bend of

the LittleQuilcene River just outside of

town. She knows her husband will be

hungry when he walks in the back door.About 5 p.m., Akerman drops

Pederson at the house. Dick ambushes

Celine with a kiss, then goes straight to theshower to wash off the accumulation of dirt,grease, sawdust, and sweat.

Cleaned, and in fresh clothes, he comesto the dinner table with Celine, son Justin, 12,and a friend of Justin's.

After dinner Pederson has but a short

time to play with his son before it's bed time.The two go out into the living room to shootducks on the Nintendo game.

Celine Pederson tries not to think too

much about the possibility that Dick will losehis job. An estimated 28,000 timber industryjobs in Washington, Oregon and northernCalifornia are expected to disappear in the

Logging • 79

Dick Pederson


"Ifthere is anormal job

that someone

would train me

for,... I'll takeit. I won't take

my kids out inthe woods.

There's not

muchof afuture left in

this business."— Dick Pederson

next decade because of the proposals to setold stands of timber aside for owl habitat

But many more jobs have been lost inrecent years as the industry has automated.These days, only seven loggers are employedin a crew that clearcuts 90 acres.

Celine instantly fell in love withQuilcene when she moved from Tenino in1988. Where else can you leave your doorsunlocked, plus hunt, fish, collectoysters, orgo crabbing right outside your door?

The Pedersons wish they could livethere forever.

But in a small timber town, there aren'tmany other kinds of jobs available andgrowth is slow. They admit they may haveto leave, but Pederson says he would gocrazy in a big town.

ByLarry Steagall

Nest Egg Soured by an Owl

About 50 years ago, Jim Goodpaster Sr.had a good idea. He was helping tolog a nice stand of timber above Lake

Cushman when it occurred to him that the

land might be worth something someday.It certainly wasn't then. After the

logging was done, the land was practicallyworthless. It would take another 50 to 90

years for a new crop to grow.Goodpaster bought the 80acresfor

$240 — $30 an acre. Oh, well. It was, hedecided, a good investment for his old age.

He was wrong.In July of 1990, Goodpaster, 84 and

dying, needed the return on that investment.Unable to care for himself, he was bedridden in a Shelton nursing home that wascosting his family $75a day. The timber onthat 80 acres up near Lake Cushman wasnow worth nearly half a million dollars.

The only thing standing in the waywas a spotted owl two milesaway on federalland.

The Goodpaster family's predicamentprovides a prime example of the legaltanglesprivate timber owners can findthemselves in as a result of efforts to save the

threatened spotted owl.Nationally, the controversy over the

owl has revolved around setting aside old-growth timber stands in national forestsinWashington, Oregon and California.Thoseregulations say nothing about protecting

them on private or state land.But in Washington, the state Depart

ment of Natural Resourceshas set upguidelines to protect the owls by prohibitingcutting trees on state and private land withinas little as two miles and as much as four

miles from where an owl is seen or known to

be nesting.There was never a suggestion that owls

might live on Goodpaster's land. It wassecond-growth forest, after all, and it is wellknown that spotted owls live in old-growthor virgin timber where decayed treesprovide lots of homesites for the owl'sfavorite food — flying squirrels.

But when Jim Goodpaster Jr. went tothe DNR to obtain a cutting permit for hisfather's land, he was told he couldn't get oneuntil someone from the state Department ofWildlife did an owl survey. The DNR toldhim a spotted owl had been seen on nationalforest land within 2 l/z miles of theGoodpaster property.

DNR officialsare quick to point outthat it was the timing more than anythingelse that caused the delays on Goodpaster'sapplication.

"Our agency was scrambling to figureout how to administer the new federal

regulations," said BenCleveland, regionalresource protection specialist in DNR'sEnumclaw office, which oversees theHoodsport area. "There was confusion overimplementation of the new regulations andthe effect on our regulations."

Jim Jr. was furious. "Here we haveprivate land that has been logged before andwe can't get permits to log our own land.Thafs not right," he said. "Our security wasthat land."

Jim Jr. is a huge, friendly bear of a manwho operates heavy equipment for a livingand lives in Hoodsport. He is one of threechildren in the Goodpaster family. Hismother also resides in Hoodsport.

He readily agreed to give us a tour ofthe property, talking a mile a minute anddriving two. When Goodpaster drives alogging road, you don't take notes. Youbrace your feet,grit your teeth and hang on.

Not only was the family having aproblem with Goodpaster Sr.'s medical bills,he explained, time was against them forgetting the land logged at all this year.Because the land is part of the LakeCushman drainage, logging would be

impossible after the fall rains began.Goodpaster Jr. would have to wait until nextspring — "and who knows what regulationswill be in effect then?" he said.

Another major concern was what thetimber market might do in the next severalmonths. The housing market already wascooling off nationally and prices were gettingsoft.JimJr. figured the property has about1.6 million board feet of timber on it that

would have sold in June 1990 for between$400,000 and $500,000.

"That's gross," he growled, shovingharder on the gas pedal of his four-wheel-drive pickup, sending dust flying on thenarrow road. "By the time we pay 30 percentlogging cost,a 5 percent timber tax, 1.3percent real estate tax, B&Otax, corporationtax and personal income tax, there's notgoing to be a lot left. We'll be damned luckyif we end up with a few thousand. Meanwhile, the property has been raped and thenwe're looking at another 50 years before itcan be logged again."

It isn't just the 80-acre piece the familyworries about. Goodpaster Sr., who spent 28years as a Mason County school superintendent, collected about 650 acres of land insmall parcels around the county. Severalyears ago, he underwent surgery to removea brain tumor, and afterward his healthbegan to decline.The familyset up a trust topay Jim Sr.'s medical expenses, and themoney from the timber sale was supposed togo into that.

His son worries about whether the

family will have the same problems loggingthe other parcels as they have with the 80-acre piece near Lake Cushman.

August went by, then September.Goodpaster Sr.'s condition grew worse. JimJr. finally was able to get someone to come inand look for owls. He smirks at the scientific

methodology used for the survey."You call this owl lady," he said. "She

comes and looks at the land. If she sees an

owl, she is supposed to give it a dead mouse.If the owl jumps up into a tree and eats themouse, it's just a transient owl that livessomeplace else.

"But if it flies off with the mouse to a

nest nearby, you're in trouble."In September, the DNR told the

Goodpasters their land was clear of owls and

wasn't considered suitable owl habitat. The

first week of October, Jim Jr. got the cuttingpermit.

On Oct. 8,1990, Jim Sr. died.

buddenly, the whole equationchanged.

"Dad's death has eased things," JimGoodpaster Jr. said in November 1990."Logging is no longer a necessity. It's now amatter of if we get the opportunity, shouldwe? Because if we don't do it now, we maynot get another one."

The rainy season has begun. Thebottom has dropped out of the timbermarket. Although the price for Douglas firremains fairly high, the price of alder andother timber on the property has declined at

Logging • 81

Jim Goodpaster Jr.


"Here we

have

privateland that

has been

loggedbeforeandwe can't

getpermits tolog. That'snot right.

Our

securitywas that

land."— Jim

GoodpasterJr.

least by half.If the Goodpastersgo ahead and cut

this fall, they probablywillend up with halfwhat they would have gotten last summer.What is the post-election climate goingtobelike?What kind of regulations will be ineffect nextyear?Will pricesgo up or down?

Goodpasterbringsthe pickuptoabouncinghalt on the edge ofhispropertyand climbsheavilyout of the cab.He pointsout the tracks of dirt bikers who havetrespassed on the land, chewing up themuddy trail.

"Simpsonhas quit buying altogetherand is talkingabout shuttingdown.Pope&Talbotshut down," he said. "Everything isup in the air right now. A lot of owners areconverting their property to 5-acretracts forrecreational homesites."

ButGoodpaster's property is landlocked with no access to the Forest Service

road a couple of miles away. He leans anelbow on the lip of the pickup bed and scansthe forestaround him."Eventually, we'll belikeEurope,"he said. "We'llbe picking upsticksin the forestand the government willbe telling everybody what they can and can'tcut."

ByJack Swanson

In Search of an Elusive Owl

The air is chilly and the Seven Sistersareso bright in the sky overhead theyalmost hurt your eyes. The small

pickup with government licenseplates pullsto the side of the narrow dirt road and stops.

When the door opens, the dome lightsilhouettes the face of a young, pretty, dark-haired woman.

It is 4 a.m., and she is 20 miles from thenearest civilization. Alone.

Shedoesn't waste time thinkingaboutthe surroundings. After locking the door, sheopens the rear canopy door and dons heavyhiking boots. She stuffs a plastic box full ofmice and a walkie-talkie into the back of a

combination rucksack-vest. Flashlight in onehand and surfing rod in the other, shetrudges into the thick forest, picking her waycarefully through boulders and rotting logs.There is no trail.

Deep inside the forest, she pauses,listens. Minutes go by.

"Oooh!" she cups her hands aroundher mouth and the sound comes out more

like a sharp bark than a hoot. "Oooh! Oooh!OoooHhh!"

The final note is louder and trails off

moreslowly. Shewaitsa minute and repeatstheseries. Thenshe moveson through theforest anotherquarterofa mileand beginscallingagain.

Finally, in the distance, her call isanswered. After a week of nights like this,thecallerhas found what she was lookingfor: a spotted owl. During the next fewminutes, ifall goeswell,the owl lady willcoaxthe owl from his tree to a spot whereshe can slip the nylon loop at the end of herfishingpole around its neck and placeaplasticband around its leg. Feathers anddignityslightly mussed,the owl willget anicefat mousefor its troubleand will flyaway, hopefully to a nest nearby.

And for her trouble, the owl lady willget to draw a circleon a map marking thehome of another spotted owl. At the end ofthe month, she will get a checkfor $9.68 foreachhour she spent out in the forest hootingin the dark.

Ivy Otto, 31, grew up in Newark, N.J.Sheis compact, sturdy and can walk the legsoff just about anybody. She wears red andgray tennis shoes, well worn, baggy blackLevis, a formless black sweatshirt withbrown logging shirt underneath and a bluenylon vest. Lots of layers for warmth.

She has been an owl lady since 1987."It goes back a long ways," she says,

explaining how she took up her unusualprofession. "My interest in biologygoes backto when I was a kid. I started working for theForest Service on the Hood Canal RangerDistrict,worked in fire suppression, fireguard, ended up going on a lot of forest firesfor two summer seasons. In 1987, theymerged the ranger districts and startedsurveying for spotted owls."

She got the job and later transferred tothe Forest Service's research laboratory inOlympia.

'The lab is trying to find out exactlyhow many owls there are in the forest andtrying to learn more about the mortality,population changes and fluctuations. It'sresearch-oriented, where the district ismanagement-oriented. The districfs task isto look at the effectsof their management onwildlife."

But with recent new federal regulations

designed to protect the spotted owl as anendangered species, Otto's job has taken onnew significance. The research she anddozens of others like her do not only willhelp determine whether spotted owlssurvive but how the entire forest industryconducts its business.

Thousands of jobs are at stake, not justamong loggers who have depended onfederal timber land for work.

Next March when the state Department of Natural Resources places its newregulations into effect, the existenceof onepair of nesting spotted owls near state orprivate land can prevent harvest of timberwithin a 4-mile circle of their nest.

Because the stakes are so high, it is easyto understand why the government hashired people like Otto. They search theforests alone, counting and banding theowls, checking what they eat, measuring thesize of the territory they claim for themselves.

In all of the Olympic Peninsula, thereare only six owl counters like Otto. As of1990, they have found 23 adult owls and 10babies.

In the forests surrounding Hood Canal,surveyors have found nine pairs of owls.Their presence will have a major impact onthe amount of logging that will be donearound the canal. There will be less loggingin the area than probably any time sincelogging began more than a century ago.

Una recent fall morning, Ottoleft herOlympia home at 2 a.m. and drove to HoodCanal to talk about her work and try to wooa spotted owl close enough for a photographer to take its picture.

Hormones and the time of the yeardoomed the venture to failure, however. Amorning of hooting brought Otto only a sorethroat and the faint, distant bleats of a

pygmy owl in response. Spotted owlsgenerally only answer intruders in theirterritory during spring mating season, sheexplained.

Do they actually expect to find everyowl on the Olympic Peninsula?

"Our goal is to find them all," she said."It's my understanding there's an intensivestudy area on the peninsula. They thinkthey're pretty close to having almost all thepair sites down."

When they are found, the owls get

brightly colored leg bands on either or bothlegs so trackers can tell them apart.

"When you go back to the site the nextyear, you don't have to catch the bird andread the band again," Otto said. "You canjust look at the color of the bands. You canusually get close enough or sometimes theywill come down to you or will preen themselves and lift their leg up. And if you don'tsee it you keep going back until you do, untilyou're sure they're either banded or they'renot. And if they're not, then you bandthem."

The job looks a lot easier on the printedpage than in practice. What it means inreality is that Otto sometimes has to spendnight after cold, lonely night out in tracklesswilderness. Owls, after all, are nocturnal.They hunt and feed at night.

Logging • 83

Ivy Otto


"I'm not

againstlogging. My

personalfeeling is thatthe old-growth

forest is aresource to our

society and ourcountry inother waysthan just for

wood

products.We're losing it

beforeweknow anything

about it in

detail"— Ivy Otto

Doesshe ever worry about getting lost?Shethinksabout it a minute. Nope. Breakinga leg?Getting hurt? Sometimes. That's whyshe always carries water, food and her two-way radio.

She doesn't even mind working in a"temporary" position without benefits.

"I really enjoy my job," she said. "It's alot of fun and I would probablykeepdoingthis for a long time,but just recentlymyhusband started graduate school in molecular biology at the University of WisconsininMadison and it makes it difficultto be apart.I'll probably do this for at least one morebreeding season but I'm going to try to getinto graduate school myself."

Otto earned an undergraduate degreefrom The EvergreenStateCollege, studyingnatural history, ornithology, agriculture andecology.

With that kind of background, Ottosaid it was only natural for her to becomeinterested in more than just counting owls.Lately, she has been collectingand analyzingthe lump of debris owls cough up afterfeeding. It usually contains the skulls andother bones of the animals they eat.

Spotted owls are so important becausethey are what scientists call an "indicatorspecies," a group of animals that shows theoverall health of an ecosystem's inhabitants.

Compared to most birds and otheranimals, spotted owls are relatively delicate.They generally have only one or two babieseach season, and the babies often do notsurvive.

Spotted owls thrive only in old-growthforests where there are lots of dead or

decayed trees that provide secure nestingplaces for themselves and their main foodsource — flying squirrels. Young trees don'thave decay pockets. Young forests don'thave thick shade canopies that keep animalscool on hot summer days. Flying squirrelslike to eat the fungi that grows on rottinglogs. That doesn't grow in clearcuts or newsecond-growth stands either. No food, noowl.

Dut for Otto, the spotted owl is morethan just an indicator species.

"To me, the owl is valuable aesthetically," she said. "It's beautiful. Ifs an animalthat is interesting. Ifs neat to learn something about their behavior and I think that'severy reason in the world to protect it"

Ask her opinion about the ruckus thespotted owl has created among lumbermenand she is careful to say that her opinions arehers and in no way that of the U.S. ForestService.

"I think we have to decide as a societywhat we value. I don't think it's necessarilyan owls vs. jobsissue. My personal opinionis that if jobs were the issue there would bemore effort by industry to retrain theloggers. All of the money that's put intomaintaining logging roads and buildinglogging roads and replanting harvested unitsand setting up units, which is paid for by thefederal government when their land islogged by private industry, should bechanneled into helping these folks adjust tosome changes that are inevitable down theroad, even if there were no spotted owls andit weren't an issue.

'To industry I think that's just a tool tostir people's emotions. They have a lot tolose. A lot of money."

The biologist is gone. In her placestands a natural philosopher in the mould ofHenry Thoreau or Edward Abbey.

"I'm not against logging. My personalfeeling is that the old-growth forest is aresource to our society and our country inother ways than just for wood products," shesaid. "I think that it's diminishing rapidly. Ifwe look at the time scale since people firstsettled in this area, we're losing it before weknow anything about it in detail.

"For example, people are looking at theyew tree as a possible cure for cancer. In thepast, we cut them all down and didn't thinktwice about it There's all kinds of plants outthere that grow in the forest that we don'tknow anything about. Most of our medicinescome from these plants. There are so manythings to learn, and it would be a realtragedy if the forest was cut down and goneforever and we couldn't learn anything fromit

ByJack Swanson

Froman airplane, the forests ofHood Canal seem to clothe the

bare earth with quilted fabric.Green patches vary in texture,revealing different ages of trees.Brown patches demarcate recent

clearcuts.

Toward the west, jagged mountainpeaks thrust upward to the sky. Below, aswath of blue water shines in the sunlight.

This is the Hood Canal watershed, afragile and interconnected ecosystem.

How people feel about this region —and the decisions they make — will determine what natural features remain for future

generations. In the intense debate over

forests, no two people see the value of treesin quite the same way.

To Gary Phillips, a logger fromQuilcene, a tree represents a way of lifepassed down from his father and grandfather. Cutting a tree means feeding his familyand providing raw material for someone'shouse.

To Aargon Steel, Adopt-A-Forestcoordinator for Washington Audubon, thetrees offer food and shelter for animals

ranging from cougars to elk, from eagles tosalmon, not to mention the tiniest organismsat the beginning of nature's food chain.

Still others see trees as part of thelandscape, an important element in the

Logging • 85

Section 6

For Timber

or for the

Environ

ment?



"The most

economicallydistressed

counties in the

Northwest are

those that

depend onloggingfor

their

livelihood. The

most

prosperous are

those that

have

unchained

themselves

from theirmills."

— Tim Egan,The Good Rain

beautythatdefines HoodCanal today.Both Phillips and Steel havestrong

feelings abouttrees andwildlife, but theyrealize the issuesare far toocomplex toresort to convenient slogans, such as "Save atree; eat an owl."

DonnaSimmonsofHoodsport,amemberof the state Ecological Commission,has worked intensivelyon timber issues.Needed more than anything, she says, arebridgesof understanding.

"The reason the timber industry is in acrisis today is not justbecause ofcrazyenvironmentalists trying to lockup everystick of timber," she says. "Thereare issuesofexport,automation—we canlog10timesfasterwith 10timesfewerpeople—as wellas the over-harvesting of the past."

It is wellunderstood that manyspeciesof wildlifewould disappear without trees.But if uncontrolled loggingthreatens thenatural system, total preservation threatensthe human system.

Already, the impacts are being felt inthe timber market as the federalgovernmentprotectstimberforwildlife habitat, saidJerryClark, resident manager of the Pope &Talbot sawmill at Port Gamble.

"We're going to pricea lot of peopleout of the housing market," said Clark. "We,as the public,have to make some toughdecisionsabout how we want to approachour lifestyle."

Despite their successes, environmentalists are not celebrating.Logginghas beenhalted in many critical areas ofOlympicNational Forest,but the northern spottedowl alone seems to be taking the heat.

Protecting the owl under the Endangered SpeciesAct has disrupted old-growthlogging, mobilized special owl biologistsandforced officials to look for other places to cuttimber.

But while everyone has his eye on thespotted owl, it has been too easy to forgetother animals also struggling to survive.These include the marbled murrelet, aseabird that nests in very old trees; the fisherand pine marten, weasel-likeanimals thatlive in hollow logs; and the Roosevelt elk, amajestic beast whose numbers have declineddrastically in some areas around HoodCanal.

Some environmentalists talk about

hitting the federal government with a

massive petition, asking that a host of otherforest species be considered for the endangered list.

"Whatwe reallyneed," says BobCrowleyof OlympicEnvironmental Council,"is an endangered ecosystem act"

Uld-growth" is one type of forestecosystem targeted for protection as a resultof spotted owl studies. Protection measuresmay wellsave otherspecies in the process.

ButCrowleyworriesthat the spottedowl issue has failed to force federal officialsto consider the biological limitsof humanactivities. The issue has simply shiftedattention to trees that can be marketed

without affecting the spotted owl itself."They are under a lotofpressureto get

the (timber)volume out again, but with amuch-reducedland base," said Crowley.

But some gains have been made.Crowley, a Port Townsend resident, isparticipating in a unique Forest Serviceexperiment in the Mount Walker area nearQuilcene. The concept is to evaluate thearea's resources — timber, wildlife, plants,deadmaterial, etc. —and decide howmanytrees can be harvested (and by what method)without destroying the ecological health ofthe area. No targets for timber were identified in advance, as would normallybe thecase.

"We give up some of our advocacy rolein going into this kind of process," saidCrowley."We have to recognizethere arevalid concernson the part of industry andthat some level of harvest is acceptable."

If successful, the program may encourage other efforts of its kind.

Related issues are boiling up on stateand private lands. A criticalwinter range forRoosevelt elk along the Dosewallips River ison land owned by Pope Resources. Thecompany had proposed logging about 2,000acres needed by the elk.

That logging could have destroyed thelast of the Dosewallips herd, according toGreg Schirato, regional biologist for the stateDepartment of Wildlife.

Elk are an important part of the HoodCanal ecosystem, said Schirato. They spendtheir summers in Olympic National Park,then wander down though the nationalforest and onto private lands as snows chasethem out of the high country.

The national park was first formed in

1909 as Mount Olympus National Monument,primarilyto protectthe elk herds thathad been decimated by settlers.Today, elk inthe Hood Canal area may again be indanger.

Schiratoguesses the combinedDosewallips and Duckabush herds may bedown to 80 animals from a 1984 estimate of

127.

Elkpopulations have been squeezed bydeclininghabitat as well as increasedhunting,saidSchirato. Elkneed a combinationof open range for grazing and protectivetrees for hiding and shelter. Clearcutsalreadyin the Dosewallips area have limitedforest habitat.

And, last year,37animals were killed,mostlyby members of area Indian tribes.(Tribes establish their own hunting seasonsin "usual and accustomed" areas.)

'That herd," said Schirato, "couldn'tsustain another four or five years of that kindof harvest."

Hunting by both state residents andtribal members has been limited to three-

point bulls or larger this year to help theherd recover, he said.

Pope Resourceshas been required todevelop a long-range strategy for protectingthe elk before the state will allow anyloggingon its private lands. How the issuewill be resolved is uncertain, said JohnWalter,vice president for timberlandmanagement.

"We are in this business as timberland

owners to operate on a profit level," saidWalter. "We're going to have to find abalance:what management is required fortimber, and what management is requiredfor wildlife?"

Some private landowners don'tacknowledge their responsibility to wildlifeor to the public. Landowners do have rights,but some hold to a frontier ethic that saysthey should be able to use their land as theywish.

Walter doesn't go that far. His company — the largest private timber owner inthe Hood Canal region — was among thefirst to buy timberland with the idea ofkeeping it forever. But Walter does worrythat the public expects too much.

'There seems to be a tendency to wantto make the timber companies pay theprice," he said. "My fear, as a professional inthis business, is that regulations are going toget so strict that it will discourage timber

1989 Timber Harvestin Western Washington

Jr Rank %oftotal

2uS» 1 Grays Harbor 14.4

+w+ 2 Lewis 13.8

tJB* 3 Cowltiz 9.5

"2L 4 Clallam 7.6

£uCc 5 Pacific 6.8

SkL i 6 Mason 6.3

Sbu 7KinR 6.2

•ES^ 1 8 Jefferson 5.2

^^b ^"^ 9 Skamania 5.0

Western ^ ^^f^»jL 10 Snohomish 4.9

Red ^y^&£*^ 11 Skagit 4.8

Cedar^^u •CSfiOWf 12 Peirce 4.1

|Hp* 13 Thurston 3.5

GSMf 14 Whatcom 2.5

KJ»|\ 15 Clark 2.2

M^P|P 16 Wahkiakum 2.0

^3"V» ^ Kitsap 0.8

1 5,434,879boardfeetharvested

Source: Dept.of NaturalResources

companiesfrom holding onto their land.'Then," he said, "you will have a lot of

short-term investors buying the land whodon't have much concern about steward

ship."Schirato says he recognizes Pope's

financial commitment, and he's trying towork out a plan that would allow somelogging over time.

Uut in the woods, itisnot always easyto see the impacts of logging. But a growingcadre of foresters, biologists and hydrolo-gists are studying old logging methods andcoming up with new approaches.

One afternoon in 1990, Robin Sanders,a technician with Olympic National Forest,slipped on a pair of hip boots and steppedinto the BigQuilcene River. Loose rockslittered the bottom of the swift stream. She

made her way quickly, but carefully, fromone side to the other, stopping several timesto take water samples.

Erosion from logging activities can bemeasured in the stream by testing the water

Logging • 87

"Forestryneeds to

expand itsfocus beyond

wood

production tothe

perpetuationof diverse

forestecosystems."— Jerry Franklin

• Using the Resource

"It took more

than 3,000years to make

some of thetrees in the

western

woods. God

has caredforthese trees,saved them

from drought,disease,

avalanches

and a

thousand

straining,leveling

tempests andfloods; but hecannot save

them fromfools."—JohnMuir

for suspended sediment. Some sedimentoccursnaturally, but history has proven thatloggingcan unleash huge quantitiesofsilt—enough to destroy salmon runs.

Sanders, who works out of theQuilcene Ranger District, hasbeensearchingfor sources of erosion all summer and fall.

Today, the water remains clean,but pressures to preserve older forests may increaselogging in this area.

KathySnow,district ranger atQuilcene, sayserosionin new areasbeinglogged is not the problem it was even 10years ago, though past problemsstillplaguethe Hood Canal watershed.

Roads cause the greatestproblembecause they concentrate and acceleratewater movement. Years ago, road bankswere routinely "cut and filled" as theysnaked along the edge of a mountain. Oftenmaterial cut from the cliff was used to fill

valleys crossed by the road. In time, waterfalling on the road would wash into thevalleyswith enough energy to erode thefilled material.

New roads must avoid fillaltogether ifthere is a high danger of erosion.

Still, large portions of the Quilcene andHood Canal ranger districts look like atangle of rope when viewed on a map.Closingsome roads —and possiblyrestoring the ground — have become major issues.

The ForestServicealso is experimenting with new techniques of logging, including combining traditional clearcuttingwiththinning.

Under a national program called "NewPerspectives in Forestry," timber salemanagers are attempting to preserve fishand wildlifehabitat as well as scenicqualities, while reducing water and air pollution.Every timber sale gets attention.

Along Townsend Creek (a tributary tothe BigQuilcene), loggers were directed toleave woody debris on the ground and not todisturb the forest floor,according to SteveRicketts, a forester in the Quilcene District. Inyears past, the entire area might have beenburned down to bare soil.

Rotting debris becomes the first habitatin the next forest. Bacteria and insects initiate

the foodchain,encouraging birds and largeranimals to move back over time.

Whenpossible, standing snagsordyingtrees are leftas homes forwoodpeckers and other critters that live within hol-

lowed-outareas of the decayingwood, saidRicketts.

Every snowflake is different, theysay,because of the many ways icecrystals canform.The same might be said of forests.

A 300-year-old tree growing in goodsoil near Hood Canal would stand taller thanthesametreegrownin poor soils in the highwilderness country. One ancient forest is notthe same as the next.

It's no wonder that there's confusion

over what forestsare needed to protect thespotted owl or that differentgroups havetheir own definitionof "old growth."

Justas important, nobody is keepingtrackof the overallHood Canal ecosystem.Private lands blend into state lands, whichblend into federal lands.

"The problem I have seen is that thereis not a lot of cooperativelong-range planning," said Simmonsof the EcologicalCommission. "I don't think anyone knowshow much of the whole Hood Canal drain

age can be harvested and converted to otheruses. Ifwe continue to chop it up into littlepieces and convert it to roads and houses, itis gone."

'The reason we have to protect soheavily on federal lands," added Snow, "isbecause the private lands were cut over somany years ago. Most forest lands have beenlost to urbanization."

Vitallinks among plant and animalspeciesare beginning to unravel in the HoodCanal area. Ifs up to humans to decide — intheir cumbersome political way — how farthe damage will go.

"Ifs like we've been on a feedingfrenzy and now the bill comes due," saidSteel of Washington Audubon. "I don't thinkwe have to throw everybody out of thewoods... but we have to wake up and realizeit's not morning in America anymore. Ifslate afternoon."

Critics question whether clearcuttingwhole hillsides can be considered

environmentally sound.

If the natural wonders of Hood Canal

are to survive, logging activities inprivately owned forests may be evenmore important than on state andfederal lands, observers say.Some of the most important fish and

wildlife habitat can be found among the treeson private land, according to Marcy Golde ofthe Washington Environmental Council.

"It's important that we start to look atthings as one forest," she said. "I thinkthere's a growing understanding that youprotect wildlife by protecting the habitat."

The state's Timber, Fish and Wildlife

(TFW)agreement, which has been in effectthree years, allowed scientists for the firsttime to scrutinize logging proposals onprivate land.

Biologists for the state Department ofFisheries and Department of Wildlife, as wellas for the Washington EnvironmentalCouncil and Indian tribes, are routinelymaking recommendations to protect naturalsystems.

"TFW has put a microscope on the

whole process of resource protection," saidMike Reed, who reviews proposals for theS'Klallam Tribe. "What we are seeing is not apretty picture."

The Department of Natural Resources,which has the final say on logging applications, does not always follow the recommendations. And biologists for every agency areoverburdened by the sheer number ofapplications.

"We're in decline for a large number ofwildlife populations," said Reed. "Ourpolicies ... are not meeting the true functionalneeds for fish and wildlife populations. Wemust allow the landscape to be left in anunmanaged state or walk lightly across itwithout disrupting the movements ofwildlife species."

In many places around Puget Sound, itis too late to preserve intact ecosystems, butthere may be hope for Hood Canal.

Kitsap, Mason and Jefferson countygovernments must take an active role toprotect forest lands from urban sprawl,according to Reed. Once a forested area is

Logging •

Section 7

Toward

Keeping

TlMBERLANDS

Intact

By ChristopherDunagan


"The problemis that there is

not a lot ofcooperatiavelong-rangeplanning. Idon't think

anyone knowshow muchof

the whole

Hood Canal

drainage canbe harvested

and converted

to other uses."— Donna

Simmons, stateEcological

Commission

developed with houses, it is lostas wildlifehabitat.

On the other hand, logging activitiesneed not destroy fish and wildlifehabitat ifdone carefully, with an eye to resourceprotection, he added.

How to balance resource protectionwith the financial interests of timber owners

was the goal of the SustainableForestryRoundtable, which brought together landowners, state agencies, counties, environmental groups and Indian tribes.

Roundtable discussions continued for a

year before a settlement was proposed in1990. It would have, among other things,limited timber harvesting in a watershed andrequired major landowners to retain 10percent of their holdings as "late succes-sional" (eventual old-growth) habitat.

"For the first time," said Golde, intalking about the proposal, "we have aportion of private land devoted to theprotectionof wildlife."

For timberland owners, the 10-yearagreement offeredstabilityas the winds ofchange continue to blow, said BobGustavson, negotiator for the WashingtonForest Practices Association.

"SFR (Sustainable ForestryRoundtable) is part of a continuing reflectionof both knowledge of the resources we'redealing with and the changing valuesofsociety," he noted.

The proposal introduced concepts thatbiologistshave long desired.One is "thresholds," which trigger more and more scrutinyas the environment becomes more severelydamaged.

For example, one threshold focuses onstreams. Proposed logging in an area wouldbe subjectto restrictions ifsilt levelsin anearby stream exceed 10percent of thebottom gravel (as measured by establishedmethods.)A 25percent silt-to-gravel ratiowould trigger even stronger measures,suchas halting all loggingin the watershed.

A few streams in the Hood Canal area

already exceed 10 percent, said Reed, whosees the threshold provisions as a majorconcession by landowners.

Other thresholds would be established

for different types of wildlife.Another new concept is that of "perim

eter." The idea is to retain good-sized treesaround any new clearcuts. Logging wouldnot be allowed unless 90 percent of theperimeter (surrounding forests) containedtrees at least five years old, or 60 percentwere at least 15years old, or 30 percent wereat least 30 years old.

Furthermore, a team of scientistswould review the impacts, and possiblyprevent logging, when a landowner proposes to harvest 500acres or 4 percent of hisholdings (whichever is larger) in a watershedin one year.

Altogether, the proposal provided aframework for long-term timber management while protecting habitat, saidGustavson.

"You don't just paint the landscape tolook different overnight," he said. "Whenyou fly in an airplane, the pattern you see iswhat was happening 10,20,30,40,50 yearsago.

But the Sustainable ForestryRoundtable agreement broke down in 1991when environmental groups refused toendorse the proposal their representativeshelped negotiate. The groups complainedthat too many concessions had been made towin agreement from the timber owners.They were particularly concerned about the10-yearterm of the agreement, worried thatmuch could be lost in 10 years if the agreement contained unforeseen loopholes.

State lands commissioner Brian Boyletried to take the proposal to the state Legislature anyway, submitting it without theendorsement of the environmental groups.The proposal died for lack of support fromboth the environmental lobby and the timbergrowers. Boyleintends to try again to winapproval of the landmark proposal.

But the Sustainable ForestryRoundtable experience offers graphicevidence of just how difficult it is to forge anagreement that bridges the differing views ofa resource such as timber. Is it more valuable

as lumber or as a forest?

& talbot sawmill at port gamble. - kitsap sun

Documents