The
New Cash Crop -- Trees
Reported by Bill
Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent
[Video of automated harvesting machine] It is a harvest unfamiliar to most Nebraskans.
Using powerful machinary it's a process that combines great efficiency with
great violence. In a day, one person can down 400 ponderosa pine trees. Big-wheeled
skidders drag the fallen timber into piles. The stripper nimbly chooses one
from the stack, rips the remaining limbs off and saws the trunk into easy to
haul segments.
It's wood that will become commercial lumber, gaurdrail posts,
fuel to burn, and until just a couple years ago, no one considered it a cash
crop in Nebraska.
[Fred McCartney, logger:] "What you see here is what
we call a mechanized harvest operation. Basically the human hand doesn't touch
the tree through the whole process."
Fred McCartney oversees the Nebraska operations of Pope &
Talbot, a vetern corporate player in the timber industry.
[Fred McCartney:] "We're doing a good thing out here
right now. This has needed to happen out here for a long time. Up until five
years ago there was no market for this timber, and it was standing here and
these people couldn't give it away. Now they're making a good revenue off of
it, and they're getting the timber managed which was needed."
There has been a small logging industry along the Pine Ridge
for some time. The Hahn family has operated this mill west of Chadron for two
decades. Rather unexpectedly, John Hahn has seen the business his father built
grow at a startling rate.
[John Hahn, Jr.:] "We went from employing a handful of
guys to employing 30 to 34 people now which has helped a lot."
[Bill Kelly:] "And that's all local wood?"
[Hahn:] "All local wood, yeah, all comes in from about
a three county area."
Stands of pondersosa pine stretch for almost 200 miles from
Crawford, past Chadron's Pine Ridge and almost to Valentine. The trees take
root along the small streams and gullies that make this rugged terrain unique
to Nebraska. When the federal government put tight restrictions on logging in
South Dakota's Black Hills, the lumberjacks looked south, and saw low-priced
timber sitting untouched in Nebraska.
[Fred McCartney:] "Demand has been up, supply has been
down. Lumber prices have been up. It's been a windfall for the landowners down
here because we've got more money to work with so we can afford to spread it
around a little better and we have."
Since the timber industry discovered Nebraska pine prices
have soared. Just ten years ago what little wood was being sold went for about
$2.00 per thousand board feet... that's the industry's price measure. Today,
ranchers can sell their pine stands for $60 to $100 per thousand board feet.
A good return has given many a landowner reason to consider their forest land
as a cash crop.
The higher prices come just as some in the enviromental movement
are encouraging selective and careful logging. Ted Hoffman, one of the founders
of the Sierra Club in Nebraska, makes his home on a ridge thick with pine.
[Ted Hoffman:] "You can't compare it to the Northwest
where they're clear-cutting and ruining salmon streams. In lieu of burning --
which you can't do, in other words let nature take its course -- we've got to
cull out some timber. The farther away you can get the trees [from each other]
the better you are."
The US Forest Service, wishes there could be more timber harvesting
in the Nebraska National Forest outside Chadron.
[Roger Keepers, U.S. Forest Service:] "For ecological
reasons you can do a lot of this cutting, and that's what we would like to have
continue up here rather than having it stay in a real dense condition which
is kind of negative in a lot of cases."
Roger Keepers of the Forest Service's Pine Ridge District
argues that man has done such a good job of preventing forest fires, many forests...including
the one he supervises... are becoming unnaturally overgrown. Selective logging
may be beneficial...but no one is talking about the clear cutting that takes
every tree in the forest. The ranger showed us an area logged four years ago,
and it was difficult to see any lasting scars. Most of the tree stumps were
decaying quickly.
[Keepers, kicking at a decaying stump:] "You can see
how fast the material will break down and go back into the system." There
were also lots of infant pines growing in areas where the sun could now reach
the soil.
[Keepers:] "And that's what it takes -- a little less
competition for the seeds to germinate and then to start growing. We're just
creating a whole new stand of trees for our children to see and our children's
children to come and look at."
Ironically, just as the Forest Service is willing to sell,
logging companies have shown little interest in Nebraska National Forest timber.
They say the price is too high and US Forest Service enviromental regulations
are too demanding.
[Keepers:] "We expect a professional looking job when
it's all over with. We expect erosion control to have been done. We expect the
slash requirements to have been followed."
Private landowners tend to put fewer restrictions on the logging
done on their land. They're also willing to sell the timber for less.
"[Doak Nickerson:] "Some landowners quite frankly,
don't care."
Doak Nickerson is the District Forester with the Extension
Service in northwest Nebraska. Lately he's spent almost all of his time educating
private landowners on the proper forest management. For the most part he thinks
landowners are acting responsibly... but the fast growth of the timber industry
here has him a bit wary.
[Doak Nickerson:] "When you see the value of timber escalate
like it is right now, the tendency is to cut a little bit harder, to take a
little more soft timber out because the market is so good."
[Kelly:] "So people out there have to be very careful?"
[Nickerson:] "Sure they do, yeah, abosoltely."
When there have been problems in Nebraska, it has not been
so much what's been cut as what's been left behind. On occasion some loggers
have cut corners to save time, and thus money. On this land tree tops and leftovers
weren't collected in piles and chopped down for faster decomposition. Deep scars
from the logging roads are still visable in the hillside."
[US Forest Service Video of the Fort Robinson fire, 1989]
Many landowners took a fresh interest in timber harvesting after the devastating
forest fires at Fort Robinson . Dave Kalecek, a rancher and Sheridan County
supervisor accepted the argument that his pine stand had become overgrown.
[Dave Kadlecek:] "I just felt there needed to be something
done to try to lessen the fire hazard, and when you can thin the timber if you
do get a major fire in it, than you got a chance of doing something with it."
It was also an opportunity to reclaim some of the pastureland
along the edges of pine stands. Kadlecek wanted any logging done responsibly.
The land has been in the family for over one hundred years. The tree where Crazy
Horse is said to have been prepared for buriel still stands here, and his grave
is believed to be in the hills above. Specific instructions were included in
the final sale contract Kadlecek signed with Fred McCartney of Pope & Talbot.
[Kadlacek:] "Part of it was dealing with the historical
area, of how we wanted to cut that. We were going to do some marked areas --
we actually had that on a map that showed what areas we were going to mark [to
avoid cutting there]. The road issue, of how the roads were going to be built,
the fact there would be water bars put in and that [the area] would be re-seeded."
[Fred McCartney, logger:] "That has to be understood
right from the start. Some of that has to contracted, but some of it has to
be around the coffee table, sitting there drinking coffeee. When you get done,
you shake hands and this is what's going to happen. You've got to do it both
ways."
Two years later, few of the scars from the timber harvest
remain. It was the contract Dave Kadlecek negotiated that set the guidelines
for an enviromentally sound timber harvest. Forester Doak Nickerson counsels
landowners to insist that loggers clean up after themselves, and that it all
be spelled out in the contract signed at the time of sale.
[Nickerson:] "I've seen all different kinds of contracts
that cover the scale, from good all the way to bad, in terms of a contract that
isn't purely just an industry contract but still has clauses in there to protect
landowner rights and concerns. I've seen the whole gamut. I'd say, by and large
the biggest share I see tend to be tilted toward the industry."
For instance, Nickerson suggests ranchers insist that before
cutting begins that landowners walk thourgh and mark the trees to be cut. That
avoid the temptation, or misunderstandings that could lead to cutting too many
trees. While Pope & Talbot generally gets high marks for responsible cutting,
we noticed there were no markings on trees at the site we toured. Fred McCartney
preferred to leave that decision up the discresion of the lumberjack operating
the mechanical chain saw.
[McCartney:] "He knows what the landownder wants and
he's the one actually making the decision. Now we can actually go in and actually
physically mark the trees to be removed and to be left. That's very costly."
For now, few people are talking about regulating the timber
industry in Nebraska. Even with some of the mistakes made, there's a belief
-- or at least a hope -- that when private landowners are properly educated
they will negotiate enviromentally sound timber cutting contracts with the loggers.
[Doak Nickerson:] "I guess my challange to landowners
would be, 'If you don't like to be regulated, then it's the landowner's responsibility
to be a good steward. Education themselves and learn what is right and wrong."
But, as good market prices continue to draw more and more
landowners into the logging business, there is concern about overcutting.
[John Hahn:] "At the rate we're cutting it, we're cutting
it faster than it's reproducing, and they'll come a time when we'll run into
a bottleneck before it has enough time to regenerate." [Kelly:] Does that
bother you, as somebody who'd like to stay here for the long term?
[Hahn:] "Yes, yeah it does. I'm the small pototo out of the group, and
this is where I call home, and I want to keep this going for a long time and
at the rate we're cutting it, there could be a problem, but I guess we'll cross
that bridge when we come to it."
For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly
[Perspective Fact:]
The Pine Ridge in Nebraska covers over 109,000 Acres. Rugged terrain makes it
almost impossible for loggers to harvest timber on about one half of that land.
Captioning by Nebraska
Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .
STATEWIDE is funded in part by the Shoemaker Family Foundation of Cambridge,
Nebraska building bridges of understanding between rural and urban Nebraska
through its support of STATEWIDE news programming.
