Logging Reports Back Opposing Views on Climate Change

By Alex Breitler, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

May 4–ARNOLD — Spotted owls, silted streams, raging wildfires — there has been no shortage of fuel for the timber wars over the decades.

Add climate change to the mix.

Loggers will return to the forested lower Sierra Nevada this spring armed with a peer-reviewed study that says “intensive” forestry practices — including clear-cuts — may ultimately assist in the battle against rising worldwide temperatures.

No way, environmentalists say. Their own report, released one week after the industry’s, says precisely the opposite: Larger, older trees will remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Neither side will budge from its position.

“They’re not telling the whole story,” said Susan Robinson, a forest activist who lives in Arnold.

“They’re way off base,” said Mark Pawlicki, a spokesman for Sierra Pacific Industries. The timber giant owns 74,000 acres, or about half of the forestland, in Calaveras County.

No one disputes that trees are among the greenest of Earth’s features, in color and behavior.

Forests suck carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere and essentially store it in tree trunks, branches, leaves and pine needles, keeping the rest of us nice and cool.

The study by Sierra Pacific suggests that more “intensive” logging practices can speed up the storing of carbon by up to 150 percent.

This is because young trees grow faster and take in carbon more rapidly, according to the scientists who prepared the company’s study.

“We were surprised at the difference,” Pawlicki said.

Cutting and replanting all of the company’s 1.6 million acres over 80 to 100 years would remove enough carbon dioxide from the air to offset 877,000 cars, says the study, which Pawlicki said will be submitted to a scientific journal for publication.

Even after the harvest, at least some carbon remains sequestered in wood products — furniture, your back deck, or your home.

But the timber company has glossed over a few details, the environmentalists counter, citing other studies and reports. In the long run, an old-growth forest will have the greatest carbon capacity, says ForestEthics, an international conservation group.

Clear-cutting releases carbon through soil erosion, the burning of logging debris and the decay of exposed roots. The resulting plantations of same-aged trees, meanwhile, are especially fire-prone — and in a fire, all of that banked carbon is released right back into the atmosphere.

“The timber company is ignoring the emissions,” Robinson said. “They tell a half-truth.”

Companies planning to harvest timber on private land must get approval from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. For now, carbon storage and climate change are not criteria.

That might change, observers say, as the California Air Resources Board searches for ways to meet the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Activists in Calaveras County claim that Sierra Pacific a decade ago trended toward more “selective” logging in which some trees were harvested, but others left behind. Now the emphasis is on “intensive” logging.

Bruce Castle, 70, stumbled upon a clear-cut field while bicycling up a remote dirt road in 2000. Ever since, he’s been deeply involved in Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch, an environmental group based in Arnold.

While Castle comes down on the environmentalists’ side of the fence, he can understand how confusing the conflicting science must be for those new to the subject.

“When it becomes controversial like that, you don’t know what to believe, quite frankly,” he said.

Contact reporter Alex Breitler at (209) 546-8295 or abreitler@recordnet.com.

—–

To see more of The Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.recordnet.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Record, Stockton, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.