The Logs Keep Rolling Along

Lois M. Scheel

1995

Published in:

Social Trends Newsletters, Sept. 1995, No. 139

Is there an alternative to trees for our paper?

Mr. Peter Isenagle of Cave Junction, Oregon, says "yes." He belongs to an organization calledTry Environmental Solutions Together (T.E.S.T.). In April of 1995 he answered a Guest Opinion column in the Grants Pass Daily Courier, written by a bachelor's degree graduate in forest management, who was the public affairs officer for Siskiyou National Forest for 12 years. Below is Mr. Isenagle's letter to the editor:

LET OUR TREES GROW -- GET PAPER ELSEWHERE

In the April 14 guest opinion, a former Forest Service officer says trees are a renewable resource. He contradicts this by saying in100 years, we can harvest. He should do some research.
Renewable resource traditionally applies to a crop planted in the spring and harvested in the fall, an annual crop. A tree is not corn. Even in 100 years, most trees would make only plywood, chipboard or paper. Sixty percent of trees cut are for paper products.
Since 1943, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been funding the testing of annual plants to make paper. Hundreds of papers have been published recommending substitution of plant fibers for paper to save trees. For some reason, the Department of Agriculture has paid for these reports and then suppressed them. For some reason the Department chose not to encourage the paper industry to convert to annual plants and reduce the use of trees. This same Department, speaking through its paid mouth, is saying, "cut more trees." There is some bad breath with those words.
Try Environmental Solutions Together has 25 years of reports by the Department of Agriculture that kenaf (an annual plant) could be used to replace wood for paper. The United States will use 6 million tons of paper products this year. Why does the Department of Agriculture spend millions to find alternatives to wood pulp and then not publish the reports or encourage more production? Is this Papergate?
It is time to replace trees for paper with a true renewable resource. It is time for the Department of Agriculture to put its money for research where its mouth is.
(Peter Isenagle)

In 1953 the U.S. Forest Service had this to say about managing the forest:

``The destruction of a forest may spell disaster to communities a thousand miles away. When trees have been blown down by a windstorm, their broken roots and weakened sap flow can no longer withstand the attacks of bark beetles. Under a tangle of branches they are inaccessible to the woodpeckers that ordinarily catch most of the beetles that do gain entrance. The beetles, thus protected, multiply like an explosion, spreading out to attack and kill the healthy trees in the surrounding forest. The dead trees dry out and turn to tinder, becoming far more vulnerable to fire than a normal forest. The catastrophe started by a local windstorm may spread out to ruin the forests on an entire water shed. The same thing may happen when man improperly cuts or grazes a forest.''
(The Web of Life by John H. Storer.)

In 1995 our bachelor's degree graduate in forest management (mentioned above) believes the public has been duped over the facts of forest management policies, and he wants to set the record straight. He says:

``....For many decades, national forests produced what each forest was capable of yielding while their managers protected soil, water, air, wildlife and other values [emphasis mine]. The forest 'outputs' included hunting, fishing and other recreation opportunities, wilderness, grazing, wildlife habitat and pure water. This was the principle behind establishment of the national forest system....
``...West of the Cascade Mountains, Douglas fir is the principal tree species, making up 80 percent or more of the forest. This tree requires full sunlight to grow, so it must be managed under some variation of a system we call clearcutting...''

Of course our bachelor degree graduate's real reason for defending clearcutting is the bottom line: money. He says, "If timber could be harvested, the county budget wouldn't need slashing." If a substitute for trees were used, the forests wouldn't need slashing. And clearcutting came about because of the advance in (and misuse of) technology. With machines it is easier and more lucrative to clearcut than be selective. Douglas firs have small roots and great height. They have two requirements for survival: they must grow in thick stands for protection from the wind, and they must have enough moisture to support a thick stand. Who is trying to dupe whom?

Kenaf Pulp and Fiber

Kenaf (ke naf'), an annual hibiscus fiber plant related to cotton, has been an important source of food, clothing, rope, sacking, and rugs in central Africa and parts of Asia for several thousand years.

U.S. interest in kenaf's potential first emerged in the 1940s when World War II shut off jute imports from Asia. A decade later, a USDA search for alternatives to wood pulp for papermaking singled out kenaf as the most promising source among more than 500 fiber crops studied.

After over 20 years of active USDA and private-sector research and several commercial-scale tests, kenaf is acknowledged as a cost-competitive source of newsprint. Compared with wood-pulp paper used for printing newspapers, tests have shown kenaf paper as stronger, whiter, less yellowing, capable of sharper photo reproduction, and more user-friendly due to better ink adherence (thus requiring less ink and resulting in less ink ruboff on readers' hands). Mixing kenaf pulp with recycled newspapers improves the quality of the recycled paper.

Another major plus for kenaf is that it could begin to replace a portion of the 7 million tons of imported newsprint that add about $4 billion to the U.S. trade deficit each year.

USES: Kenaf's established role as a source of fiber in Africa, Latin America, and Asia has centered around clothing, rope, matting, and sacking. Now an extensive commercial-scale demonstration project has added quality newsprint to the list of accepted uses. To add to the value of kenaf as a newsprint source, testing shows that kenaf performs well whether used alone or mixed with either virgin wood pulp or with recycled paper. In Africa, kenaf also is a food crop. (For more information about kenaf, send SASE to, T.E.S.T., Box 545, Cave Junction, OR 97523.)

With alternatives to tree cutting brushing the periphery of forest preservation, the silence regarding them is deafening. And the logs keep rolling along. You can drive almost anywhere in the Pacific Northwest and see one loaded log truck after another, at one count five in a row. And the log trucks will continue to roll as long as timber companies can find tree owners to furnish them with logs.

We mow down the forests that supply us with cool air, moisture, wildlife and sustenance for that wildlife. No longer do we have vast supplies of old growth to dole out moisture at a measured pace. Instead, snow and rain, no longer able to penetrate a parched, crusted earth, run off the hills and mountains all at once, taking what is left of valuable topsoil with it, filling the creeks that salmon need for spawning with silt and debris, flooding meadows, encouraging an inferior growth of trees and shrubs and tenacious weeds. Without the moisture that forests invite and later deliver at nature's regulated pace, the creeks and rivers dry up and fish become an endangered species.

Few, least of all the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture and timber companies, will admit that this ecological upheaval is helped along by the human hand. In some areas seedlings are planted in a vain attempt to restore the ravished forests, some of them not indigenous to that particular area. The forest ecosystem can never be restored to its full potential. And as long as there is money to be made, the log trucks will keep rolling along. It would be a pity if Japan ran out of wooden toothpicks for her restaurants. She already has made a large dent in the rain forests of Papua, New Guinea for this purpose.