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NATIONAL
7 OREST
| WEEK

A special report

from the Terrace Review

~~ 6¥

T.. forest in this photograph is a narrow band of woods growing
between Copper River Road and the base of Kleanza Mountain. Walking
through it, all the profuse plant and animal life one expects from a healthy
forest can be seen: a floor covered with fern, devil's club and moss, towering
cedar and hemlock trees, red alder lifting branches into the openings left by
the massive conifers.

A leisurely examination — the only kind appropriate to a walk in the woods
— also reveals the moss-covered stumps of trees, the remains of former giants
silently nourishing the surrounding soil. Decades ago, this forest was clear
cut,

Not every exercise in clear-cut logging leaves a legacy this successful. The
site is strong, resilient and fertile, and the forest returned through natural
regeneration, bearing none of the marks of a managed stand. It is proof,
however, that despite the vile reputation clear-cutting has gained through the
widespread airing of its worst examples — many of those not far from here,
in the Nass Valley — itis a technique that can be successful and is sometimes
the preferred method of felling timber, both from a forest industry and a
forest ecology point of view.

The public debate on clear-cutting is only one indication of the burgeoning
public interest in the forest, a sign that forests have social as well as industrial
and biological value. In this special report we have attempted to cover some
of the significant issues surrounding the use — or absence of use — of forests
in the Northwest: clear cutting, new techniques for getting timber out of the
woods and into the mills, industrial strategies in a rapidly changing world,
public involvement in planning, the process for determining what the value
of a forest is, even the vernacular of the Northwest's best-known occupational
group, the loggers.

It's National Forest Week, but in this afea every week of the year is forest
week.

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