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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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