Jungwirth says the Forest Service can't even guarantee to deliver the i million
board-feet she needs to keep her operation going for a year.
Twenty-five hundred cubic meters (about 718,000
board-feet) will keep one full-time horse logger busy for a year; many of the horse loggers are part-time farmers.
Collins' 94,000-acre mixed conifer Almanor Forest in northeastern California has produced 30 million
board-feet a year for 50 years without clearcuts or herbicides.
When you consider that large-diameter sawlogs sell for more money per thousand
board-feet than small-diameter sawlogs, the actual timber-harvest value on SI-100 land increases yet again.
"Instead, I have cut 1,670,000 board-feet of timber in that 45 years and still have almost as much left as I started with!
Wilkinson figures on an annual allowable cut of 67,000 board-feet per year, and every fiv years he cuts about 500,000 board-feet of top-quality timber, currently bringin him as much as $64.50 per 1,000 board-feet.
This Columbia Helicopters operation, which eventually logged 1.8 million
board-feet of pine for Fibreboard, required virtually no road building (with its associated erosion), and produced no discernible impact on the land, while removing explosively flammable trees in a seriously overfueled forest.
Each commercial acre supports an average volume of over 7,500
board-feet, with a growth rate overall of some one million
board-feet a year.
The mill processes logs at a projected rate of 5,000 per 10-hour shift, with an annual production of 50 million
board-feet.
In most years, the log volume shipped across the Pacific exceeded three billion
board-feet. It reached more than 4.5 billion
board-feet in both 1988 and 1989.
In 1825, the Erie Canal was completed and was soon floating millions of
board-feet of lumber east to Albany.
The Vento bill proposes to create a 6.3-million-acre ancient forest reserve, set a substantially reduced annual timber sale level of 3 billion
board-feet during a three-year interim study period, direct the Forest Service and BLM to manage old-growth outside the reserves under New Forestry principles, and provide economic assistance to affected workers and communities.
During World War I the Army recruited 7,000 men, called them the Spruce Production Division, and set them to hand-felling some 300 million
board-feet of Sitka spruce, the nation's strongest and finest construction softwood, for the war effort.
"What's unique is that we're not going after the
board-feet," says Kipphut, who contends that the thinning process is closer to European horticulture than it is to conventional logging.
