Subject: North Carolina, USA: Logging, Chip Mills Increase, Threaten Hardwoods
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1/27/00
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
As old growth logging in the Pacific Northwest has been slowed 
somewhat, the industrial timber industry has had to go back for 
another round of over-intensive management to areas they had 
previously cleared.  Much of the southern U.S, the North Woods near 
Lake Superior and Michigan, and other areas of regrowth that are now 
displaying late successional characteristics, are now having their 
logging ramped up.  Chip mills in the south threaten to replace 
regenerating natural forests with vast plantation monocultures.
g.b.

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Title:   Logging, chip mills both increasing, threatening hardwoods
Source:  The Associated Press 
Status:  Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint 
Date:    January 19, 2000 

CHARLOTTE (AP) -- A draft of a two-year study of North Carolina's 
proliferating chip mills warns that increased logging may thin the 
state's hardwood forests because regeneration will lag behind tree-
cutting.

While the preliminary report on the study -- whose scheduled release 
Tuesday in Statesville was postponed by snow -- doesn't blame the chip 
mill industry for the increased logging, environmentalists were 
willing to.

"There's no question about causation -- they go hand in hand," said 
Josh Abrams of the Dogwood Alliance, an environmental group that 
opposes expansion of chip mills. "The clearest thing is that there is 
no room left for increased logging and new chip mills."

The preliminary report predicted that in North Carolina over the next 
decade, hardwood trees in the mountains and Piedmont will be cut 
faster than they grow. Pine plantations, which support a smaller 
diversity of wildlife, will continue to replace naturally growing 
forests.

Fred Cubbage, a North Carolina State University forestry professor and 
study leader, said logging has increased where chip mills are 
prevalent. The final report, to be released in March, may explain what 
the correlation is, he said.

Cubbage said projections showing logging of hardwoods exceeding their 
growth rate reflects the fact that hardwoods grow slowly. He said 
researchers found that in 20 years, 3.1 percent of the state's 
hardwoods would be cut each year, compared to a 2.7 percent growth 
rate.

"The decline there is hardly precipitous," he said.

Gov. Jim Hunt ordered the $250,000 fact-finding study, the first of 
its kind in the South, where environmental groups say about 100 chip 
mills have opened in the past decade. The mills shred trees into 
postage stamp-size pieces. The chips are used to make paper and other 
wood products.

In 1980, two North Carolina mills sent chips off-site. Now, there are 
18, with another of the highly mechanized mills planned in Stokes 
County, just south of the Virginia border.

Between 1990 and 1997, North Carolina pulpwood production rose 21 
percent. Pulpwood from oaks and other hardwoods rose 66 percent in the 
Piedmont, where nine chip mills are located.

The study was conducted by the Southern Center for Sustainable 
Forests, a collaboration of North Carolina State University, Duke 
University and the state Division of Forest Resources.

Mill operators say the mills have created a market for timber once 
considered unfit for processing.

Robert Slocum of the N.C. Forestry Association, an industry group, 
said study researchers found "almost no harvesting done solely because 
of chipping."

"What I've seen shows me the forests will continue to be healthy, 
diverse and productive, and that chip mills will continue to be part 
of that," Slocum said of the study. "I don't see anything there that 
says chip mills are a big problem."

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