State Officials Respond.
By Ken Midkiff
Ozark Chapter Director
The First Mowing
About one hundred years ago, the forests of the Ozarks Plateau were being leveled. Huge milling operations, established along the streams and rivers, took in logs floated down the rivers or hauled in by mule teams and converted them to railroad ties and lumber to meet the demands of the country’s westward march. Rail lines crisscrossed the area to haul away the milled lumber.
In the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, the logging was done by manually operated crosscut saws. Photos from that era document the destruction of Missouri’s ancient forests — pictures of loggers standing proudly beside fallen trees with diameters equaling or exceeding the height of the loggers.
Eventually, after years of clearcutting and devastation, the forests were gone. So were the deer, turkey, bear, elk, cougar, and smaller mammals of the Ozarks. The denuded hillsides with no vegetation to hold back the soil, gravel, and rocks eroded , and the streams filled with sediment. Since the settlers of the area were subsistence farmers, hunters, and fishermen, there was no way left to make a living — people left the area along with the vanished trees and wildlife.
The timber companies moved on west to the evergreen forests of Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and California; leaving behind a bombed–out landscape. Now, the descendants of the old logging companies — grown into giant multi–national corporations — have depleted the woodlands of the Pacific Northwest: their legacy the same devastation, erosion, and wildlife habitat destruction as was evidenced in the Ozarks. However, unlike the Ozarks, the logging companies were prevented from totally destroying the ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest due to the Endangered Species Act and a courageous federal judge who ordered the Forest Service and the logging companies to call a halt. Contrary to what the timber companies claim, the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet were simply indicators that logging had destroyed the ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest. Given a few more years, nothing would have been left.
The Second Mowing
These companies — Champion, Georgia–Pacific, Willamette and others — having logged out the Intermountain and Coastal West are now turning back to the South and Midwest: in essence coming back for a second mowing. The forests of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia are now regrown and somewhat recovered from the excesses of the beginning of the last century — although diminished considerably in diversity of species.
Now, however, the crosscut saws have been replaced with highly efficient large machines that do the work of 20 men. One man operating one machine can fell, debark, delimb, cut a tree into eight–foot logs, and load these onto a waiting truck in just a few minutes.
These logs are not converted into planks or railroad ties, but rather are ground up into wood chips to make paper pulp, oriented strand board, and composition board. A mill can now process up to 25 acres per day, and once again the preferred method is clearcutting, where all of the trees, regardless of size or species, are cut and hauled to the mill.
There are two high–capacity chip mills operating in Missouri. Canal Fibre, a Japanese consortium, located in Scott City (northwest of Cape Girardeau) and Willamette Corporation, an Oregon Company, located in Mill Spring (northwest of Poplar Bluff) are in full operation, chewing up trees and sending chips off to pulp and fiber processing plants in Kentucky and elsewhere. Both of these companies hire contract loggers to deliver logs for chipping.
The companies buy timber from private landowners paying a per acre price, rather than a board foot price as locally owned sawmills and loggers have done for generations. Many of the landowners are absentee, owning large holdings in the Ozarks, but living in St. Louis, Kansas City, or other states. Typical prices range from $175 to $250 per acre for every tree and sapling on the land.
Local loggers and sawmill owners view these incursions with alarm. As one independent logger told us: “There won’t be anything left for me to cut if these companies have their way — where they go in, nothing of value will grow there in my lifetime.”
Where the clearcutting occurs, once again the forests are gone, erosion and sedimentation wash downhill, and wildlife habitat and water quality are degraded. Once again, our Ozark forests are under siege.
Reactions
The response of state officials has been mostly gratifying. The Governor recognized the threat after being alerted by the Department of Natural Resources and appointed an Advisory Committee on Chip Mills; at the recommendation of the Attorney General, the Missouri Clean Water Commission is poised to impose a two–year moratorium on issuing any permits to new chip mills. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR), following an Executive Order by the Governor, placed restrictions on the operations of the existing chip mills (which Willamette Industries immediately appealed, with former MoDNR Director David Shorr as their attorney).
Ironically, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), the agency charged with conserving and managing our state’s forests, was complicit in inviting the chip mills in and has been acting as an advocate and defender of the mills’ operations. The Ozark Chapter brought to light a secret report that had been compiled by an MDC multi–disciplinary team that documented the concerns of environmentalists and conservationists. MDC reluctantly produced this report after initial stonewalling.
Fortunately, MDC’s positions are not shared by other agencies or officials. Unfortunately, the state was ill equipped to deal with industrial forestry and had no experience with this sort of highly mechanized and heavy handed logging. Up until the advent of the chip mills, Missouri’s timber industry was composed of small locally owned operations. While these companies may not have always observed sustainable logging practices, the small size of the areas logged kept impacts to a minimum.
The Ozark Chapter has been in the forefront of the movement to impose strict regulatory standards on these massive operations, using a grant to fund radio and newspaper ads throughout the state with a focus on the towns in the Ozarks. The ads ask citizens to call the Governor to request that regulations be placed on the high–capacity mills, not on local loggers or small sawmills.
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Soon these ads will appear in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield, and Columbia. While the forest lands may be privately owned, the industrial operations can be regulated under the Clean Water Act. The Ozark Chapter is advising the Chip Mill Advisory Committee to avoid placing regulations on forest landowners, but rather to rein in the corporations that are directly responsible for the heavy–handed logging.
There is a simple principle involved: Our forests were destroyed once by industrial forestry and the land, air, water, wildlife, and human residents of the area were devastated; we can’t let this history repeat itself.
ACTION: Write Governor Mel Carnahan, Room 216, State Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO 65102 and ask him to protect Missouri’s forests from high–capacity chip mills.