Logging

Cutting the big pines near Flagstaff, Arizona, ca. 1904. Image 15a courtesy of Cline Library Special Collections, Northern Arizona University.

Logging began in the vast ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau in the 1870s and 1880s with the harvest of railroad ties and other products for construction of the transcontinental railroad. At first, only large, high-grade ponderosa pines were cut. Gradually, to make expensive rail transport more economically feasible, increased volume had to be removed, sometimes reaching 70-80%. Vast amounts of slash and other debris left on the forest floor caused much of what was left of these forests to burn in the late 1800s.

Beginning in the 1920s, new technology including chainsaws, bulldozers, and logging trucks allowed for the rapid harvesting of steeper slopes. In the 1930s Depression years, concern that snags contributed to the spread of  lightening-caused wildfires led to the removal of many large snags by the the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), further reducing the habitat quality of these forests for wildlife.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s dramatic increases in harvesting and road building occurred in the National Forests of the Colorado Plateau and throughout the west. An "agricultural" model of sustainable forestry favoring even-aged management became institutionalized. To insure continued timber supplies until young trees could establish and grow to adequate size, harvests of large trees were reduced by distributing the cut to two or more entries. During this time, typical harvests removed one-third to two-thirds of the available volume. At these residual stocking rates, stem density increased while tree size and age decreased.

Timber management practices on National Forests in the 1970s and 1980s continued to emphasize intensive, even-aged management, despite concerns of many resource professionals and an increasingly vociferous public that even-aged management negatively impacted visual quality, wildlife, riparian zones and water quality. Harvests increased in mixed-conifer forests due to favorable markets for these tree species.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed by Congress in 1969, and both the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and the National Forest Management Act became law in 1976. The new regulations restricted many management activities in federally-administered forests. For the most part, private, non-industrial forestland continued to be managed on an economic-harvest basis.

Timber harvest levels on National Forest lands in the Southwest (Arizona and New Mexico) have been tracked since 1908. Harvest levels gradually increased through the 1950s and, under sustained-yield management, remained relatively flat through the 1980s.

Harvests only began to decline in the 1990s after a hail of lawsuits from environmental organizations challenged most large timber sales based on the requirements of the new regulations to protect biodiversity.

(Data courtesy of: Cathy Dahms, Brian Geils, and Dan Huebner of the Southwestern Region USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station. From General Technical Report RM-GTR-295, http://www.rms.nau.edu/publications/rm_gtr_295/)

Follow these links to:
Ponderosa Pine Fire Ecology
Reintroduction of Fire to Forest Ecosystems

Changed Southwestern Forests: Resource effects and management remedies. Over 150 years of occupancy by northern Europeans has markedly changed vegetative conditions in the Southwest. Less fire due to grazing and fire suppression triggered a shift to forests with very high tree densities, which in turn contributed to destructive forest fires. Options to deal with these changes include prescribed fire, thinning and timber harvest to mimic natural disturbances and conditions. However, there are barriers to implementing these activities on a scale large enough to have a significant benefit. Adapted from a published journal article by Marlin Johnson.

Contribution of Roads to Forest Fragmentation. Increasingly, previously extensive, continuous tracts of forest are being reduced to widely dispersed patches of remnant forest vegetation by logging and road-building, but few measures of the effects of roads on forest fragmentation are available. This study looks at the importance of roads in delineating and quantifying landscape structure, including the proportion of the landscape occupied by edge habitat, and compares the effects of roads and clearcut logging on forest fragmentation. Adapted from a published journal article by Rebecca A. Reed et al.

Restoring Ecosystem Health in Ponderosa Pine Forests of the Southwest. Restoration of ecosystem structure and reintroduction of fire are necessary for restoring rates of decomposition, nutrient cycling, and net primary production to natural, presettlement levels. The rates of these processes will be higher in an ecosystem that approximates the natural structure and disturbance regime. Adapted from a published journal article by W. Wallace Covington et al.

Anderson, M. F. 1998. Living at the Edge: Explorers, Exploiters and Settlers of the Grand Canyon Region. Grand Canyon Association, Grand Canyon, AZ, 184 pp.

Avery, C. C., Larson, F. R. and Schubert, G. A. 1976. Fifty-year records of virgin stand development in southwestern ponderosa pine. General Technical Report RM-22. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, CO, 71 pp.

Cline, P. 1976. They Came to the Mountain: The Story of Flagstaff's Beginnings. Northern Arizona University with Northland Press, Flagstaff, 364 pp.

Cooper, C. F. 1960. Changes in vegetation, structure, and growth of southwestern pine forests since white settlement. Ecological Monographs 30: 129-164.

Covington, W. W., Everett, R. L., Steele, R. W., Irwin, L. I., Daer, T. A. and Auclair, A. N. D. 1994. Historical and anticipated changes in forest ecosystems of the inland west of the United States. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 2: 13-63.

Covington, W. W. and Moore, M. M. 1994. Southwestern ponderosa forest structure and resource conditions: changes since Euro-American settlement. Journal of Forestry 92: 39-47.

Ffolliott, P. F. and Gottfried, G. J. 1991. Natural tree regeneration after clearcutting in Arizona's ponderosa pine forests: two long-term case studies. Research Note RM-507. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station.

Finch, D. M., Ganey, J. L., Yong, W., Kimbal, R. and Sallabanks, R. 1997. Effects and interactions of fire, logging and grazing. In: Ecology and Management of Songbirds in Southwestern Ponderosa Pine Forests. General Technical Report. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experimental Station.

Gomez, A. R. and Tiller, V. E. V. 1990. Fort Apache forestry: a history of timber management and forest protection on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, 1870-1985. Tiller Research, Albuquerque, NM, 212 pp.

Keegan, C. E., III, Wichman, D. P. and Van Hooser, D. D. 1996. Utah's forest products industry: a descriptive analysis, 1992. Report RB-83. USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station.

Lauver, M. E. 1983. A history of the use and management of the forested lands of Arizona, 1862-1936. M.S. Thesis. University of Arizona, Tucson, 221 pp.

Leiberg, J. B., Rixon, T. F. and Dodwell, A. 1904. Forest conditions in the San Francisco Mountains Forest Reserve, Arizona. Series H, Forestry 7, Professional paper no. 22. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C., 95 pp.

Olsen, W. C. The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. <http://chla.library.cornell.edu/> 12/15/2000.

Pearson, G. A. 1950. Management of ponderosa pine in the southwest. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Monograph 6: 218.

Stein, P. H. 1993. Railroad logging on the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests, 1887 to 1966. SWCA, Inc. for the National Park Service and National Register of Historic Places, Flagstaff, AZ.