Logging & the Environment

Cut in the Umpqua National Forest, 1914.
Courtesy of the Umpqua National Forest

Nearly all techniques to remove timber from the land harmed the environment. For example, when mills relied on the Willamette River and its tributaries to move timber, their splash dams prevented migrating salmon from swimming up stream, scoured streambeds, and eroded stream banks.

To me it's like looking at a farm in different stages. We go down to Yuma, you know [during part of the year] and they are continually [rotating crops]. When one gets done they start redoing it for the next crop and you've got brown, tans, and greens. It's like a built quilt. I mean you fly over Kansas and it's just like looking at one big quilt. It's beautiful, I think. Timber is the same way. It's in different stages of growth. It's like farming.
-- Mrs. Charles Plummer describing forest clearcuts.

Many in the timber industry wanted to treat the forest like a series of tree farms. "Sustainable" forestry was the epitome of this ideal in which the land would never be depleted of its trees. As early as 1936, Weyerhaeuser practiced sustained yield logging, a practice it continues in the Willamette Valley. By stripping the forest of its timber and replacing a variety of tree species with a single commercial species like Douglas Fir, timber companies created monocultures instead of complex forest systems and reduced plant and animal diversity.