Loss of Sawmill Could Mean Trouble for Yosemite

Wildfires like this one in the Stanislaus National Forest could spread into Yosemite if logging operations to thin trees in overgrown forests around the park cease. Photo by Andrew Huff.

As we get a little older, we get a little smarter. We’ve come to the understanding that one thing affects another and that destroying one will destroy both. Gone are the days when forests were clear-cut in big swatches for a more ecologically and economically viable solution of cutting and removing dead and fallen trees to produce a more natural, fire resistant environment. Selective cutting means that fires no longer climb quickly to the top of the vulnerable forest canopy on dead trees and destroy thousands of acres of beautiful forest annually. That’s why the loss of the Sierra Pacific lumber mill in Standard which gets it trees from National Forest and privately owned land surrounding Yosemite could be a major disaster for the Park if a fire were to break out.

Modesto Bee: Ramon Guzman wields a big, loud piece of logging equipment for his delicate task in the woods.

The machine grabs a small tree in an overcrowded stand, shears it off near the ground, and lays it down amid the timber that will be left standing.

Guzman’s work provides raw material for building homes, but he takes pride in something more — the forest he leaves behind.

“You open the trees so the sun is going to the ground,” he said on a July morning deep in the Stanislaus National Forest. “The trees you leave get more air and more water and start growing better.”

Logging advocates say skills such as Guzman’s are vital to forest health in Tuolumne County, and to its economy. They fear what will happen after this month’s closure of the Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill at Standard, once the hub of a booming timber industry.

“There’s an awful lot of people that work in the woods, like I do, that rely on that sawmill,” said Dave Hansen, a private forester working the same logging project as Guzman, just west of Cherry Lake.

The Standard closure, expected to happen Friday, will put 146 mill employees out of work. About that many contract loggers and truckers also will lose their jobs, industry people said.

The loss of these paychecks — more than $20 an hour in many cases — will hit hard in a county struggling with the recession.

The decline in logging could mean increased fuel for wildfires, which could leave barren soil that degrades rivers supplying farms and cities in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. The blazes could burn forested spots where valley residents camp, hike and fish — and where they might like to retire.

“We’ve got a major, major problem on our hands,” said industry forester Chris Conrad at a forum in Sonora in June. “We’re in the middle of the destruction of the American forest of the West.”

Many environmentalists agree that logging could help restore forests that have grown unnaturally dense, though they continue to question some of the industry’s practices.”