Last Stands: Timber Industry Eyes Region for Massive Logging

April 3, 2002

One hundred years after loggers reduced virtually all of Michigan’s forestlands to chewed-up stubble, stands of regrown timber are prompting a new clash between citizens working to better manage Michigan’s forests and a state Senator insistent on taking trees down more quickly.
Caught in the middle, surprisingly, is the state Department of Natural Resources, which manages 3.9 million acres of public forest. The DNR, under pressure from conservation groups, has proposed a process for designating swaths of state land as old growth biological reserves. The plan, due early next year, will identify areas most suited for a ban on human activity, allowing the trees to regain their primeval state over the next century.
Tens of thousands of acres of Michigan’s most ecologically vital forests could be slated for permanent protection, ultimately creating some of the most beautiful forestland in the upper Midwest.

TIMBER BASKET
Meanwhile, the timber industry, which is again eyeing the Wolverine State for massive logging, is not pleased. With timber cutting greatly reduced in the Pacific Northwest and reaching peak production in the Southeast, the industry would like to again make Michigan’s slowly recovering forests “the nation‘s timber basket.“
The industry has a champion in State Senator George A. McManus, Jr., an influential three-term Republican from Traverse City, and one of the Legislature’s most ardent advocates for boosting industrial production at the expense of the environment. In February, for example, Mr. McManus was one of the five members of the state Senate who voted against a permanent ban on drilling for oil and gas beneath Lake Michigan. Twenty-eight of his colleagues voted in favor of the drilling ban.
Sen. McManus is pressing to open more of Michigan’s public forests to logging through a legislative invention that he pushed through the state House and Senate in 1996 and has since come to be known as “timber mandating.“ Last year, lawmakers directed the DNR to mark enough trees to produce 855,000 cords of cut wood. The Legislature is starting to debate this year’s mandated cut, but it is expected to reach a similar level.
While most conservationists agree that it is possible to take that much wood from state forests without damaging their long-term sustainability, there is pronounced concern about whether careful logging can actually occur because of cuts in staffing in the DNR forestry division. Moreover, DNR staff members say they worry that the mandated logging levels could damage areas that are either not yet officially protected or designated potential old growth areas.

MANDATES & MISMANAGEMENT
“When politicians start setting timber levels, you can guarantee there is no scientific consideration involved,“ said Anne Woiwode, director of the 18,000-member state chapter of the Sierra Club, who also noted that other states don’t have mandates because they lead to mismanagement.
Woiwode and other critics said that through his chairmanship of a Senate appropriations subcommittee, Sen. McManus uses the budgeting process to proscribe how much wood the state marks for sale each year, and ignores pleas from both conservationists and leaders in the DNR not to do so. Sen. McManus responds that the mandating process will continue because pulp and lumber lobbying groups have complained that the DNR is not marking enough timber for “treatment“ — industry parlance for cutting — by the highest bidder.
Sen. McManus, who is not eligible for re-election in November because of term limits, said he is unmoved by the resistance he faces each winter when the DNR budget reaches his subcommittee. “We are growing timber faster in this state than we are cutting it,“ Sen. McManus said. “If I’ve got a hundred acres of corn available to cut, do I cut it or leave it stand? Timber is no different.“

OLD GROWTH MOVEMENT
This politicization of forestry decision-making is a source of deep frustration for forest defenders, among them Tim Flynn, a lumberyard owner from Petoskey, member of the Sierra Club, and a driving force behind the old growth restoration movement.
On a rainy afternoon last fall, Flynn engaged in one of his favorite activities: Riding around in his Jeep on a remote lumbering trail near Gladwin scouting old trees. Encountering a pond across the trail that looked big enough to swallow his vehicle, he shifted into four-wheel drive and floored it. A huge splash and several alarming slips and slides later, his Jeep crawled out the other side. Triumphantly, Flynn pointed at his quarry — a lone and rare hemlock tree.
Hemlocks were once a mainstay of Michigan’s forests — tall, proud, ancient. It took lumber barons just 40 years to cut them all down — as well as the white and red pines, beeches, maples, and other softwoods and hardwoods.
Because he’s a Sierra Club member and an outspoken critic of the DNR, some timber industry people consider Flynn either weird or traitorous. Yet he insisted he has solid business reasons for saving this hemlock, the stand it lives in, and many other stands throughout the nation’s largest state forest system. He said the countless species of microbes, bugs, plants, and wildlife that old growth forests harbor are essential
to forest health.
“Native biodiversity, native species are the working capital and infrastructure of this business,“ he said. “In a perfect world, Georgia Pacific and Mead and all those guys would be fighting to protect it, since it is their equipment. To me there is no conflict between being in this business and being for the restoration of old growth forests.“

DRAGGING ITS FEET
In 1993 Flynn was happy to hear that the DNR was considering an old growth restoration plan. But his excitement has turned to skepticism: It took eight years for the department to make any detectable progress.
“The state has been dragging its feet forever,“ said Glen Sheppard, who’s been covering state forestry since 1954 and is editor and publisher of the North Woods Call, an influential weekly that focuses on environmental and conservation news. “That’s because the timber industry owns the state forest. That’s how they got the timber mandate.“
The mandate also frustrates many DNR staffers, who juggle a plethora of priorities — lumber, paper, hunting, recreation, wildlife and botanical conservation, soil erosion, water protection, and scenic beauty. Even large paper companies like Mead — which could benefit from the lower timber prices such mandates can produce — have publicly opposed it, fearing a political swing in the opposite direction that might some day completely deny them access to state forests.

FOREST FOR THE TREES
Meanwhile Mr. Flynn continues scouting potential old growth. He marks his discoveries on DNR maps, transfers them to his computer, attends DNR compartment reviews (which decide, stand by stand, what to cut and what to save), and doggedly presses for more restoration, which, he says, many DNR staffers increasingly support.
“Once you start digging around,“ he says, “you start to fall in love with Michigan forests. The more you learn, the more you realize what you don’t know. But you can see the intrinsic value of recovering our native habitat. They just blew that away a century ago. I was brought up to pay back the things that you borrow. With our forests, we have a way to go yet.“

Jim Dulzo is a freelance writer who specializes in environmental reporting. Reach him at . A version of this article
appeared in the February 2002 edition of Hour Detroit magazine.

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