Mooney Road after last weeks cold and very windy front blew through. I lost count of how many big trees were down across the road. About three years after a fire they start coming down, and five years after, the majority of them go. If I wasnt up here watching what happens on a daily basis I would probably be one of those people that says no, you never sell off some of your burned trees for lumber...today I would tell you that its not a bad idea as long as you do it right after the fire. The wood inside the dead trees is still usable, most plants have not started growing back yet, the soil is still getting balanced out, and its loose so it can easily be restored to a pristine state after logging is done. You chip and scatter the branches and bark and leave the cones - a lot of whom will have already dropped their seed, and you wrap the operation up before winter sets in. You dont take every single tree; there are some animal species that prefer burned environs. In the long run, there are huge management benefits in a dry climate like ours, where a tree is going to take twenty years to decompose into small pieces. In a wet climate, letting thousands of acres of timber fall back to the ground might be just fine; here, with a few million visitors a year, its a management nightmare. Images 1-7-15 Angeles National Forest
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 05:25:57 +0000
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