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NORTH CAROLINA CHIP MILL STUDY RELEASED On February 10, the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources released its long-awaited study on the impact of chip mills on sustainable forestry in the state-and contributing very little to putting a lid on the controversy. The authors of the study find the state's hardwood forests indeed under pressure, although chiefly from urban and suburban development. Although they fail to find a link between the growth in off-site chipping and increases in clearcutting, they do not demonstrate that such a link does not exist. The study does affirm that the forest products industry and its continued growth are important to the state's economy, but media coverage seems to construe this obvious correlation as a threat to sustainability rather than an asset. The February 1 Christian Science Monitor provides an unusually balanced view of the expansion of off-site chip mills in the South. The article "Wood chips, and controversy, fly in South" focuses chiefly on Missouri but also contributes an overview. Reporter Craig Savoye correctly attributes the growing "outcry" to a swelling urban fringe concerned with viewsheds. His grasp of the applicable science is encouraging: "The idea that clear-cutting provides environmental benefit to the forest might strike the average urbanite as counterintuitive, to say the least. But in the Ozark highlands, amid a stand of hardwoods in a buffer zone between a public road and a clear-cut, a visitor was shown a dozen trees that varied in radius from six inches to more than 18 inches and from 15 feet in height to more than 50. 'All of those trees are roughly the same age-80 years old,' says a Willamette Industries forester who asked not to be identified. 'Some are stronger and grow faster than others. People say, "Why don't you just take the large trees and leave the rest." If you do that, you leave the weak trees, not necessarily the young ones. ...'" (The article is available in the Monitor's on-line archive at www.csmonitor.com, for a $1.50 charge; to find it, enter the article's title as a search term, or browse the February 1 issue.) Back to "News" Forest Resources Association
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