Planet Green
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Our hit show Heli-Loggers explores the dangers and struggles in a green-logging mission and highlights the way everyday practices can be sustainable. We talked to Mike Ferrucci, a logging operations instructor, to discover more about the different types of logging and why heli-logging is advantageous in the first place.
Planet Green: Are there more and less sustainable and eco-friendly ways of logging? Can you explain why or why not?
Mike Ferrucci: There are many ways to conduct logging; some have less impact to the environment than others. Logging impacts the forest mostly by disturbing the forest soil while yarding and trucking trees and logs. Yarding means moving trees from the stump (where they are cut) to the truck loading area. (More below under question 3.) Access roads for the log trucks, roads also heavily used by people who visit the forest for recreation, have the greatest potential to affect the forest environment. Modern logging practices are designed to minimize, but can’t eliminate, effects on the forested environment.
PG: Does heli-logging have advantages over other types of logging?
MF: Heli-logging involves the construction of fewer logging roads, but only works over short distances and when the wood to be removed has high value and significant volumes in one place. It is almost always associated with removal of trees from patch cuts or clearcuts on steep ground. While disturbance to the ground at the removal site is minimized, the helicopters are noisy and dangerous, and the work must be very carefully planned to protect the workers, to avoid impacts to birds and sensitive wildlife, and to ensure that the production levels are high enough to justify the costs.
PG: Do certain types of forests and landscapes require different forms of logging? How is a logging practice chosen?
MF: Each forest type and associated landform is amenable to different forms of logging. Steep, unstable soils are suited to yarding using helicopters or aerial cables. Logging using various types of suspended cables is far more common than helicopter logging. “Cable yarding” has many varieties, and really amounts to very sophisticated applied engineering. More gentle slopes are generally suited to ground-based yarding methods, where a variety of machines is employed to cut trees and transport them to the truck loading areas.
PG: Is there a realistic way around logging at the moment? What would the world be like without it?
MF: Wood-based products are one of the world’s most useful and widely-used materials. In fact, by weight, only cement is more widely used, and for far fewer products. Books, magazines, film, furniture, homes, packaging and more come from trees, and are brought to all of us through the efforts of loggers. I can’t imagine a world without these forest products. And, as a forester dependent on loggers to get projects done right, and who counts loggers as the hardest-working and most skilled of outdoorsmen, I really can’t imagine a world without loggers.
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