forestry's "best practices"

At the recent Chautauqua annual meeting, Mount Gretna Borough's Chuck Alwein responded to members' concerns about the seemingly abundant amount of wood "fuel" (or "slash") left behind by the Pennsylvannia Game Land's timber harvester. He assured us that they used "best practices."

So, I did a little research of forestry best practices. Here is what I found.

"Best Management Practices for Pennsylvania Forests" (by Chinko and Wolf)
BMP #6, on page 29 states:

"6. Use as much of the harvested wood as possible to minimize debris."

and BMP #5 on page 20:

"5. Consider the effects of planned activities on surrounding properties."

Then I went to the bible of silvicultural practices, David M. Smith's "The Practice of Silviculture" ["Silviculture" is the term for the art of producing and tending a forest.]

On page 222, Mr. Smith emphasizes that site-preparation may be the most crucial consideration given the type of regeneration planned. Here, in Mount Gretna, the PA Game Commission has repeatedly stated that it is going to replant thousands of trees. For this plan, Mr. Smith states "slash disposal is very often done to reduce the physical impediments to hand or machine planting." page 224

It seems fairly obvious that, given the size and amount of slash left behind our little village, that physically moving through the area to plant anything is near impossible, as well as dangerous. Further, the egregious amount of slash left behind also suggests that site-prep activities have really not be conducted--how could they be? Perhaps there was no plan for site prep. Perhaps the harvester is not done yet...

More importantly, on page 223, Smith states

"most slash disposal is still applied primarily to reduce the potential fuel for forest fires"

(citing Brown and Davis, 1973, Chandler et al, 1983, andPyne, 1984). He further states

"Slash is a fire hazard because it represents an unusually large volume of fuel; it is often so distributed that it dangerously impedes construction of fire lines...

Mr. Alwhein further comforted us by alleging that our fire risk is lower now that a fire can't spread from tree top to tree top behind our little village. Here is what Mr. Smith has to say about that:

"Fires on cutover areas almost invariably start and spread in the litter of the old forest floor."...Page 224, and:

"the greatest menace exists during the ...period in which the foliage and small branchlets remain on the slash; they are readliy ignited and burn rapidly....[W]hen conditions are favorable to very hot fires, the size of [large] units of fuel is no longer a factor limiting the rate at which a fire will spread....[F]ires can burn rapidly in large concentrations of slash and may 'blow up' into well-nigh uncontrollable conflagrations." page 223


Well, given that lightening is known to favor striking right where all this slash is piled up, that there are plenty of humans out there every day--some of them even smoking, and that there is plenty of duff and "small branchlets" up there drying out in the unfettered sunshine, whose take on things should we err towards?