Logging 2 Essay Research Paper Logging in

Logging 2 Essay, Research Paper

Logging in the Northwestern United States has been a major part of its economy almost since it s settlement. In the movie they noted that most of the mainland had been cleared for housing developments and high-rises. This interested me, in the movie they used the cedars to protect them from the prejudiced society, the trees became a place they could live without fear of being torn apart by an unjust world. On the mainland they had removed all the trees, and so they had removed they re innocence. When the two young lovers left the shelter of the trees they also left behind they re innocence. I think the logging industry in America helped removed the innocence of the country, but at the same time instilled a more realistic perspective in the people of this country. How was this accomplished, was the first question that occurred to me. How did they remove the majority of the forests in America. What techniques did they use both now and then to go about cutting down and removing the trees. What did they do with all of the wood.

People started cutting down the tree in the America s nearly as soon as they got off the boat. They used the lumber to construct they re first houses, and other essential buildings. The forestry industry got its official start in 1633 with the construction of the first sawmill in the colonies. Today approximately 12,000 sawmills are operating in the United States (logging book). Soon though the colonies were shipping lumber back to England for they re buildings and ships (Encarta forestry industry). They cleared all the land up to the Appalachian Mountains with little resistance. After the American Revolution they began crossing these mountains and settling the plains for farming this demanded land free from trees. The farmers used a technique called cut and burn. This is when the lumber people go through and cut the best trees for their use and burn the rest in an effort to clear the land for some other use. In this fashion they worked they re way all the way to the northwestern United States. Here they found much bigger trees the Redwood, and Douglas firs, which grow to enormous proportions. All the way up to the twentieth century the logging companies cut trees without regard for the future. At this point most of the old growth had been cut for immediate use without any regard for any future need (Encarta, Logging history). In all the forestry industry in the United States cleared one half of its forests by 1900. Of the 583 million acres left 2/3 are owned by commercial logging companies. The other 1/3 is tied up in Federal and State parks and preserves, according to the article Forestry Industry in the Encarta encyclopedia.

The early loggers had a difficult job in cutting down the trees that were hundreds of times larger than they were. These men were charged with finding quick, efficient and safe ways of removing the trees. The early methods relied mainly on physical force of the loggers and their animals. To accomplish this the loggers would prepare the camp for the year before the September start of the logging season. They would cut paths and roads through the trees, and also set up they re essential buildings such as sleeping and eating quarters. Usually the early loggers usually used one of two animals horses or oxen, they would harness the animals and use them to move the heavy fallen lumber (logging book). The tree cutters would work in pairs they would use poorly sharpened saws and axes to chop or cut the trunk of the tree, allowing it to fall where it may. After this they removed the branches and other protrusions from the tree. Next another member of the logging team attached the tree, by way of harness, to their animal; finally using the paths they drove the animal to the nearest waterway. After placing the log in the water they then drove them downstream to the sawmill (lumber industry Encarta). Once the logs arrived they were manually cut using a wide arrange of saws and various cutting instruments and then shipped via boat or wagon to the desired locations.

Today however logging is a very different process, involving technologies, such as chain saws and computers. In the modern cutting of trees they use a wide range on tool. The type of tree cutters used today depends on the type of terrain. If the area is relatively flat a mechanical feller called a shear is used to clear the trees. The shear has two blades that work like a pair of scissors, cutting through the trunk of the tree and carefully laying it on its side. The shear works very quickly, it can take as little as 30 seconds to cut a tree 8 inches thick. A shear working on level terrain can cut 25 cords of wood per day. Two men working with a chain saw can only clear about 4 cords of wood in the same amount of time. The chain saw has an advantage over the shear on the large trees located in the Pacific Northwest. Here the cutting blades of the shear cannot fit around the enormous trunks of a Douglas fir or a Redwood tree. The chain saws can slowly but surly make it all the way through the enormous trunk of these giant trees. Now unlike the days before all the technological advances in the field when the cutters fell a tree they carefully plan where to lay the trees down without crushing people or damaging other trees in the process. Next the limbs and branches of the tree are bucked. This is a way of saying they remove the excess