Asa Mercer—who settled in Seattle, became president of the territorial university, and served in the upper house of the territorial legislature—published a promotional guide to Washington Territory in He appealed to prospective emigrants by touting the region's burgeoning lumber industry and the expanding markets for timber. Similarly, Ezra Meeker, another early settler in Washington Territory, described the region's infinite timber resources, noting, "We need have no fear that [the supply] will ever be exhausted" see document 6.
As the lumber industry expanded, political and economic conditions encouraged fraudulent land practices. Federal regulations prohibited the removal of timber from public lands, but many mills ignored such mandates, particularly since government agents were scarce. In the late s the federal government sent U. After realizing that he could not stop the logging of public lands, McGilvra created a system to regulate the process: mill companies pled guilty to the theft of public timber and were charged a modest fine of 15 cents per 1, board feet they cut.
The government again tried to end corruption by passing the Timber and Stone Act of Corporations could not file such timber claims because the law was designed to help farmers, but enforcement was inefficient, and lumber companies used the law to amass substantial landholdings. In the words of the historian Richard White, the Timber and Stone Act "had loopholes so large that entire crews of sailing ships walked through them and filed on timber claims that they immediately sold to the mill companies.
Out of self-interest, the Northern Pacific Railroad took matters into its own hands and launched a campaign against illegal logging on the public domain. In the federal government had agreed to subsidize the construction of the railroad.
It received a twenty-mile-wide strip of land on alternate sections in a checkerboard pattern for each mile of track laid in the states and a mile strip for every mile of track in the territories.
The Northern Pacific tried to locate its track through heavily timbered areas to maximize the value of its land grant. Because it stood to acquire so much valuable federal land, the railroad worried about timber theft. With the help of the attorney Hazard Stevens, the son of Washington Territory's first governor, the Northern Pacific convinced the government to strengthen its efforts to catch timber poachers in the s.
Although illegal cutting did decline, the continued prevalence of corruption was demonstrated by the fact that the railroad later fired Hazard Stevens after he was accused of taking bribes and allowing mill companies to log government and railroad land.
Technology, the Railroads, and Capital, In the s the railroads gained even more power in the lumber industry. When the Northern Pacific completed its transcontinental line in , it owned 7. The railroad initially reached its Tacoma terminus by way of Portland, but in it opened a direct route across the Cascade Mountains to Tacoma, providing efficient transportation to Puget Sound mills.
The Great Northern Railroad quickly followed suit, finishing its line to Seattle in The arrival of the railroads was a significant development, allowing Puget Sound firms to sell lumber in eastern markets. The railroads also brought new settlers to the Pacific Northwest, which stimulated a building boom that depended on more lumber.
Moreover, traditional lumbering centers around Puget Sound, such as Port Gamble and Port Blakely, lost some of their influence. New timber centers developed around Tacoma and Grays Harbor, and the new mills used the railroads to ship lumber to an expanded national market. During the s the lumber industry was also transformed by major technological developments, particularly the donkey engine, patented in As forests right next to the water became relatively scarce and logging moved inland, it became apparent that bull-team logging had to be replaced by a more efficient method.
Consisting of a small steam engine set on skids and attached to a winch, the donkey engine pulled logs from the woods with cables see document It moved logs much faster and for longer distances than did oxen and horses. Thus, the donkey engine enabled companies to halve the cost of log removal. Sometime after loggers developed a new way to use donkey engines. Instead of yarding logs across the ground, workers could use donkey engines to haul logs through the air by suspending cables and pulleys from the top of a tall tree called a spar tree.
This technique was called high-lead logging see document 18 and document It made yarding even more efficient and allowed firms to cut trees on steep slopes and in narrow valleys. However, the process of moving huge logs through the air above workers' heads also increased the number of industrial accidents. The development of narrow-gauge logging railroads was another important innovation. Though the donkey engine enabled loggers to haul logs considerable distances, there was no efficient way to move logs from the deep woods.
Many mill owners wanted to harvest this timber in order to increase the timber supply and counteract rising prices. In the s a few mills began to build logging railroads, opening up new stands of timber that were previously inaccessible because of the rugged terrain and the distance from the water see document Both the donkey engine and the logging railroads made mechanical power indispensable to the lumber industry.
New technology, however, also ensured the dominance of large logging companies because small operations could not afford the new equipment see document New technologies and railroad expansion reached the Pacific Northwest as lumber companies depleted the Great Lakes timber supply.
The timber giants of the upper Midwest looked to expand their operations westward, as indicated by the establishment of the St. Chauncey Griggs, a Minnesota grocer, and several associates created this mill through the purchase of 80, acres of timber from the Northern Pacific Railroad. It was the first mill to deliver its timber entirely by rail. Frederick Weyerhaeuser, another Minnesota investor, gave the Washington lumber industry a huge boost with his arrival in He bought , acres of western Washington timber from the Northern Pacific Railroad to become the second largest private holder of timber in the nation.
After an additional transfer from the Northern Pacific in and several smaller purchases from other owners, Weyerhaeuser's holdings encompassed 1. Initially, the Weyerhaeuser Company's main purpose was to acquire land and sell its timber to other firms. In the s, however, the company began to take an interest in milling and manufacturing. Weyerhaeuser also experimented with pulp and paper production. Technological developments, railroad expansion, and the arrival of large corporations transformed Washington's lumber industry, making it the dominant player in the state's economy.
In the state's lumber production was million board feet; by production had skyrocketed to over one billion board feet.
In Washington produced 4. The timber industry became Washington's largest employer: a study by the U. Bureau of Corporations found that 63 percent of the state's wageworkers directly or indirectly depended on it for jobs.
In Washington became the nation's leading producer of timber, a position it held until the late s, when it was surpassed by its neighbor to the south, Oregon. Government and Unions Enter the Woods, The rapid expansion of Washington's lumber industry led many people to fear that timber companies would deplete the supply of wood. During the era of bull-team logging, Asa Mercer, Ezra Meeker, and others had claimed that Washington's timber resources were inexhaustible, but new technologies and dramatically increased logging made these statements seem hopelessly naive.
The federal government stepped in and implemented measures to conserve the nation's forest resources. Passed in , the Forest Reserves Act authorized the president to establish forest reserves on public lands. One of the primary purposes of the forest reserves was to protect western watersheds; farmers feared that logging, forest fires, and overgrazing would destroy the forests that regulated the flow of rivers.
Furthermore, the federal government hoped that the forest reserves would guarantee a steady supply of timber for future decades. President Grover Cleveland set aside millions of acres of reserves across the West in , including a 1. Over the next decade the federal government expanded the forest reserves and created a system to manage these lands. The Forest Management Act of gave the Secretary of the Interior the power to regulate the uses of the reserves, including grazing, irrigation, and lumbering.
In Congress transferred control of the forest reserves which were later called national forests to the Bureau of Forestry which soon changed its name to the Forest Service. The first head of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, became a major leader in the Progressive Era conservation movement and played a key role in shaping the management of national resources in the U.
He derived much of his power from the fact that he was a close friend and advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt. Pinchot, who was the first American to receive an advanced degree in forestry, promoted a philosophy of conservation that advocated the scientific and efficient use of natural resources for the common good. He believed that if the Forest Service set proper harvest levels and required proper logging methods, the national forests would provide a continual source of lumber for the American people.
Many Western interest groups feared the growing power of Pinchot and the Forest Service. Even though Pinchot promised to expand logging and grazing on the national forests, many Western ranching and logging companies feared that the Forest Service's conservationist policies would eventually restrict their access to natural resources.
In Western Congressional representatives passed an amendment declaring that the President could not add lands to the national forest system in six Western states, including Washington state, without the consent of Congress. President Roosevelt strongly opposed the amendment, but he had to sign it into law because it was attached to a key part of the federal budget.
However, Roosevelt and Pinchot figured out a plan to circumvent the amendment: on the eve of signing the amendment, they drafted an executive order that added millions of acres to the national forests. This executive order also created the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington. Over the course of his administration, Roosevelt more than doubled the size of the national forest system in the Pacific Northwest.
When he left office in , almost 11 million acres of Washington state 25 percent of its total land area was under Forest Service control. It was clear that the Forest Service would play a central role in shaping the future of Washington's forests and its logging industry. Although many Western interests despised Pinchot, he was quite successful at gaining the support of lumber companies. He recognized that lumber firms were hesitant to replant trees after logging and implement other conservation measures because of taxation and the threat of forest fires.
Owners had to pay substantial property taxes every year on the forestlands they had not yet logged. Because they also faced the constant possibility that a fire would destroy their timber, they had an economic incentive to cut their lands as rapidly as possible. To address this dilemma, Pinchot advocated cooperation between federal, state, and local governments and private landholders to reduce forest fire destruction, and he also called for tax policy reform.
At the same time, many lumber executives also began to implement their own conservation measures. They supported the establishment of the University of Washington's forestry school in and created the Washington Forest Fire Association in and the Western Forestry and Conservation Association in Lumbermen were willing to develop conservation practices that complemented their economic interests, especially the need to prevent, detect, and fight forest fires.
Lumber executives also supported Pinchot because his ideas about forestry were fairly similar to their own. Like Weyerhauser and other corporations, Pinchot wanted to maximize the long-term output of lumber. According to his autobiography, he viewed "virgin forests" which we would now call old-growth or ancient forests as "inherently wasteful. In addition, the old-growth forests of the Northwest contained many alders, hemlocks, and other species that were not valuable for lumber.
Pinchot wanted to cut down these "wasteful" forests and replace them with managed forests that would produce lumber quickly. The ideal forest would be composed only of high-value trees like Douglas firs. Once these trees reached maturity and their growth slowed, they would be cut down and replaced by a new managed forest. As long as one did not cut more wood than the forest was producing, this system would produce sustained yields of lumber forever.
Even after Pinchot left the Forest Service in , the idea of sustained-yield forestry remained enshrined as the agency's guiding principle. The notion of using the national forests to produce lots of lumber suited logging companies just fine. While the Forest Service and lumber companies worked on conservation measures to ensure sustained yields, other parties became interested in the preservation of the forests from any future development.
Unlike Pinchot and other conservationists, who believed in the practical use of natural resources, preservationists advocated the permanent protection of large tracts of public land, where logging, grazing, and dambuilding would be forbidden.
Through the creation of national parks, they hoped to preserve the nation's scenic landscapes. Their successful national park campaigns included the creation of Mount Rainier National Park in However, the park's boundaries excluded the adjacent lowland, forested areas, which preservationist John Muir thought were equally worthy of protection.
But again, this was only a partial victory for preservationists. Unlike national parks, where logging was essentially prohibited, national monuments were administered by the Forest Service, which often allowed some grazing and lumbering there.
Preservationists faced an uphill battle to protect forests because of their economic value. Preservationists and conservationists were not the only groups to respond to the rapid expansion of logging in the Northwest. The growth of the lumber industry and its labor force sparked the formation of unions that fought for better wages and working conditions for white workers. In the s the Knights of Labor, a national labor organization, worked to expel the Chinese from the West Coast lumber industry.
The Knights were motivated by racial prejudice and a fear that the employment of Chinese loggers, who worked for low wages, precluded improved working conditions for whites.
In the Knights also launched a campaign to reduce the workday from twelve to ten hours. Strikers disrupted operations at several mills, and many mill owners adopted the ten-hour workday.
The ten-hour workday, however, did not address the high accident and fatality rates for those who worked in the lumber industry. Pacific Coast Logging, , documented the incredibly dangerous nature of the work. Prouty found that during the early 20th century, 1 in loggers in Washington died every year.
This fatality rate meant that one-third of all year-old loggers would not live to become year-old loggers. In addition, every year almost one in five loggers and one in eight millworkers suffered some sort of injury on the job. Some injured workers sued their employers for damages, and juries sometimes gave them generous awards.
In most states, appellate courts limited employers' liability and routinely overturned verdicts in favor of wounded workers. However, Washington voters had elected several liberal governors who appointed pro-labor judges to the Washington State Supreme Court.
This court often sided with injured workers, leading Washington lumber executives to complain that they had become easy targets for lawsuits.
To protect themselves from liability, most industry leaders decided to support a compulsory workers' compensation program. In a committee of timber executives and representatives from the Washington State Federation of Labor drafted a bill to create the nation's first compulsory workers' compensation law, and the state legislature subsequently approved it. The law affected only certain industries with high accident rates, such as logging and manufacturing.
It allowed injured workers to be reimbursed for most of their medical costs and lost wages. Employers paid half of the costs of the act, and employees paid a small payroll tax to cover the other half of the costs. By eliminating lawsuits, both employers and workers avoided attorneys' fees. Some unions eschewed the incremental approach to reform represented by the workmen's compensation program and instead sought fundamental change.
A forest is a living community of organisms that naturally experiences constant change. Over time, forests experience many disturbances including fire, insects, disease, drought, wind throw, floods and timber harvesting , yet trees continue to grow back naturally. In the forest, nothing is ever static.
This is particularly true in the boreal forest, which is ecologically adapted to renew itself through disturbances such as fire. Read more about natural disturbances. Although many forests are in remote areas, inaccessible to people, human activities such as harvesting do affect other forests.
However, modern methods of harvesting trees are often intended to mimic natural disturbances and harvested areas are regrown. See how harvesting is done in boreal forests. You will not receive a reply. For enquiries, contact us. Myth: Deforestation in Canada is increasing. Myth: Logging causes deforestation. Fact: Harvesting trees does not cause deforestation. Fact: Canada is a world leader in sustainable forest management. Myth: Industrial activity, such as the development of the oil sands, has made Canada the new global leader in deforestation.
Fact: Canada has reduced deforestation over the past 20 years. Myth: Canada must preserve our forests untouched or intact to keep them healthy. By the turn of the 21st century, forestry activities had expanded further still, including caring for trees in urban settings.
Slightly more than half of this area is classified as commercial forest capable of producing merchantable trees in a reasonable length of time, and has not been reserved for other uses such as parks. Most Canadian forest land is owned and administered by either the provincial or federal government and is thus referred to as Crown forest.
The British North America Act of assigned jurisdiction for forests to the provincial governments regardless of when each joined Confederation. There were a few exceptions to this rule, however. Until , the federal government retained authority over the forests of Manitoba , Saskatchewan and Alberta and the 64 km-wide railway belt along the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia.
Today, provincial and territorial governments are responsible for about 90 per cent of the non-reserved commercial forest land, the federal government controls roughly 2 per cent this includes First Nations reserves, military bases and national parks , and private owners oversee the remaining 8 per cent.
In some instances, provincial governments — and sometimes the federal government — have supported forestry on private lands through a variety of instruments including tax incentives and regulatory policies.
Finally, nearly every province and territory has a forestry agency, usually a branch or service located within a ministry charged with responsibility for natural resources. The fact that governments have had jurisdiction over nearly all the commercial timberlands in Canada has had a profound influence on the manner in which forestry has been practised.
From the outset, foresters called for the woods to be managed prudently. A problem arose, however, due to a marked lack of political will to support the latter activity. In the eyes of elected officials, whose terms lasted a mere four years, there was little point in spending precious public resources on reforestation when the returns on investment would not be seen until decades after they had left office. In this regard, the politicians were simply reflecting the wishes of most Canadians, who, for the longest time, did not insist that their governments be good stewards of their woodlands.
The forestry profession was born and developed in Europe during the first part of the 19th century. It owed its genesis to a widespread realization that short-sighted harvesting practices had deforested major parts of the continent and created a string of environmental issues. In this context, forestry ranked alongside other professions — such as medicine and dentistry — in terms of social stature.
When forestry arrived in Canada around the turn of the 20th century, it was transplanted into a very different social setting than the one in Europe. By this time, Canadians had come to value certain professions, such as engineering, for their relatively immediate and practical contributions to society. Engineers enjoyed a privileged status, and efforts were made to train more in the field.
The situation was the opposite for forestry. There had been calls for the woodlands in Canada to be managed in a more effective manner, but there was hardly widespread political or public support for full-fledged forest management. People struggled with the concept of spending money in the present in order to realize long-term gains. This meant that the handful of foresters who began practising their profession in Canada in the early s lacked the social legitimacy that their brethren in Europe enjoyed.
This disparity lingered for decades. Despite these challenges, Canadian forestry had its beginnings in the early 20th century. It consisted of lumber makers they turned relatively large-diameter trees into building materials and pulp and paper producers they transformed generally small-diameter trees into things such as newsprint and book paper , located across the country.
They leased their woodlands from provincial governments.
0コメント