Legitimate Logging Methods

When legitimate logging methods are practiced, the slash is piled in heaps to dry during Summer, and burned when the wet season begins. By this method, we dispose of much material infested with fungus diseases and insect pests instead of harbouring and protecting them amongst dead wood throughout the deforested areas, and large areas of the forest floor, with its carpet of humus, seeds, and seedlings, are left undisturbed, and in two or three years the second growth becomes well established. When the slash is left on the ground is constitutes a very dangerous fire menace and is the prime factor in most of our dreaded forest fires. By these fires, the forest floor is burned, the humus, seeds, seedlings and other young growth destroyed, leaving the soil exposed to rain, sun and frost, with nothing to protect the surface and keep the soil from washing out. Forest fires frequently take place several years after the area has been logged; if a certain amount of second growth does succeed in pushing its way up through the debris, all this is destroyed, and the longer the fire is postponed, the greater is the damage. It often takes many years to reforest burned areas; similar areas in many parts of the world have never been recovered, and in some instances it required drastic efforts and the expenditure of much time and money to artificially reforest burned out lands.