03/20/2025
Robert Heilman
LANDSLIDES AND CLEARCUTTING: DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL
Robert Leo Heilman
Along about the end of tree planting season, we used to do a few test plots in special fenced-off areas. Inside a ten-foot-tall enclosure, we'd plant rows of seedling trees, each one carefully numbered, each block of trees planted by one tree planter. The trees were part of a "super-tree" program. Each one had a pedigree longer than my own.
It was a joint government and corporate effort. God only knows how much money has been spent over the past forty years on this program to develop genetically superior trees which will grow faster and be more resistant to disease and drought than average trees.
Now, during these same four decades, landslide research has advanced to the point where scientists and foresters can confidently throw up their hands and shrug and say, "Well, maybe, but, then again, maybe not."
How much money we spend and on what is a reliable clue as to our priorities. We spend piles of money on questions we want answers to and next to nothing on questions we either don't care about, or don't want to know the answers to.
Super trees, herbicides, rodent control, chemical fertilizers, and logging technology are, and always have been, heavily funded. Each of these are areas of study which promise to make fast bucks come a little faster, and perhaps a little more plentifully as well.
When it comes to why big chunks of mountains slough off and come down in a roaring watery hell and whether or not modern forestry practices have anything to do with it, none of the experts seems to know. Over and over again, we have heard that "There's just not much hard data out there on the relationship between clearcutting and landslides. We haven't studied it much."
Yet, loggers, tree planters, farmers, and fishermen have been saying all along that clearcutting often causes landslides. Relying on common sense and personal observation, those who work the land instead of reading books about it long ago concluded that bare ground washes away faster than soil with mature trees growing on it and that the steeper the ground is, the more likely it is to slip.
Why is it that the experts have done so little to see whether or not the prevailing folk wisdom is correct?
My guess would be that it is because the answer could have one of two economic consequences:
A. If it doesn't, then everything stays the same and it doesn't lead to increased or decreased profits.
B. If it is proven to be destructive, then to deal with the problem results in lower profits and to further questions about whether other standard (and profitable) practices are safe and sound.
All-in-all the corporations, government agencies and schools of forestry have failed to address this question. It's not that it's only recently become important, because it's been a big question for decades. It's just that it's been a tough question that nearly everyone has avoided.
One of the Oregon Department of Forestry's major justifications for approving the clearcut above Stump Akers is that they didn't then have, and to this day still don't have, enough evidence to say that logging incredibly steep ground definitely increases the risk of landslides.
"We can't say for sure that it's destructive, therefore we keep approving it," strikes me as both a disingenuous reply and an imprudent policy. After all, it stands to reason that if you don't have enough information to say, "No, you can't log here," then you also don't have enough information to say, "Yes, go ahead and log it," especially when saying, "Yes," carries the uncertain possibility of adding harm while saying, "No," eliminates that possibility.
When I was little, my dad told me that in Russia human life was cheap. When I asked him how much, he replied, "Over there they don't think any more about killing somebody than they do about killing a chicken." 1 person = 1 chicken seemed very cheap since I knew that my grandfather paid two chickens to the doctor for delivering my dad. Nowadays, I find myself wondering how many board feet of timber equals a human life here in Oregon.
