Dave: Just pull up the link below from the SnoCo. website and you'll be able to zoom in on a parcle number and use an aerial photo overlay to locate the clearing. I believe you can even look at the permit history for the parcel.


http://gis.co.snohomish.wa.us/maps/permits/index.htm


BD

BD: Thanks. I will be at Sky Guys house doing just that tonight. I am a bit computer challenged but Ryley is good at that stuff.

A guess float down just isn't the same? (;-)

Cool! ...we found a day to have our Banquet where Dave won't be off on some fantastic voyage picking pristine waters free of their finned inhabitants.

We'll have a big campaign here on PP for the Sno-King CCA Banquet in the coming month. I'm working on how how I can get Todd to write it up for us..

Many counties are not proactive, just reactive, so unless someone makes an offical complaint they won't do anything. I know some of the guys here in Pierce County and they say they won't do anything about violations they see unless they are called, otherwise they would get nothing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if no permit was taken out. With the costs of permits, studies, and such, and the low price of timber, I could imagine how a private land owner might think it wasn't worth the effort. That looks like a big enough project that they would know better.
You do not have to produce evidence where logs come from in Washington, at least you didn't a few years ago. In the past, I had lots of small land clearing done when I was building. When log prices were up we sold a few trees to cover the cost. Never bothered to get a permit, even though it probably was required and never got asked. The requrements are much stricter now and make it so it isn't even worth selling the timber.
One of the common tricks to stealing logs years ago was for the self loaders to drop one or two trees off from the top of a load on the way to the buyers. Then, when they got enough they would take a load in. I am pretty sure that they got me over the years as the only way to prevent this is to scale it yourself then make a call to the buyer and see what is delivered. Some guys I know would spray paint numbers on the butt end of every tree and then call to see how many where delivered. Unless you are willing to sit on the job all day or to pay for an independent scaler, there is no way I saw to be fully protected. My father had a logger steal every tree of a huge project when he first started. So yes, they do steal timber at times.

I am amazed at you guys hitting the high notes over a simple logging operation which isn't doing squat to any fish, yet you live in a pavement world where once there was a forest. Fly over the Seattle area and imagine what the rain that falls there tastes like by the time it gets to the fish. I can hardly believe a fish will leave the Ocean, even if it is their only chance at sex.

Rivers have been eroding mountains since before the invention of fiberglass rods, a little color in the water is a natural occurance, same for a few trees in the water from time to time. Pavement sealing the natural soil out of circulation permanently is a more legitimate concern.........but it feels better to point at someone else huh.

Oregonian , what are you talking about? No one says stop roads, construction, or city building. I'm saying why can't they leave a small buffer around the stream for shade and shelter, and not disturb the riverlife more than necessary. We're (I'm) not on a crusade to stop floods and runoff and natural events. You're trying to hijack this thread into your own scripted ramble...not working here.

Forest management has come a long way since noticable damage was done, but plenty of city dwellers who are completely ignorant of this still put on war paint at the sight of a fresh stump. Where did you think the lumber in your obscene mansion came from ?

Another [censored]-bit for you, generally the more productive timber ground is on the lower half of a slope, the more of this ground you take out of production causes an even greater amout of ground elsewhere to be harvested to reach the desired volume of product...at an even greater cost per unit. Back in the day they would have been dragging those logs right down the streambed with a bulldozer which would obviously effect the habitat value a little differently than what you would see IF you ventured into the woods today.


Tidbit was "censored" with a dash in the middle...............I feel very safe being protected like that. Sheesh.

Dave and Ryley,

I have parcel numbers and names of what I believe is the correct parcel....can you say Nordstrom? I'll call you in a little bit at Ryley's house.

Ike

There are plenty of trees out there that you don't need to take the ones next to the bank. Who cares if the loss of buffer trees are made up in another unit, as long as it doesn't impact the fishery. I went to one of my favorite streams (salmon and steelhead) last fall to find about 4 fallers tearing down a unit and leaving a buffer of 3 sparsely spaced trees from the bank to the clearcut boundary. This stretch has no protection any longer and now sees the southern sky all day long. Anyone could tell that this will negatively impact those runs. Just because the logging practices of today are far better than in the past doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. Oh, and I'm not your average city dweller (bet my town is smaller than your town ;-), spent plenty of time in the riggin myself. If this is legal currently, it should change, I don't care how hard it makes your job.

The main reason "forest management has come a long way" is that the public demanded it. If left to their own devices, many timber companies would still be using the creek beds as skid roads, as they did not all that long ago when I worked in the woods. And no, I'm not one of those "city dwellers" you talk about.

If there aren't any trees in the buffer strip it's because there weren't any trees growing there at the time of the sale, the buffer strip is a set amount of space to not be logged, nothing else..............rest assured there will be a diversified stand of trees planted in that buffer within a year of logging... some people would call it habitat enhancement, others stick their head in the sand.

Evidently you have stuck yours somewhere else.

I'm just saying that the logging operation in the picture looks normal to me, and I highly doubt that a job of that size would be started without every "I" dotted and every "T" crossed on the legal paperwork, same for following the legal setbacks and rules on the ground...

Org,

You're kind of not making sense. Are you in the middle of a stroke maybe? Anaphylactic shock? I'm not saying they logged the buffer, I'm saying the buffer left was about 30-50'. I don't want to wait thirty to forty years for the next "diversified" stand of timber, the fish can't wait. Habitat enhancement=logging 30 feet away from a stream??..., more beaureaucratic "new-speak". Dude, you're beginning to act like a troll again.

The thing is, there are many miles of river and if a couple hundred feet does loose it's buffer ( to man or nature) for a few years, it won't have catastophic results....................but taking away miles of it at one time would probably have an more noticable effect. Current logging practices are the least of the concerns of a healthy fish run, probably behind fishermen and their dam jet sleds.

Oregonian do you also post by the avatar of "Timber" he also loves logging.

Stayed out of this as long as I could stand. But Oregonian, you make about as much sense my dog eating the cats sh-t.

The buffer on any fish bearing stream is supposed to be 200 ft. The problem with that is it is just that....200ft. It should be 200 ft of conifers.

One small parcell is not going to make a difference, but a dozen or more small parcells on any stream will make a difference.

Logging practices are much better than they were 10 or 20 years ago, but they still have a long way to go. The same laws that apply on public land need to apply on private land.

By the way, I worked as a logger, trapper for the forest service, and even own a fair amount of timber land today.

Hello from Hotlanta where instead of being hot, it's 27 degrees.

The logging in that location is definately going to immediately have noticable effects on the river during the first average "big" rain event we will get, probably sooner than later. I'm not talking about a flooding type of rain, just a little above a daily average type of rain. The problem is once this type of stuff is done, it takes an incredibly long time to recover from the negative effects. It's much easier to actually prevent the damage initially from occuring before it happens than to attempt to fix the damage that will be created from this project. The fish that need this river don't have the luxury to wait until we fix damage created by such logging. They need us to protect what the have now, and continue to fix problems from the past.

We don't need less spawing habitat created by a constantly eroding river bank. Natural erosion is fine, this looks as if it will completely change a section of river drastically, quickly, and the change will do nothing but deplete good habitat. Nobody here is saying don't log. Log responsibly. Are the logging practices better? Yes. Could they be even more better? Yes. Are there some logging practices done under the radar and/or without regard to rivers and fish? Yes. Often, to keep things the same, or make them better, you have to take some initiative to prevent a lack of proper judgement from someone, or group, from destroying what is left of good habitat.

Sometimes the shock of seeing a huge change along side of one of your favorite rivers will cause you to jump to conclusions or get mad and frustrated, just from the shock of what you've seen. Being diligent to find out if what is going on is a good practice, a legal practice, and a wise practice is just good stewardship and shows concern for the resource. Nothing ever got better by doing nothing, inquiring about nothing, and caring about nothing. We are ot talking about Nazi enviromentalism here, we are just conerned for a river that has some tremendous fish inhabiting it, and would like to see that river and fishery get improved, not ruined.

Oregonian,

WA forest practices are pretty strict . . . compared to what they were before 1988, or before 1973 when they were non-existent. The problem is that even today's restrictions really aren't sufficient to protect salmonid habitat. Yes, it's protected better than before, but it's not protected at a level that would allow the habitat to maximize its productivity.

As far as buffers, we have streamside buffers galore. One problem with those is that not all buffers are "no entry" buffers. Depending on the site and the stream classification, a percentage of the merchantable trees can be removed from the buffer. In WA, buffers ain't sacred.

And as bad as sport fishermen and their jet sleds are, they don't hold a candle to the detrimental impacts caused by logging and logging roads. Where logging comes out ahead, is that logging has lesser impacts than land use conversions from forestry to urban development, as you suggested. But that's not really something I'd be bragging about.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.

Like I said before, when you take acres out of production, you put other acres into production...and you add other costs to the environment in the trade. The more ares that are buffered, the more roads you end up with to get the same volume of timber (taking away a small percentage of each job creates an additional small percentage of jobs to the area)...