CHIP MILLS: GROUP STUDIES EFFECT ON MISSOURI FORESTS

As Dave Bedan sees it, Missouri's chip mills could ravage forests in southern Missouri.

Bedan serves on Gov. Mel Carnahan's advisory committee that is studying the overall effects of such mills on the state's forests.

The committee is scheduled to issue a report to the governor in December.

Bedan wants the state to adopt some forestry practice standards and require loggers to be licensed and trained.

"The real issue is what happens out in the forest," Bedan told about 100 birders Saturday night at a state meeting of the Audubon Society of Missouri.

Chip mills, he said, encourage "cut and run kind of forestry like we had 100 years ago."

But Steve Galliher, a forester and procurement manager for Willamette Industries' chip mill at Mill Spring, said the business turns low-value trees and sawmill waste into wood chips.

"The type of logs we get in are beat up oak trees," he said. Many times the trees have rotted in the middle. They can't be sawed into logs for other uses, Galliher said.

Southeast Missouri also is home to Canal Industries' chip mill at the Southeast Missouri Regional Port on the Mississippi River near Scott City.

Both Galliher and Bedan debated the logging issue during a panel discussion held at the Show Me Center. Also on the panel was Clint Trammel, a forester with Pioneer Forest in Salem.

The event was part of the three-day state meeting of the Audubon Society, which ended Sunday. It was hosted by the Four Season Audubon Society.

Bird-watching field trips were held throughout the weekend.

The issue of chip mills sparked debate among the panelists.

Bedan said chip mills rely on loggers who indiscriminately cut trees on private land.

"What we really are going to be seeing are large, unmanaged clear cuts," he said.

But Galliher said much of Missouri's timber is in areas that have been clear cut for years.

Trammel said trees can be harvested without clear cutting. He said the practice of cutting individual trees has been practiced at Pioneer Forest for decades.

Trammel, who has been a forester for 30 years, said Pioneer Forest makes sure that the loggers don't damage neighboring trees when cutting and removing a tree.

Pioneer Forest has had good success in harvesting timber, Trammel said. "One logging company has been on our land for five generations," he said.

Pioneer Forest currently manages 154,000 acres for timber harvest. Another 6,000 acres are being preserved as natural areas.

"After we walk away from a harvest, we still have a forest standing out there," said Trammel.

But that isn't the case with timber harvests on much of Missouri's private land, he said.

Clear cutting, he said, has destroyed forests. It could take 200 to 300 years for such forests to grow back, Trammel said.

Many landowners, he said, don't care how the trees are cut down.

"Missouri, in general terms, is still a frontier state," he said. Landowners don't want to be told how to manage timber on their properties.

But Trammel suggested that if landowners don't take responsibility, the government will.