Ken,
I'm not understanding the geography of your area.
Here, in northern California, the forested areas are
up on the Sierra, while the valley floor was
grassland. In between is manzanita bushes, high deer
concentration.
The sugar pine forest of the eastern Sierra around
Chico was completely clearcut between 1873 and about
1901. In 1877 a 40-mile long flume was built down the
mountain, connecting the sawmills around the sugarpine
forests with Chico, which became the lumbering center
of northern California. The flume caused an economic
boom that year--1877-- and caused the population of
Chico to swell to about 7,000, but the flume
fundamentally changed the lumber industry such that an
oversupply depressed prices, and there was a boom/bust
cycle every few years. Chico population dropped down
to about 3,000 until well into the 20th century.
(It's beside the point, but the flume company brought
Chinese workers to work the sash and door factory
associated with their flume, and the local white
population took umbrage, eventually forming a secret
society that was dedicated to murdering them outright.
The Chico mass murders of 1877 so revolted eastern
society that anti-Chinese sentiment in Congress was
off-set for a while, and the anti-immigration mesures
were probably set a decade or two back.)
The forested areas east of town eventually were bought
by the Diamond Match company, which still maintains a
large tree farm in the area.
I have a different take on the fire situation. Maybe
the canyons are steeper here, but creeks have never
served as a firebreak, fire just jumps right over
them. During the Depression a roadway called
"Ponderosa Way" was cut just about right at the area
where the manzanita land meets the forests-- the
purpose of the road was to serve as a firebreak. This
road stretches from Sacramento all the way to Mount
Shasta--maybe 200 miles. It's not that the fire would
run up the hill and just stop at the road, but rather
that the road allowed access for CCC fire crews, which
could back burn so that the fire couldn't move further
up into the forest. I assume that this was a taxpayer
financed protection of corporate-owned tree farms up
the ridge.
Incidentally, I've found quite a few accounts from the
1860s when the Yahi and Yana--really the only two
Indian nations resisting white encroachment-- set fire
to the grasslands and manzanita lands of the lower
foothills, with the expressed purpose of destroying
cattle grazing opportunities for the whites. But those
fires never caused any real damage to the forest
further up.
In short, there's far less forest around these parts
than before colonization, or rather "settlement," as
it's called here. As far as I can determine, there
isn't any single tree at all in this area that's more
than 130 years old, with two exceptions: a stand in
the town limits of Paradise, which sits along a
stretch of the Feather River that was too steep to log
until helicopters were introduced last year (up until
then I had seen logging trucks carrying thirty or
forty logs; last year for the first time I saw I truck
carrying a single thirty-foot diameter tree). The
second exception was up in Deer Creek Canyon, in a
roadless area of the national forest; thanks to the
Clinton "salvage-logging" rider, however, that is now
gone.
I don't know if this speaks to your observation.
tim
--- Ken Hanly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My understanding is though that in Western Canada
> settlement had the result
> of increasing not decreasing forested areas in many
> areas. Many wooded areas
> were burned in periodic grassfires on the plainsm
> and before settlement only
> natural barries such as streams stopped the fires.
> With settlement there
> were section roads that acted as firebreaks and this
> meant that many
> woodlots grew up in areas that previously did not
> support forests. Actually
> around here marginal grain land is being returned to
> pasture and woodlot.
> Louis will be glad to know that even the buffalo is
> making a comeback. Just
> five miles down the road the buffalo roam on a
> couple of sections. Of course
> an electric fence confines their movements and they
> are destined to be
> buffaloburgers. Maybe not what Louis had in mind.
> Treed areas coexist with
> the pasture in the buffalo compound.
> Also, deforestation may eventually result in
> reforestation. Forest fires
> clear very large areas just as much as clear
> cutting. The forests eventually
> regenerate through a progressive series of plant and
> tree species. Traveling
> through a newly burned out area is just as much or
> more a scene of
> devastation as seeing a clear cut area but over time
> shrubs appear certain
> species such as birch and as in time the original
> type of cover..
>
>
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
> Mark Jones wrote:
> . A similar process of
> the pioneer hacking out a life for himself and
> family in the forest occurred
> in Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
> In Aus-tralia, for
> example, nearly 400,000 sq km of the southeastern
> forests and sparse
> woodland were cleared by the early twentieth
> century.
>
=====
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