good wood

Ohio’s modern day lumberjacks fight for sustainability amidst a forest of misconception.

Like his father before him, Steve Pugh is a logger. Over the span of his 20-year career as owner of Pugh Logging, he has felled thousands of trees on scores of properties, a record capable of making any environmentalist cringe. For many, logging conjures up snap-shots of old growth forests destroyed by invading armies of chainsaws, of clear-cut swaths of land festering like wounds on a mountainside. Steve Pugh is one of many seeking to make it anything but. He is not alone. As popular opinion has turned against logging in recent years, many loggers have shied away from clear cutting, attempting to bal-ance sustainability with their liveli-

hoods. Work is plentiful. Widespread education about the damage of clear-cutting has caused many landowners to request that their land be selectively cut. The Ohio Forestry Association es-timates that the percentage of forested land in Ohio has increased to 33 percent since hitting bottom at 12 percent in 1940, attributing the rise to forest edu-cation and conservation movements. Pugh confirms this. “We cut to the way the land owner prefers it to be cut, but I think most peo-ple prefer select cut. I’ll clear cut if they want it clear cut but...” he trails off. “I’m not really sure about it.” The differences are great. A clear cut

story and photos by becca quint

Steve Pugh, owner of Pugh Logging, steps back as he fells a tree. Falling trees often send dead branches flying, lending to logging’s continued reputation as one of the world’s most dangerous occupations.

Above, Justin Richards attaches a log to a cable for removal by skidder. On the cover, Steve and Brad Pugh head to the log yard to cut logs into smaller sections for transport.

good wood

takes out all the wood in a forest, sending the larger trees to the sawmill to be turned into lum-ber. The smaller trees become firewood and bark chips. In the worst cases, they are left to rot. The result is most often a torn up mess. In comparison, a select cutter acts as a sort of forest manager. The select cutter takes only large trees, 18 inches at the stump and up. Pugh often cuts down dead or sick trees, leaving them to de-compose naturally if they are too bad to take. “A lot of times you’ll find maybe some tree is just not healthy and they’re dying out,” said Pugh. “Once in a while we’ll go in and there’s a patch of white oak that’s still got a long way to grow but for some reason a blight’s hit it and it’s just starting to die out or get unhealthy. We’ll go in and cut some of that out also.” That’s the closest it gets to a clear cut. Select cutting a forest is not unlike pruning a very large bush. Cutting down the large and the bad opens up the forest, affording more light and more nutrients to the smaller trees, and ultimately encouraging growth. Downed treetops form habi-tats for small animals. Mushrooms bloom out of old stumps. The forest thrives and grows again, a natural rise in the cycle of nature. It will be ready for another harvest in another 20 years, far sooner than the 70 to 100 years it takes a clear cut area to regenerate itself. It’s quite a complex process, really. Justin Rich-ards, Pugh’s assistant cutter, explained. “When Steve’s cutting trees he’s pretty precise about where he’s going to drop a tree. He doesn’t want to hit another tree and take the integrity out of a smaller red oak or a white oak or a poplar that is potentially going to be some good lumber maybe 20 years down the road.” Pugh is not a certified forest management tech-nician, but he knows just as much, if not more. In the morning, trees are more likely to fall to the east. The black ridge that marks one of the tree rings is mineral deposits. He can identify every tree in the forest on demand. That big one over there? A red oak. The skinny stand of trees to the east? Maples. The tall, willowy one with nonde-script leave? Alder. When asked how he knows? “I don’t know. It just looks like one.” It is impressive to see him work, staring up at a tree, deducing which way it might fall, perhaps trying to nudge it to the left so that it doesn’t hurt

Right: Sawdust often gathers in Justin Richards’

beard as he tops trees.

Far right: Steve Pugh cuts into a log to free

Justin Richards’ saw. Too much pressure on the saw

can cause it to become “pinched”.

Above: Steve Pugh. Brad Pugh and Justin Richards prepare their chainsaws

for a day of work. The chainsaws are sharpened and oiled every morning.

Justin Richards prepares a log for transport to the log yard. After the fallen trees have been topped, the skidder uses cables to drag the logs to the log yard for further trimming.

”“ I think if people looked into it a little bit more, studied it, they would understand that

that young white oak over there. It will be good timber in another ten years. We could take that one, but we would have to tear up a lot of this to drag it out. Let’s just leave it. “It’s all about management,” he shrugs noncha-lantly. “If you go in there and you just start tearing up stuff, it’s not going to do the woods any good.” Slowly, Steve Pugh is one of the men changing the face of logging. Justin Richards is his witness. “Logging was something that I didn’t really want to do,” he admitted, explaining that he took the job because he needed the money. “I went into it, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t really think this is good on the environment.’ But as I started talking to Steve and he was educating me on why people do this. And it’s good to do it. Now that I look back on it, it is good.” “I think if people looked into it a little bit more, studied it, they would understand that it is, really it is a good thing.” Spoken like a true convert.

Mushrooms grow in a rotting stump. Dead wood sustains much of forest life.

really it is a good thing.

Steve Pugh uses a log claw to load firewood onto his truck for transportation. Pugh sells the low grade wood as firewood as a part of his

commitment to waste as little wood as possible.

The forest a few weeks after logging. Since the bigger trees have been cut, these smaller trees

now have the light and room to grow larger.