Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 31, 1992 TAG: 9203310113
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JUDY SCHWAB CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He seems to know each tree, stump and stick and its life history.
Wade is concerned with leaving the woods in good order when his logging company - S&W Logging - has finished its job. He's been in business for himself for almost three years. He did his first S&W logging jobs alone.
His first job - that 18 acres on a Giles County hillside - shows more damage from the 1989 hurricane named Hugo than from his logging. The first impression of this area is that it is still woods, not the remains of a former forest.
"After you're through, it just looks a whole lot better and the landowners are pleased with the job," Wade said of his efforts to preserve the environment.
The owner of that land, Bob Robinette, said he was happy with the results. Robinette said he told Wade he didn't want the land clear cut. "He told me exactly what he was going to do - and he did it," Robinette said.
The road Wade needed to carve into the area is barely visible. Thanks to the water bars, raised earth placed across the roadbed at a right angle to the road - sort of environmental speed bumps - rainfall didn't turn the temporary road into a major erosion problem.
The trees Wade left standing are spaced nicely through the area and serve as seed trees. They include trees too small to cut. He made a contract with the landowner to cut nothing smaller than 16 inches in diameter. The only logging law in Virginia - the seed tree law - requires eight seed trees per acre to be left or planted after logging.
The hickory trees weren't cut at all.
"A lot of times the landowner wants something left for the squirrels," Wade said.
Sprinkled throughout this landscape are uprooted trees. "Hugo came in after I was through," Wade said.
Walking the hillside, Wade points out stumps he cut deliberately close to the ground. That way sprouts will root in surrounding soil instead of the decaying stump and will turn into firmly anchored trees.
The level area at the bottom of the hill where logs were cut and loaded onto a truck - the log landing - was seeded with grass, as were all the roadbeds and skid roads - trails along which logs were dragged to the landing.
Wade learned the logging business in several ways. He grew up in Fairfax, a city not known for its forests. After a few part-time jobs in high school, he was convinced he wanted to make his living in the great outdoors. Forestry seemed a logical choice and he enrolled at Virginia Tech in 1975.
Every time he ran out of money for school, he went out and got a job in the wood industry. After seven years and multiple adventures in the business, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in forestry.
Now, at 34, he spends his time wading through briars and mud, supervising equipment maintenance and working with his logging crew. His job requires coveralls, a four-wheel-drive truck and a briefcase.
Although some of his methods include techniques that sound as if they come directly from the classroom - using topographic maps to plan roads, landing areas and stream preservation - Wade said he's learned more about his work in the field than from school.
"Randy is typical of the new breed of logger in Virginia. We're a far cry from the days when anybody could get a chain saw and truck and go out and cut some wood," said Bob Shaffer, associate professor of forestry at Virginia Tech and one of Wade's teachers.
Wade begins a logging job by selecting a site that needs logging. Then he finds the owner of the land through county records. If the landowner agrees to the job, they negotiate a price.
At another site in Giles County, Wade's crew is cutting trees, sawing limbs off and hauling logs to the landing, where they're cut into lengths and stacked on a truck to be hauled to Wade's log yard. There they will be sorted by grade and species.
Access to the site is through a short stretch of road owned by neighbors whose land is not being logged. An agreement Wade signed says he will repair any damage to the road caused by his trucks and equipment. He plans to put gravel on the road even though it needs no repair now and he anticipates it will need none.
The road he cut through the woods followed the remains of a logging road left from work done 50 years ago. Additional roads were placed along the contours of the hillsides, as prescribed in the Virginia Department of Forestry's Loggers Guide.
Streams were crossed at right angles to prevent erosion, and culverts were laid to let the water flow under roads he had to build to get the logs out.
One stream supplies drinking water for a house at the end of the lane - "we don't want to mess that up," Wade said, examining the stream bed for signs of silting.
When the job is finished, the entire road will be graded with water bars and seeded with grass. Any brush - or "laps" - that ended up in the stream will be pulled out.
J.C. Clark, area forester for the Virginia Department of Forestry, said Wade does "a better than average job of protecting the environment." But he's not alone - about 80 percent of local loggers follow adequate practices, Clark said. Very few did anything extra to protect the environment 10 years ago, Clark added.
The federal government has stringent guidelines on how to log and how to leave the land, Wade said, and you're penalized if you disregard those guidelines. Still, there are people in Giles County who are against logging on federal land - in this case, the Jefferson National Forest.
"I've met people who were against harvesting timber and they lived in a log house," Wade said. "If you like wood furniture and wood in your houses - that's where it comes from," he said, nodding toward the wooded hills.
"Less than 1 percent of Virginia's forest is harvested each year," Shaffer said. And the hardwood forests of Western Virginia grow four times the harvested amount each year. "It's a healthy resource and it's in the best shape it's been in 100 years," Shaffer said.
by CNB