The Pocahontas Times features an encouraging article this week: "West Virginia Forests Growing." Here are some highlights quoted from the article, which will disappear into their archive next week. The article is a summary of the National Forest Service's report, "The Mountain State's Forests: Trends In the Resource." The Times' link to the pdf version of the report doesn't work, but I tracked it down. You can download it here.
...The most recent report, complied by the U.S. Forest Service and West Virginia Division of Forestry, shows a significant increase in forested lands since the post-World War II timber boom and a corresponding increase in the volume of timber in the state's forests.
Today, forests cover 12 million acres of West Virginia. That's up from 9.9 million acres at the end of the 1940s.
The increase occurred due to more fields and pasture lands growing up at a rate that outpaced road building, mining and development for other nonforest uses across the state, according to the report.
A slight decrease in forest lands--about 100,000 acres--occurred between 1989 and 2000, may indicate that the area of forest land has peaked, notes the report. However, with 78 percent of its area in forest, West Virginia remains the third most heavily forested state in the nation....
Pocahontas County, which contains much of the Monongahela National Forest, as well as Seneca and Cal Price State Forests, is between 80 and 89 percent forested....
West Virginia's forests are becoming older and bigger. Stands of trees suitable for sawlogs have increased in acreage since the last forest inventory of the state....
During the last 50 years in West Virginia, the growth of trees has outpaced removals. Between 1989 and 2000, the net growth of trees averaged 430 million cubic feet, while removals averaged 248 million cubic feet, the report states. Those numbers translate to a net increase of 182 million cubic feet of wood on West Virginia's timberlands....
Hardwoods make up 94 percent of the total volume of forests in the state. West Virginia ranks second in the nation in hardwood sawlog volume--only Pennsylvania has more.
The 2000 inventory found that West Virginia's forests contain a rich mix of more than 100 different tree species. Just 15 of these species account for 84 percent of the total volume. Yellow poplar leads in volume, followed by white oak, red maple, chestnut oak and northern red oak.
Between 1989 and 2000, red maples and sugar maples saw the biggest gains of any tree species, at 27 percent.
However, oaks, which make up about half of the valuable hardwood timber logged in the state, have declined in the last 50 years, according to the report.
Some of that decline is attributed to the invasive gypsy moth caterpillar and over-browsing by deer. Selective harvesting of oak over other species is also a factor, according to the report....
Evaluations of forest conditions show that the health of West Virginia's forests is good despite concerns related to introduced forest insects and diseases such as the gypsy moth and beech bark disease, the report states....
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