Emphasis Preaching Journal

Since 1997, the U.S. Forest Service has been busy trying to remove 3,500 miles of logging roads in an area of 383,000 square miles of forest in the Northwest. Some square mile areas of forest are laced with as many as 60 miles of such roads. A 50,000-pound excavator with huge treads and a 50-foot arm with a huge bucket does the "obliteration" or "decommissioning" of roads. Swinging from side to side, the track hoe knocks down all the trees on a roadbed. Then it reshapes and contours the roadbed, which is then seeded and planted with shrubs for new vegetation.