Clear-cutting looks bad. No doubt about that. But chip mills didn't invent clear-cutting. Blaming sloppy timber harvesting on chip mills is like blaming divorce on marriage. Chip mills simply turn logs into wood chips.

Whatever the management benefits (and there are several), clear-cutting is the least attractive way to harvest timber. Clear-cutting removes all or most of the trees in a stand in one operation. All merchantable trees are taken off; smaller trees typically are felled or deadened. The practice leaves the land virtually denuded with limbs, tops and sprouts piled into long windrows.

Clear-cutting can be a useful management tool when an entire stand is old and needs to be regenerated or when a manager wants to convert the woodlot to an even-aged stand or a different tree species.

But pretty it is not.

In recent years, clear-cutting has generated a great deal of controversy, especially with timber harvested to supply chip mills. While 50 or so saw mills around the state produce wood chips, targets of the uproar have been big, specialized mills that turn logs into chips. The chips are freighted to pulp and paper plants in other states.

For example, Mill Spring Chips, Inc., in Wayne County, Mo., produces more than 200,000 tons of hardwood chips each year, which are sent by rail to a paper manufacturing plant in Kentucky.

Supporters of these mills see them as a forest management tool because chip mills use low-quality wood that otherwise doesn't have much of a market. Opponents maintain that chip mills degrade water quality and will lead to irreparable damage to the state's forests through widespread clear-cutting.

Because chip mills can use timber that saw mills generally do not use, harvesters for these mills take small, rough or partially rotten trees along with better timber. Some harvesters use track-mounted "feller-bunchers" to shear off the tree, lop off limbs and load the tree trunk onto a truck-all in one operation. The result can be less-than-responsible harvesting practices: denuded hillsides, skid trails and haul roads with no "water bars" to prevent erosion, and slash (treetops and limbs) piled into fire-prone swaths.

Early in 1998, the late Gov. Mel Carnahan appointed an advisory committee on chip mills to study the potential social, environmental and economic effects of these mills. The committee was co-chaired by the department directors of Natural Resources and Conservation.

Last July, the committee made its report and recommended several courses of action. The committee outlined several best-management practices for timber harvesting but had few recommendations to make about chip mills, per se. They did recommend that the General Assembly fund two more years of study on chip mills and timber harvesting practices. However, the Missouri Clean Water Commission placed a moratorium on storm-water permits for new chip mills until April 20, 2002.

"DNR doesn't have specific regulations on silviculture or timber harvesting practices," said Dan Schuette, deputy director of DNR's division of environmental quality. "However, we are charged by the Missouri Clean Water Commission to address water pollution from whatever source."

Still, blaming sloppy timber harvesting on chip mills themselves is a bit like blaming divorce on marriage. The mills simply turn logs into wood chips. For that matter, conventional saw mills produce thousands of tons of wood chips each year from waste wood generated by other operations.

For example, Ozark Wood Products, at Goodman, Mo., saws top-grade logs into construction lumber, furniture making and hardwood flooring. Logs of lower quality are turned into wood pallets. Side slabs and otherwise unusable wood is turned into chips, which are sold to a paper mill in Arkansas.

All parties involved in forestland operations Ð landowners, loggers and end-users Ð are responsible for water quality and the long-term sustainability of forest resources.

Some people seem to think a tree should never be cut, but timber managed with best practices is a renewable resource Ð one that is needed as long as people need lumber, particleboard, paper, charcoal and the other wood-based products necessary to modern life.

But the aftermath of getting trees out of the woods doesn't always look good.