Find out in a special series on the state's forests, The Forest for the Trees, originally published in a series of installments from September through December 1996. Five miles up the road, past old farmhouses and weathered school bus stop shelters, sits West Virginia's newest timber giant. Logging effects on the environment An explanatory graphic. The surrounding landscape was a mess of crooked maple trees and stunted yellow poplars. Worries increase over timbering in Appalachians West Virginia isn't alone in facing an onslaught of chip board plants and pulp mills that could gobble up valuable hardwood forests.
Most surrounding states are already home to or are targeted for similar operations.
State's history reveals bitter clear-cutting legacy NONE other than George Washington provided an early description of the untamed forests that greeted the first explorers and settlers of West Virginia. State's logging industry goes unchecked West Virginia loggers are cutting twice as many trees as they did just seven years ago. A logging law West Virginia many say is too weak was actually pushed through by outgoing House Speaker Chuck Chambers, one of the Legislature's staunchest environmentalists. W est Virginians cut down a lot of trees. But they don't turn those trees into as many jobs as they could.