PISTOL RIVER, Ore. A family-owned logging company is using techniques from yesteryear to deal with environmental realities of today.
Equine Energy, a Jacksonville company that consists of Elwin Wines and his son and daughter, uses five horses to heave the truckload of timber they cut every day. But they leave more behind than they cut.
''It's logging the modern way,'' says Elwin Wines, adding that the ecological impact, or lack thereof, is the reason behind almost all of the company's jobs.
''Horses are chosen not so much for what they do as what they don't do,'' explains Wines.
''They don't tear up the ground, they don't make a bunch of racket, and they don't spill fuel on the ground.''
Adds 27-year-old Stan Wines: ''We're not required to have nearly the fire equipment that machine loggers do, either. Horses don't start fires or give off sparks.''
The horses are able to maneuver through thick timber stands that would be impossible to log by machine, Wines says.
Maureen Walker, manager of a private timber sale the Wines recently cut, said she had the environment in mind when she made the sale.
''We didn't want to just cream the timber and make a lot of money,'' she said.
Darrell Bonde of South Coast Lumber Co. in Brookings agrees that Walker did not get a high price for her timber.
She received only $625 per thousand board feet.
''The market is just plain freaky,'' he says. ''In February, $725 per thousand was a good price, but it's eroded since.''
He said Walker's sale was unusual because of her commitment to a logging job that was environmentally sound rather than economically profitable.
''Hers is not a typical logging job. It's really more of a stand enhancement,'' he said. ''I think it's great, what she's doing up there.''
Wines' 25-year-old daughter, Marian, has been a horse logger since high school.
Though she has a degree in music education and taught school for a year, she found herself back in the woods this summer.
The toughest part of horse logging, she says, is not the physical demands, but the endurance required to get through the day.
''You have to stay sharp mentally,'' she says. ''With a horse hitched to a log, you have to see everything that could go wrong. You have to gauge which way it's going to swing when you yank on it, what it's going to pick up and throw at you when it moves, and how you're going to get out of the way.''
''After a while,'' she adds, ''it becomes automatic. I'm still in the have-to-stop-and-think stage.''
