The loggers have left and the timber has been sent to the mills. The logging machinery has been carried, hauled, or driven from the landing to another harvest operation. The harvest unit is now as quiet as the forest surrounding it.

Now is the time for the activities that make harvest unit suitable for reproducing a forest of the desired tree species, called site preparation. In the forest, all types of plants begin to grow immediately after the logging operation. In fact, plants grow so quickly in the forests of the Northwest that if we don't begin site preparation and reforestation immediately after the harvest, our activities will be more costly and the resulting reforestation effort may be less successful. It pays to prepare and plant the harvest unit right away!

	What does it take to turn a slash-covered hillside...
...into a well-stocked stand of regeneration?

We need to manage the environment within the harvest area so that the young, small trees grow up under the best possible conditions. Most often, site preparation involves some or all of the following activities: using burning and other methods of debris removal to clean up broken limbs remaining after logging, weeding with herbicides and other methods to remove vegetation competing with the young trees, using machines to exposing bare soil for the seeds or the seedlings, and controlling diseases that could negatively impact the trees that we want to grow. Cleaning up the limbs and other debris, called slash, left from when the logs are delimbed or vegetation is broken during the harvest, is the first step. There are many ways of doing this, and it often involves tough work.