Youth Looks Elsewhere -- Logging Classes Are Given The Ax -- Forks High School Teen-Agers Give Up On Declining Industry

FORKS, Clallam County - Young people in the ``Logging Capital of the World'' don't want to be loggers anymore.

When Forks High School offered its logging class for the school year that begins on Wednesday, few students signed up. So the class, believed to be the last of its kind in Washington state, will not be offered.

``My parents want me to go to college, and they don't want me to go into logging, because there's not going to be much logging,'' said Steve Jewett, 18. Jewett, cradling his football helmet under his arm, watched from the sidelines behind Forks High as his teammates ran through kickoff-coverage drills.

The bleak future everyone talks about here is not always easily seen. Highway 101 through town is littered with chunks of wood deposited by passing logging trucks. Students say their parents continue to work in logging, but more fathers than usual are headed this fall to work in Alaska logging camps. Teen-agers, as always, work at logging jobs during the summer.

But they make few plans to pursue it as a career.

``If you're young now, you don't want to be a buffalo hunter anymore,'' said Joe Seymour, a former logger who taught the canceled course for the past four years. ``And if you lived in Forks, and you saw your mother and dad go through what they've going through out here, you don't necessarily want to follow in Pa's footsteps.''

Working with timber donated by ITT Rayonier, the students learned how to operate chain saws and how to fell trees, among other things.

``We gave them a chance to get dirty, to get a taste of what it's like out there,'' Seymour said.

Forks was the last high school in the state to offer courses strictly in the how-to's of logging. More comprehensive programs in forest management, many of which include instruction on fisheries administration, are offered at 33 of the state's high schools. That figure is down from 59 programs in 1980.

``When the economy went down in the early `80s and the number of jobs available in the forest industry went down, a number of these programs were discontinued,'' said Gene Forrester, a vocational-education supervisor with the office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The number of students enrolled in the programs has fallen from 1,659 in 1980 to 1,165 last year.

``With what's happening with the movement to preserve old-growth forests, we expect more programs to be discontinued,'' Forrester said.

While students at Forks have shunned logging classes, they've flocked to two carpentry courses. ``That's because there's no future in logging and that and carpentry are the only things to do in Forks,'' said Pat Nelson, 17, who drove a sawmill truck this summer.

Mike Simmons, a mill manager who served on a logging advisory committee for the high school, said he had mixed feelings about the course's demise. He supported the class because it helped students learn safe on-the-job techniques. But he also believed the class encouraged teen-agers to pursue a dead-end field.

``I've tried to discourage kids from working in the woods,'' he said. ``There's no retirement, and there's no future in it.''

Despite the gloomy forecast for the forest-products industry, Forks schools are robust. Workers are laying new carpet at the high school, and a new junior-high gymnasium was just completed. High-school enrollment is steady at 350. So far, reductions in the timber harvest, many of them aimed at protecting the habitat of the threatened northern spotted owl, have not had much impact on the schools, said Forks High principal Jim Bennett.

Still, Bennett is disappointed that Forks will not be able to offer training in the area's longtime bedrock industry. ``It's a real shame,'' he said. ``It's a way of life that's important to the history of this community.''