EVARTS, Ky. — The practice of transporting logs with helicopters, popular in the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest, is slowly making its way into Appalachian woodlands.

        “They're definitely becoming more popular,” said John Reinstetle, a timber manager on Little Black Mountain in Harlan County where a tandem rotor helicopter flies logs to a truck-loading area. “They're important tools when the terrain is rough or when you want to build your lumber inventory quickly.”

        For environmentalists, helicopters are viewed as less damaging than the traditional Appalachian method of bulldozing roads and pulling logs out with heavy equipment.

        Damon Morgan, a retired logger and a member of the environmental group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, said using helicopters is more environmentally friendly than traditional transportation methods.

        “An awful lot of damage is done by building logging roads on the mountains,” he said. “Logging is very destructive because of the very nature of it. There's no way you can extract logs from the mountains without causing a great deal of damage.”

        Columbia Helicopters of Portland, Ore., is providing a helicopter and pilots for the job in Kentucky and another under way in North Carolina.

        The helicopters are tandem rotor crafts similar to the Chinook used by the military. Ground crews attach cables to logs to be lifted to a truck-loading area.

        Dan Sweet, spokesman for the helicopter company, said his firm also has worked over the past two years with timber companies in Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, New York and Vermont to transport logs out of forests.

        Mr. Reinstetle, who works for International Lumber of Gilbertsville, W.Va., said steep terrain on Little Black Mountain at the headwaters of the Cumberland River near Evarts made it unsafe to drag logs out with ground equipment.

        International Lumber's first experience with helicopters was on federal land in the Jefferson Forest near Norton, Va. The logging firm was harvesting storm-damaged trees and wanted to limit environmental damage to the public land.

        Mr. Reinstetle said using the helicopters was more expensive; but because the work was completed so much faster, the financial outcome remained about the same.

        “The average producer will get 2 to 2 1/2 million board feet of lumber in a year,” he said. “We're hoping to do that much here in a month and a half.”

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