Logging Against the Clock
Timber Salvage Underway After a Tough Fire Season
By Dan Testa, Flathead Beacon, 10-19-07
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| Jim Kranz, manager of log resources, describes how salvaged logs from burned areas retain their value if retrieved in time at the Plum Creek Timber Company in Columbia Falls. Photo by Lido Vizzutti of the Flathead Beacon. | |
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Timber companies and sawmills endured multiple work stoppages during 2007’s severe fire season, but while flames still flickered, officials at the Plum Creek Timber Company were already planning how to salvage the lumber from tens of thousands of burned acres.
According to Plum Creek’s Regional Northwest Manager Tom Ray, the company suffered roughly 41,000 acres of burned land from the summer’s five major fires: Brush Creek, Chippy Creek, Jocko Lakes, Mile Marker 124 and Black Cat fires. Although it’s too early to say definitively, Ray estimates about one-third of what was burnt will be salvageable. Plum Creek announced earlier this month that, after salvage logging, it will still have lost about $4 million in timber.
While the fires also burned on public land, it’s likely to be a year or longer before logging crews can go to work on fire-damaged lands in the Flathead National Forest, where 25,000 acres burned.
“We go through a carefully orchestrated process,” said Bryan Donner, district planning team leader for the Tally Lake District, where the Brush Creek fire burned. “It could take quite a while before we come to a decision about how to conduct this salvage logging.” The Forest Service currently has crews out assessing the burned areas to determine where salvage logging would be appropriate, and then will begin putting together a proposal for public review.
But in that time, burnt trees will dry out, crack and deteriorate significantly, grossly reducing the wood’s value and rendering it unsuitable for most purposes – which explains why salvage logging on private and tribal land is such a race against the clock.
Steve Robbins, Plum Creek’s resource manager for the Flathead Unit, has at least five contracts in place, three crews on the job already and is looking for more loggers.
“The longer you wait, the more it dies,” Robbins said. “Our concern is to get in and salvage timber just as quickly as we can.” Robbins and Ray emphasized logging crews will employ the same mitigation practices used on any other job, including reseeding, widening culverts, reinforcing some roads and designating riparian areas along waterways. The crews will try to get as much done as possible during the winter months, when snowpack and frozen ground minimize soil damage.
A few miles to the south, foresters for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, where the Chippy Creek fire burned 35,000 acres, hope to begin salvage logging in November.
“This year was the worst fire season since 1910 on the reservation,” said Rolan Becker, CSKT division manager for projects and forest planning. “It’s the biggest salvage project we’ve ever had.”
But first, a Findings of No Significant Impact, or FONSI, document must be signed by the Environmental Protection Agency superintendent and approved by the tribal council.
Becker is working with wildlife biologists to shelter some trout streams that suffered significant damage from the intense heat of the fires. While slightly daunted from the sheer magnitude of the salvage logging to be done, he estimates the harvest to be double the workload of a normal year.
“I think we’re looking at 30 to 40 million board-feet at least,” Becker said. “I will be real darn disappointed if we don’t get 30 million.”
Out of the land burned, Becker estimates 28,000 acres are timber – though the tribes don’t plan to log everything available, leaving alone burned land in primitive areas affected by the Jocko Lakes fire. Still, Becker anticipates a value between $8 million and $10 million from the salvage logging.
“The market is a little soft” for timber right now, he added, with a glut of burned wood coming to market. “We’re cognizant of the value.”
Foresters interviewed were bittersweet about salvage logging; while the timber harvest won’t make up for what was lost, it provides some consolation for a damaging fire season.
“We didn’t plan for it to burn,” Robbins said. “But we don’t want to let an opportunity go by that would cause any more lost opportunities than are already there.”
This article was originally published by the Flathead Beacon.
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Comments
Why is that you worldly people always treat us Mormans the way you treat your native Americans?
If we weren't so sly and organized we'd suffer the same fate as they have had wouldn't we?
Anyhow, this article is just an example of the ostricizatinoality caused by the worldly media at NewWest.net.
Change needed!
Preston Drew
Below is the abstract from an extensive study of post-fire salvage logging in the west. If you want to read the whole study you can download it here:
http://maps.wildrockies.org/ecosystem_defense/Science_Documents/Beschta_et_al_2004.pdf
FROM: Postfire Management on Forested Public Lands of the Western United States by ROBERT L. BESCHTA, JONATHAN J. RHODES, J. BOONE KAUFFMAN, ROBERT E. GRESSWELL, G. WAYNE MINSHALL, JAMES R. KARR, DAVID A. PERRY, F. RICHARD HAUER, CHRISTOPHER A. FRISSELL (2004)
Abstract: Forest ecosystems in the western United States evolved over many millennia in response to disturbances such as wildfires. Land use and management practices have altered these ecosystems, however, including fire regimes in some areas. Forest ecosystems are especially vulnerable to postfire management practices because such practices may influence forest dynamics and aquatic systems for decades to centuries. Thus, there is an increasing need to evaluate the effect of postfire treatments from the perspective of ecosystem recovery. We examined, via the published literature and our collective experience, the ecological effects of some common postfire treatments. Based on this examination, promising postfire restoration measures include retention of large trees, rehabilitation of firelines and roads, and, in some cases, planting of native species. The following practices are generally inconsistent with efforts to restore ecosystem functions after fire: seeding exotic species, livestock grazing, placement of physical structures in and near stream channels, ground-based postfire logging, removal of large trees, and road construction. Practices that adversely affect soil integrity, persistence or recovery of native species, riparian functions, or water quality generally impede ecological recovery after fire. Although research provides a basis for evaluating the efficacy of postfire treatments, there is a continuing need to increase our understanding of the effects of such treatments within the context of societal and ecological goals for forested public lands of the western United States.
As for increasing understanding, the fact is, that is already happening in venues away from SCB. Anyone with eyes can see the results of fire and salvage and not salvaging, and there's lots of ground now to study. When it comes time to ask the public, which result do you value, well, I don't think you, or Ric, or Keith, or Steve, or Dominick, or or or...are gonna like the answer.
By the way, Dan, good story.
You can criticize this report and the team of scientists that put it together all you want. Besides your well-trained eyes what scientific reports or studies do you have in your pocket?
Come to think of it, I do agree with you that "anyone with eyes can see the results of fire and salvage and not salvaging." Here are some recent examples for you.
http://www.nativeforest.org/pdf/Bitterroot_Primer.pdf
http://www.nativeforest.org/pdf/Biscuit_Primer.pdf
More "junk" science for your critical eye.
Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire
By Jonathan R. Thompson, Thomas A. Spies and Lisa M. Ganio
Department of Forest Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331; and Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Corvallis, OR 97331
Published online before print June 11, 2007, 10.1073/pnas.0700229104
PNAS | June 19, 2007*| vol. 104 | no. 25 | 10743-10748
Key findings: "Areas that were salvage-logged and planted after the initial fire burned more severely than comparable unmanaged areas, suggesting that fuel conditions in conifer plantations can increase fire severity despite removal of large woody fuels."
Debate over the influence of postwildfire management on future fire severity is occurring in the absence of empirical studies. We used satellite data, government agency records, and aerial photography to examine a forest landscape in southwest Oregon that burned in 1987 and then was subject, in part, to salvage-logging and conifer planting before it reburned during the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Areas that burned severely in 1987 tended to reburn at high severity in 2002, after controlling for the influence of several topographical and biophysical covariates. Areas unaffected by the initial fire tended to burn at the lowest severities in 2002. Areas that were salvage-logged and planted after the initial fire burned more severely than comparable unmanaged areas, suggesting that fuel conditions in conifer plantations can increase fire severity despite removal of large woody fuels.
Science has lost much because of this type of use and has created unbiased reports. Just understand both sides of the science debate and aling yourself in the middle...use your third eye and you would have so much more respect from a wide array of communities...not just the ones you taylor too...
Thanks,
A Concerned Scientist
A response to your last two wouldn't be worth it except for the fact that the lack of context you present might misguide folks.
First, the Thompson paper occurred in the Klamath ecozone, which is unique in terms of both geology and climate. I've been there several times, and weird doesn't begin to explain it. But the Silver and Biscuit-reburn zones did as expected. The hottest parts of the fire were on southerly, drier slopes. No surprise there, and no surprise that an effort to replant would happen, inasmuch as the Forest Service was just completing a 465-page, $21 million study of the Klamath forests that basically says if you don't replant after fire or logging on south exposures, you won't see trees. It's called Reforestation Practices in Southwestern Oregon and Northern California.
I've also read Thompson, and they hint that recurring fires during a certain early-seral time frame might make it difficult to economically reforest these burns. But the authors do not state that replanting should not happen.
Next, I would like to point the curious to the Tillamook State Forest in Oregon. From 1933 to 1951, the TSF burnt big, every six years. This is before "global warming" by the way, but not before the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, which affected Oregon as well as the Midwest.
As the forest burnt during the deepest Depression, it was not worth salvaging at the time, so most forest owners just gave up paying taxes and the land reverted to the counties, which in turn could not afford to do anything.
Politics being politics, finally the state of Oregon got the land and then the state floated and passed a referendum for a replanting bond.
60 years later, the Tillamook turned out so well that logging operations have resumed. In another sixty years, the TSF is expected to be managed into a landscape that is as diverse as it was before the fires.
Now, this was a forest that had been just plumb nuked. Then, over a period of 20 or so years, sporadic salvaging activity (which the Beschta/Kohler gang says is bad) had taken place. In the early 50s, it was decided to stop the remaining salvage work and focus on replanting a forest.
While the TSF is pretty much a plantation, it's easy on the eye, the water is good, the trees healthy, and the future looks green. The folks old enough to remember before, really, really are proud of the after.
So here's the comical part.
The enviros in Oregon tried to pass a ballot initiative to set aside half the TSF as nonmechanized pseudo-wilderness, pretty much following the "wildlands project" or "conservation biology" model.
But the reason the forest even exists, and is not brushfields today, is because the humble citizens of Oregon taxed themselves to have foresters rebuild a working/recreational forest from a wasteland.
If the Beschta model Matt suggests had been used, there would be no beautiful forest worthy of becoming a wilderness. Period.
I must point out not only the irony in enviros wanting to claim a managed artifact as "wild nature," but also the fact that green Oregon voters shot down the eco-proposal.
So folks, don't worry about arguing the often-questionable "science" being bruited around here. Just go look.
Go look at the Biscuit. The Bitterroot. The Tillamook. Go look at Mt St Helens and the commercial forests in the blast zone that were salvaged and replanted. Go look at your local 2007 wildfire, and see which trees toasted, and which ones still live, and ask yourself why. You won't need any peer review for the answer.
The following phrase: "The dangers of slash: Logging removes the least flammable part of trees (their trunks), while leaving logging “slash” behind" strikes me as over-simplified.
Saying "logging increases fine fuels" is like saying "forest fires are bad". It aint that simple.
I personally have witnessed "logging", although I prefer to call it simply "management", that cleaned the forest floor clean of every twig and needle and left the big trees behind. I have also witnessed the inverse. Its not automatically the later though.
"Logging" is a little to broad brush.
Also, I have afew questions on the most-recently cited work . I admittedly am not totally familiar with the findings of the piece: Why did the plantation burn at a higher severity? Was it cause of fines left as a result of the residual logging slash on the forest floor underneath the young trees, or simply because of a young even-aged stand that you would to large degree expect to burn at that high severity because of the live fuel configuration (young even-aged trees with low canopy base height)......both?
In talking to some of the scientists doing work on the Fire-Fire Surrogate study, their preliminary results are showing that fire (again: what kind of fire? logging? management? etc?: fire that has been prescribed in a pure Ponderosa Pine stand with an uneven-aged and size class structure on flat ground during ideal prescribed burning conditions without pre-treatment with mechanical to remove the portion of the structure that has grown in since fire suppression) is actually creating more fuel for future fires than it is removing. See how ambiguous the statement is without all the details. Devil is in the details...darn it that devil.
Lots of questions can be asked of the same data sets and different answers appear depending what you ask. Also, conclusions can be made by scientists based on those questions and answers that dont really answer the management questions we are grappling with.
Just some thoughts. Good lively, thoughtful, debate is whats needed!
The Thompson article was based on aerial photos, so they couldn't answer the very question you ask.
In general, I'll risk it and GUESS the configuration was the latter, the stand makeup was ripe. It has been my GENERAL observation that plantations in the teens to twenties (a result of planting methods thought wise at the time, if not natural regen from seed trees) that have not had pre-commercial thin, tend to be about as ripe for stand replacement as any doghair thicket, of any age, would be.
Current dogma, which I think is a good thing, is trending toward lower stocking rates, which I think is partly a result of better planting methods thanks to experience gained. The seedlings are better fit to their sites than in the past, so it is not thought necessary to cover the place with a bazillion stems when a hundred or so have a high likelihood of giving you 80 good ones.
Scott, I see nothing wrong with organizations or anyone being informed by the latest scientific research and findings and using those findings to push for better management of our national forests. Should science play no role in the debate? Should the debate only be emotional? For year's the environmental movement was criticized for basing everything on emotion, now we're being criticized for basing our policies on science.
I've never said any of these studies represent the "gospel truth;" however I certainly think that science can help inform land managers and result in better management.
Witness the nearly 600 scientists that signed onto a letter to congress a few years ago opposing the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act. These 600 scientists, which included many of the top researchers and scientists in their respective fields, wrote, "When we, as scientists, see policies being developed that run counter to the lessons of science, we feel compelled to speak up. Proposed post-disturbance legislation (specifically the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act [HR 4200] and the related Forests for Future Generations Act [S. 2079]), crafted as a response to recent fires and other disturbances, is misguided because it distorts or ignores recent scientific advances. Under the labels of “recovery” and “restoration,” these bills would speed logging and replanting after natural disturbances. "
If interested, you can download the whole letter and see the 600 scientists that signed onto it at: http://www.americanlands.org/documents/1157560794_4200.2079sciltr_592.pdf
Scott, are you going to take these 600 scientists and researchers to task and "shame" them for writing such a letter? Why in the world can scientists not advocate for better forest policy based on the findings of their research? Should climate scientists have remained silent in regards to global warming?
I agree with Dave that the Klamath ecozone is unique and "weird doesn't begin to explain it." I've visited that area too and have thought the same thing. A dry rainforest with a bunch of werid endemic species...heck a few times while hiking in that area I half expected a dinosaur to come waltzing over the next ridge.
Regarding your info about the Tillamook State Forest I'm sure you can also agree that the Tillamook is a much wetter forest than both the dry rainforest of the Klamath ecozone and most of the forests here in the northern Rockies. And it should certainly be mentioned that plenty of PhD scientists would directly contradict Dave's information about the Tillamook and applying the Tillamook example from the 1930s to Biscuit or the Northern Rockies.
For some background on this info, please go to this link http://www.gazettetimes.com/articles/2004/04/13/news/opinion/3see13.txt that includes the following snip: "Finally, Newton compares apples to oranges when he equates the Tillamook as the post-fire recovery standard. The Tillamook Forest, which burned in the 1933, is now largely a tree farm. Tree growth rates on the Tillamook, a coastal temperate rainforest, are much faster than in other forested areas, including the area burned in the Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon."
I also agree with you Dave that people should just get out and look. Go to the Biscuit fire area and the fire areas on the Bitterroot. Compare with your own eyes the areas that were logged before the fires, after the fires and/or have never been logged before. That's why I sent out those pdf's which included photos from those areas.
Alex, I'm glad that the phase struck you as "over-simplified." I agree that it's over-simplified, but for the record what you quoted is a one-sentence PHOTO CAPTION for god's sake! I would think the numerous conversations that we've had in the presence of mutual friends over beers and elk would convince you that I know these are complex issues and that the policies we advocate are a little deeper than based on one-sentence photo captions. Just out of curiosity, did you find the photos of post-fire logging on Biscuit or Bitterroot to be "over-exploitative" or "over-doing-it?"
If you have questions about the Thompson paper I would suggest you contact the authors directly. That's why I posted their contact information above. Also, I was able to dig up an email for Thompson via a google search. Not sure if it's still current, but here it is: .
That "600 scientist" letter is precisely the sort of uber-advocacy that Scott expressed concern about. Never mind that same letter is a spin-off of a small paper, rushed to publication, that absolutely over-generalized conditions in the unique Siskiyou ecozone to forests in general. And never mind that the same players in the Beschta cycle of anti-salvage politicking, aimed specifically at congressional action, were buried up to their eyeballs in that small paper....not only its promotion as gospel, but in its production. Never mind that the latest link you provide goes straight to Dominick Della Salla, who "edited" the CBD "peer-reviewed" version of Beschta, while the supposed "editor" of Beschta 1, the un-peered, naked 1995 polemic, was the lead academic on the small paper (Donato et al if you folks haven't figured it out yet) that turned out to be the big foil against FERRA HR 4200. Never mind that this same hit piece is targeted at Mike Newton, one of the Gang of Nine scientists that criticized the Donato item, for many reasons, one being its "all oranges and apples are the same" approach.
Is the fact that all these names keep popping up together pure coinicidence of scientific consensus? Or is there something else going on?
Let me tell the few here a little story about that. Feb of 2006 I'm in Dreadford (Medford) Oregon, for the hearing on HR 4200, riding on the press meat wagon up to the Timbered Rock fire. Lots of "name" journalists aboard whose byline I've read. None are looking out the windows, but rather yapping about their office-gossip stuff, who's sleeping who. One exception, sitting next to me, looking at the forest, dressed like a Dead Head who's gone legit, Hawaiian shirt and all. Looks unhappy. Gotta be a Willamette Weekly writer or some such, right?
Dude, what's your gig?
I'm the area ecologist for the Forest Service.
Oh ya? That's Tom Atzet's old job, right?
Yep.
Wow, small world. I'm Dave Skinner.
I'm Tom Sensenig.
What's your connection to all this, Tom?
I'm the guy who got the funds for the study the Donato paper is based on.
(thought to self Holy ^%#(*@#! And why have I never heard of this guy?)
Well, Tom, you and I need to talk....
So we did.
Give Cameron a nice raspberry for me. I've missed you both since our tour up at Hungry Horse.
The reason CB's rate of rejection is so high is because CB is the only outlet of significance for the subset of advocacy "science" pushed by conservation biology advocates.
And speaking of rejection, how did Donato get past a 90 percent rejection and further get fast tracked into Brevia? Might want to ask Donald Kennedy about his relationship with Mike Soule and Paul Global Cooling Erlich.
As for seeing the data, most of these journals are only accessible to a specialized subset of college students and academics. The general public isn't about to pay the required subscription rates unless their careers mandate a professional interest.
The nonscientific public hasn't a chance in heckfire of cross checking the footnotes for veracity. Those that do will, as I have, find an amazing number of "mutual admiration" cross-peerage that must be a lot like reading poetry around Dave Foreman's campfires.
As for not a single article in CB supporting logging, that's not a surprise at all, given this from SCBs mission statement:
From the section on Enhancing the Impact of Conservation Science: :powerful constituencies, interest groups, and institutions should look to us as sources of sound information that will help them SOLVE PROBLEMS IN A WAY THAT SERVES OUR VALUES."
I added the emphasis, but the fact is, here is a blatantly political mission aspect, overtly directed at political influence using "science" as a means of bolstering "our" values judgments.
There is politicalized science on both sides of this values battle. It is unfair to both society and the environment, however, when the participants refuse to acknowledge that the real issue is not the science, but the values systems of the scientists and whether or not their value beliefs are driving their conclusions.
If values drive science, then the science, for obvious reasons, loses all value, to everyone. And that's a frickin' shame.
Hope you had good luck with the hunt...winter is on the way, I'm stoked.
I couldn't agree with you more..."I see nothing wrong with organizations or anyone being informed by the latest scientific research".
This..."using those findings to push for better management of our national forests"...partly. Only if the study is emperical and is region or site specfic to the management action that is being proposed. Compare apples to apples is all I'm saying. Know the authors level of confidents in his/her finding, the study area and methods they used to obtain there findings, assumptions used, and most importantly sources of error within the study. Basic scientific method stuff right...
Of course the debate needs to be scientific...less emotions would be a bite easier to manage actually. I'm definitely not saying throw science out...Lets just use it wisely given what we know about natural variability in forest ecosysems.
"However I certainly think that science can help inform land managers and result in better management." Exactly!!! Thats why we need to monitor the projects we do implement to truely understand the the landscapes we are manageing locally/regionally.
And about the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act...Man, I would probably would have signed it to if I saw this huge legislation possible coming down the pipe from the topdown to me on the ground from Washington. Salvage and post distrubacne logging can be done well on CERTAIN parts of the landscape with what we know about forest science today. Can it be done everywhere, nope, science also tells us that.
All I'm saying is that I have studyied under alot of these guys at OSU and can truely say I have lost much respect for the impact they have personally have had on the fundamentals of science. I feel you can no longer truely read a peer reviewed journal without using your only third like like you were watching Fox news or something... Thats all...keep up the good work Matt, truely.
Points well made for the most part. I'm just curious. Have you spoken directly with any of the Gang of Nine? Or are you just going with what Mike Milstein and Jeff Barnard "reported?"
I have only spoken with a one of the "Gang of Nine" and took a couple classes from Sessions. I was at OSU when all of this went down...a sad mess to say the least. I would incourage anyone interested in this to read an excellent article by Dave at:
http://www.evergreenmagazine.com/PDFs/DonatoEvergreenPDF.pdf
Check it out...