Santiam timber harvest gets off to a slow start

Equipment breakdowns and poor weather have hampered Bugaboo Timber Company's efforts to start logging near Suttle Lake, according to Dick Cozby of the Sisters Ranger District.

Logging in the Santiam corridor is designed to reduce the threat of a catastrophic wild fire in stands of timber decimated by the spruce budworm infestation of the early 1990s, Cozby indicated. Units have been laid out to provide a fire break.

There are two sales in the area, Santiam Corridor and Corridor Follow-up.

"Both sales focus on removing the dead and thinning live trees where we have them," Cozby said. At the same time, the logging is to retain cover, snags and down logs for wildlife.

Bugaboo Timber was one of two bidders on the Santiam Corridor sale, which it purchased for $3,158,787 on September 17. Helicopter logging will be used to take out 5.3 million board feet, some on the steep slope that separates Suttle Lake from the Santiam Highway.

Tractor logging will be used to harvest another 8.5 million board feet. Cozby said that about 1,000 acres will be treated in that sale.

Approximately 62 percent of the Santiam Corridor sale will be sawlogs, with 38 percent suitable for fiber and chips. About 55 percent of the sale is made up of dead trees, 45 percent live.

The Corridor Follow-up sale will remove 7.6 million board feet from 611 acres. Of the total, 88 percent will be sawlog and 12 percent will be fiber/chips. Follow-up is scheduled to go on the block on December 23, Cozby said.

Both sales will have fairly high visibility from the intensively used Suttle Lake area and the Santiam Highway. There is no easy way to disguise a major removal project or a 600 foot wide firebreak.

"From the highway motorists will see the north to south units. In time they will see less gray and more green, green trees and vine maple that we are going to plant," Cozby said.

"We try to soften the hard edges of each unit by feathering the number of trees we cut, avoid logging on slopes greater than 30 percent, specify low stumps and require the removal of all pole material between four and eight inches in diameter at breast height," he added.

There are restrictions on when the areas may be logged to avoid conflicts with the intensively used campgrounds around Suttle Lake, Bald Eagles, osprey, Northern Spotted Owls and hawks.

Wet, warm weather has kept the ground from freezing in the basin. Soft soil and a couple of break downs have delayed logging, although the helicopter was expected to arrive this week, according to Cozby.