Forest Service proposes logging

The Forest Service is inviting comment on an extensive vegetation management proposal to "treat" approximately one-third of a 15,000-acre project area west of Sisters.

"Treatment" would include logging, thinning, mowing, under-burning, reforestation, road closures and other measures. The McCache Vegetation Management Project, as it is called, is located west and southwest of Black Butte Ranch.

The project area comes to within about a mile of the southwest corner of Black Butte Ranch and to within a mile of Cold Springs on Highway 242. The western boundary extends to the edge of the Mt. Washington Wilderness Area and touches the northern tip of the Three Sisters Wilderness along the road to McKenzie Pass

Most of the project area lies in a two mile-wide, north-south swath that begins about four miles west of Black Butte Ranch and abuts the Mt. Washington Wilderness Area.

According to a Forest Service Environmental Assessment (EA), the McCache area is part of a "late-successional reserve" that is well on its way to returning to "old-growth" status. Such habitat is seen as critical to the survival of rare species such as the spotted owl.

According to District Ranger Bill Anthony, in a memo released earlier this month, "Years of aggressive fire suppression resulted in white fir trees growing where ponderosa pine once dominated."

As a result, the report says, dense forests of white fir crowded the remaining ponderosa pine trees that had survived logging. In the last two decades of the 20th century, a spruce budworm epidemic left thousands of dead white fir trees posing a serious fire danger threat to the entire region.

The ranger district's proposal would include harvesting 29 million board feet of timber for the McCache project area. About 15 million board feet would be saw timber and the remainder pulpwood.

No trees exceeding 21 inches in diameter would be removed, and none of the treatments are slated for known spotted owl habitat. More than 1,400 acres are targeted for reforestation, and another 1,500 acres would be thinned of trees under eight inches in diameter.

As the various stages of the project are completed, more than 3,000 acres would eventually be considered for under-burning, a process that burns forest floor combustibles beneath the forest canopy.

The Forest Service believes that, without the proposed action, there is a potential risk of "extensive loss from wildfire." The report concedes that evolution of new spotted owl habitat is probably 60 years away.

However, the report goes on to say that the "proposed management will help the forest develop more resilient, stable late-successional habitat sooner than if no management actions were taken."

Although Anthony's memo makes it clear that the extensive treatment program outlined in the EA is the Forest Service's preferred option, no final decision has been made.

Now that the assessment is complete, however, the Forest Service is providing the public with one more opportunity to comment on the proposal. A complete copy of the EA is available at the District Ranger's office and at http://www.fs.fed/r6/deschutes.

Additional information may also be obtained by contacting Kris Martinson, Project Team Leader, at 549-7730.

Comments may be addressed to Bill Anthony, District Ranger, c/o McCache EA, P.O. Box 249, Sisters, OR 97759, or by e-mail to [email protected]

To ensure consideration, any comments should be delivered to the Forest Service by Wednesday, April 5.