Logging project finished near Sisters

Brush piles are all that remain of a logging operation near Three Creek Lake. photo by Jeff McCaulou

The Forest Service recently finished a logging project known as the Broken Rim Sale near Three Creek Lake, off Forest Road 700.

The Forest Service contracted with Weyerhaeuser for the project and Weyerhaeuser subcontracted B&S Logging, of Prineville, to thin 462 acres of public land near the Three Sisters Wilderness Area. The 6,315 cubic feet of timber harvested was sent to the Weyerhaeuser mill in Redmond.

According to Becky Zimmerman of the Forest Service, the cut was intended to thin a dense stand of primarily lodge pole pine "to increase the health of the forest."

Some white fir was harvested from the site.

At $42.52 per hundred cubic feet for lodge pole pine, the sale came to roughly $250,000.

Not much of that money will stay in the Sisters area. According to a Forest Service employee, "Seventy percent of timber sale money is skimmed off the top and sent back to administrative offices in Washington D.C."