News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Foresters are waiting for the green light to launch a salvage logging project on approximately 4,877 acres burned during the Eyerly Fire of 2002 to the north and northwest of Sisters.
The plan, which has received criticism from both environmental organizations and timber industry groups, aims to cut about 20 million board feet of dead or severely damaged trees in the 17,000-acre fire area.
A final decision is expected by the end of April.
According to Sisters Ranger District silviculturalist Rob Schantz, the proposed cut represents about one-third of the timber that could be salvaged out of the fire area.
Predictably, timber industry interests, including the American Forest Resource Council and Ochoco Lumber, lobbied the Forest Service for more salvage. Environmental groups, including Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC) and the Sisters Forest Planning Committee, have weighed in with concerns about salvage.
"Logging big trees in the late successional reserve (about 3,414 acres of the project) is not a good idea," said Tim Lillebo of ONRC.
The late successional reserve (LSR) is a designation for mature forests including "old growth."
Lillebo said that current science indicates that large, mature trees should be left alone, even though dead or damaged, because they provide shelter and habitat.
"You need to leave those large trees because they are the heritage trees for a new old-growth forest," Lillebo said.
Karen Coulter of Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project said that the Eyerly project, like most fire salvage sales, is "a mixed bag."
Some of the areas to be logged are acceptable to Coulter, but she is concerned about logging on steep slopes above streams and about logging in areas that are still fairly green.
Citing reports that question the ecological benefits of logging in recently burned areas, she said, "We're very leery of logging in recently burned areas at all."
She said the only rationale for the project is economic, but she said she sympathizes with local communities that want to recover some value from burned timber.
Schantz and planner Todd Chaponot noted that restoration on this project is independent of salvage. Some of it is already underway. Guzzlers have been replaced, grass has been seeded and trees have been planted.
However, some restoration efforts, such as refurbishing some roads and obliterating others and planting bitterbrush in deer winter range are dependent on salvage in one way: financially.
Receipts from timber sales can be tapped to fund restoration efforts.
Lillebo said he has some concerns about road refurbishing in the Eyerly burn. He argues that refurbishing often has the same impact as building a new road.
He worries that the refurbishing of roads could cause sedimentation problems in local streams.
The Forest Service analyzed a "no action" alternative and a scaled back salvage alternative that would have reduced the scale of the project to about 2,893 acres of logging.
According to Schantz and Chaponot, the Forest Service's preferred alternative is the best plan for the burned area. Schantz noted that the Eyerly blaze was a destructive "stand-replacement fire" in an area that should experience fairly consistent low-intensity fires over a period of years.
"We think the best thing to do is an active management response," Schantz said.
"What we'd like to see ideally in that landscape is to let fires burn again.
"We're a long ways from that now," he said.
Schantz also noted that in some areas tree survival has been better than expected. Such areas will be left to recover naturally.
The Forest Service believes logging burned areas and replanting aids forest regeneration, a belief that is challenged by environmentalists.
Jerry F. Franklin, Professor of Ecosystem Analysis, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington has argued against salvage on the Biscuit Fire, stating that "general salvage of large snags and logs is absolutely antithetical to the goal of rapid recovery of fully functional late-successional forest habitat and inappropriate within the Late Successional Reserves."
Schantz attributed much of the criticism from environmentalists to a basic philosophical difference of opinion with forest managers.
Many environmentalists, he said, want an end to commercial logging of any kind on National Forests and would prefer to see "nature take its course" in burned areas.
Lillebo said he does not oppose all commercial logging on National Forests.
The forest activist argues that forest ecosystem health should be the first goal and any commercial value should come as a byproduct.
The Forest Service sees salvage logging as a legitimate management tool -- and the agency needs the money generated by handling salvage commercially.
However, Forest Service personnel point out that they are far from pushing commercial logging as a top priority.
Coulter acknowledged that the Sisters Ranger District did not put together an extreme proposal.
"I think they were more conservative in a careful way than on other fire sales I've seen," she said.
Schantz certainly considers the proposal conservative.
He noted that more than half of the fire area is unaffected by salvage logging.
The Metolius Breaks Roadless Area will not be logged, in part because of political sensitivity about that area -- and roadless areas in general.
"It's a hot-button issue and we just didn't want to go there," Schantz said.
And the proposed project is a far cry from what would have been done a couple of decades ago, when perhaps five times as much logging would have been done in the wake of the fire.
"In the past we were more aggressive with salvage," Schantz acknowledged. "The laws have definitely changed and the level of analysis... it goes up every year."
Analysis includes studies on the impact of salvage logging on soil, habitat and wildlife.
All this takes time -- and the window of opportunity to salvage dead timber is narrow (about four years).
"It'll be two years this July (since the fire) and we haven't cut a stick yet," Schantz said. "If anybody thinks we're just going out there and cutting trees willy-nilly, we're not."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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