USFS proposes salvage logging on B&B Fire lands

Only about 10 percent of the area swept by the B&B and Link fires in 2003 will be logged under a proposal released last week by Deschutes National Forest officials.

After months of planning, the Forest Service issued a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) presenting five alternatives for a recovery project of portions of fire areas within the Sisters Ranger District. The public now is invited to review the alternatives and submit their comments by April 18.

In 2003, the B&B Complex Fire and the Link Fire burned a total of 94,281 acres west of Sisters with over 89,000 acres within the Deschutes National Forest in Central Oregon and in the Willamette National Forest west of the Cascades.

Alternative two is the preferred alternative of the five presented. It involves “active management” on about 10 percent of the burned area. Alternative two includes reducing woody debris to aid fire suppression, replanting, salvaging some wood products and closing some roads.

This alternative specifically includes timber harvesting on 6,803 acres with ground-based logging on 5,848 acres and helicopter logging on 955 acres. About 29.7 million board feet of timber would be harvested.

About 71 miles of roads would be closed or designated as roads where motorized use would be prohibited for one or more years. Another 5.1 miles of temporary roads would be developed for timber harvesting.

Some salvage and fuels treatment work would be visible. Allowing that will require site-specific amendments to the Deschutes National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan.

So would another project that would allow firewood removal within the Metolius Heritage Area.

One of the five alternatives in the EIS would lead to no action and only dead and dying trees would be harvested in the otheralternatives.

“The project is just one of many steps we have taken in our overall post-fire recovery efforts for the area,” said Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony. “We have tried very hard to design this project carefully and we want to continue to listen to the public’s concerns as we move toward a final decision.”

The agency and non-governmental groups led scientists, environmentalists and other members of the public on 22 tours of the burned area, which is part of the popular and scenic Metolius River Basin, Anthony added.

During this past year, some recovery work has been carried out on much of the fire area. To date, more than $2.5 million was invested in post-fire recovery, including road drainage repairs and replacement of culverts to handle expected increased water flows, Anthony said.

In addition, five headwater streamside areas were fenced to allow vegetation to become reestablished without grazing by elk and deer or damage by people.

Much of the area was closed to off-road vehicular travel to protect recovering vegetation and allow removal of hazard trees along some 100 miles of forest roads.

Only some 44,000 acres of the fires were outside of dedicated wilderness and research natural areas and therefore available for salvage logging. Another 30,000 acres was not recommended by Forest Service staff for salvage efforts including most riparian reserves around streams, recent timber sales, underburned areas with low mortality, the Metolius Wild and Scenic River Corridor, spotted owl habitat, high elevation areas, landslide-prone ground and other areas.

The human-caused Link Fire started July 5, 2003, burning 3,590 acres in dense stands of insect and diseased-killed trees seven miles northwest of Sisters, threatening Black Butte Ranch.

The lightning-caused Bear Butte and Booth Fires were detected August 19, 2003, in wilderness west of Camp Sherman. The two fires eventually burned together to become the B&B FireComplex.

The fire forced the evacuation of Camp Sherman and Suttle Lake and burned more than 94,000 acres.

Contact the Sisters Ranger District to obtain copies of the B&B Fire Recovery Project draft environmental impact statement or log onto: http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/centraloregon/projects/units/sisters/b-b-fire/index.shtml.

Comments can be submitted by logging onto: [email protected] Send written comments to: Team Leader, Brent Ralston, Sisters Ranger District, P.O. Box 249, Sisters, OR 97759.