Ranger District looks forward to busy 2006

Between salvaging timber from burned lands around Sisters and preparing to move its headquarteters, the Sisters Ranger District will be a busy place in 2006.

According to District Ranger Bill Anthony, the Sisters district is well on its way to wrapping up timber sales from the 2003 B&B Complex Fire.

“The B&B salvage was sold as three separate sales,” Anthony said. “The Little Sale is 100 percent done. All salvage timber has been removed, but there is still work closing out the units. The Butte Sale is about 77 percent harvested with just under 400 acres to salvage and the Booth Sale is about 95 percent harvested with just 40 acres to salvage.”

Good fall and winter weather allowed salvage logging to continue until the rains came, Anthony added. Foresters are still waiting for snow-covered roads to open to determine the full extent of recent storm damage.

However, emergency drainage work done following the B&B Fire has worked well this winter in protecting roads that have been inspected, he said.

A future project that will have a big impact on the City of Sisters is the planned relocation of the Sisters Ranger Station.

“This project is going faster than I had originally planned,” Anthony said. “We have funding to move forward on the process. We will probably make a decision this spring on which location northwest of the current site where we will build and which current parcels we will sell. Building designs will go out this spring. At least one of the current parcels should be put on the market by the end of September.”

The end result will integrate the administrative office and a visitor center with the work center close by. The new ranger station will follow the architectural theme of Sisters with high visibility to the public. The rest of the current property will be sold next year.

Anthony is pleased with the outcome of the recent renaming of geographic features with the name “squaw.’

“Most of the features were on National Forest or Bureau of Land Management lands. Nobody else really took the lead in this effort, so the Forest Service did, working closely with other agencies and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs,” Anthony said.

“It takes some understanding of why we would do this and the cultural sensitivity to it. I am really proud of the team that worked on this. Now there are unique and respectful names in place. The next generation will never know the difference. While some people have told me that they will always call it Squaw Creek, I tell them, ‘Your children will call it Whychus Creek.’”

Because of a declining budget, the Deschutes National Forest is continuing to reorganize its recreation programs, Anthony said.

“Some upper level positions vacated by retirements have been kept open and duties consolidated to keep our resources out on the ground,” he said. “Instead of each district having its own trail crew and wilderness crew, crews will have forest-wide responsibilities with priorities set by a forest-wide team.”

As a result, the public may see that it will take a little longer for trails to be maintained and forest roads may wait longer for routine maintenance with only one road crew for the Deschutes and Ochoco national forests.

All campgrounds will remain open and maintained as in the past with no fee increases. At least two field rangers will be maintained in each district making contacts with the public in fire prevention, public affairs, and with forest users such as firewood gathers and mushroom pickers.

“This is work like the district ranger used to do and it will create a new organization,” Anthony said. “In addition, someone in this district may have forest-wide responsibilities in a certain activity.”

A lot of work will go into responding to the off-highway-vehicle (OHV) motorized use national policy. That policy recognizes that OHV use is a legitimate use of public lands, but that it must be done to protect forest resources and respect other forest uses.

“Each forest will designate which roads, trails, and areas will be open to motorized travel and everything else will be closed,” Anthony explained. “We will assess the current situation over the next few months. A proposed plan will be determined and reviewed through the public process in the next two years with implementation the following year. This issue along with forest health and wildfire will be major issues of the next few years.”

Anthony has just returned from a 2-1/2-month assignment in Bend as acting deputy forest supervisor for the Deschutes National Forest while recruitment was underway to fill the position. Much of his time was spent on framing the OHV review process, developing safety improvements for employees, and being involved with biomass issues. That issue is addressing how to efficiently utilize forest thinnings and residue to reduce smoke from burning, provide jobs, and create a source of energy.