Logging company offers innovative thinning

The forest thinning operation underway north of Sisters High School may be small by Weyerhaeuser standards (see a description in The Nugget, Jan. 11). But the company conducting it is not just a bunch of roughnecks in red suspenders.

Melcher Logging Co. of Sweet Home was started 50 years ago by Scott Melcher’s grandfather. As Scott told the story in a brief interview last week, “My dad took it over in the 60s right out of high school. He was determined that his kids were going to college. And we did, but we ended up back in the business anyway.”

Scott, 39, received a business administration degree from Oregon State University in 1990. His brother, Robert, went south for his schooling and studied diesel technology at the Oregon Institute of Technology.

The two brothers who now run the firm concentrate most of their efforts on thinning operations, like the one in Sisters, but more in the valley than on this side of the mountains. A third partner handles more conventional “production” logging with the full array of shovels and skidders and other heavy equipment.

Melcher describes it as a diversified company that tries, at least, to keep crews working year-round.

Almost since the brothers got on board in the early ’90s they have been involved in what’s known as “cut-to-length” thinning. They were one of the first in the state to try the system and had a fair amount of business during the 90s. The small log market sunk in 2000 and is only now coming back.

As Melcher describes the cut-to-length system, “It involves two machines and two men. They process (clip off) the tree at the stump and carry the wood out of the forest instead of dragging it on the ground (as in conventional logging). There’s less impact on the soils; it leaves a lighter footprint.”

He makes both an aesthetic and environmental argument for the system: “It might cost a little more but it achieves the goal with higher quality.”

The current operation in what’s formally known as the Trout Creek Conservation area north of the high school will probably take about three weeks. It was supposed to cover 160 acres but is turning out to be more like 190, Melcher said.

Four men are working on the site, feeding the trucks of two independent owner-operators. Logs that are five inches or more at the small end are hauled to the former Crown Pacific mill at Gilchrist. Those from five inches down to about two go back to Sweet Home to WPK Industries, a chipping plant that grinds the material for chips and sends the product to the Georgia Pacific paper mill in Toledo.

Melcher hopes that in the future some of what now goes into slash can be used instead in biomass plants that produce usable energy. Experiments in this field are underway in La Pine and on the Warm Springs Reservation.

But for the time being, on most fuel reduction/thinning jobs Melcher is caught between the lack of an economic market for the smallest material on one end and, on the other, rules forbidding the harvest of trees big enough to produce a profit. The common prescription now keeps loggers from taking out trees larger than 12 inches in diameter. Melcher argues that it would make more sense to focus on health rather than imposing an absolute size limit.

By coincidence, the Trout Creek project is an example of what he means. The “no cut” limit there is 21 inches and not many of the trees there are even that big. “We’re really able to look at the health of the trees instead of the size of them,” he said.

Nonetheless, he’s not expecting a profit. He’s doing the job for the value he can get from the material being removed and hopes to break even. It’s a good deal for the forest owner, Sisters School District, which is getting the work done basically free.

Students will also benefit. A high school class is making a video record of the operation. And teenagers from the Heart of Oregon Corps will clear brush and gather the limbs and small tops into burn piles.

The overall goal is a combination of fuel reduction to protect against destructive future fire and the protection of several plant and animal species, such as the rare wildflower, Peck’s penstemon.