Salvage plan

Thinning our Forests: A News-Review Special Series

Around Douglas County, forest thinning controversies in Washington, D.C., aren't slowing down private logging workloads for industry.

In fact, loggers have been busy this fall.

But that hasn't always been true in recent years, with more than 1,900 local wood-products jobs lost since 1990.

Rick Barnes, owner of the Roseburg forestry consulting firm Barnes & Associates, said past job losses are due, in part, to low quantities of available timber from federal lands in Douglas County.

That's a shame, he said, both for forest health and healthy local economies. He supports the Bush administration's Healthy Forest Initiative as a way out of a decade of environmental appeals and lawsuits.

"I really appreciate what President Bush is trying to do. I think it is important both for the industry and the long-term health of the forest," he said. "We need to be able to get over all these appeals that are stopping positive forest management."

Positive forest management means many things to Barnes. Depending on location and site conditions, it could mean thinning productive forest to a spacing of 12 or 13 feet between trees. In more arid southern Douglas County, a spacing of 15 to 17 feet could be necessary to help ponderosa pine grow healthy, he said. Sometimes even old-growth trees must be cut to prevent the spread of disease in reserves.

"If you say no cutting of old growth you're taking a tool away from forest managers," Barnes said. "In some cases, active management in old-growth stands is going to be needed to maintain those old-growth stands in good health."

Barnes, who has worked in the timber industry since 1978, points to 1996 - a year when Douglas fir trees were toppled in the Umpqua National Forest by high winds and heavy snow. He said a lack of management after the "snowdown-blowdown" is an example of "what not to do" to reduce fire risks.

Barnes estimates nearly 125 million board feet of timber - enough wood for 12,500 three-bedroom homes - ended up as hazardous fuel on the forest floor.

Little salvage was possible because of environmentalist opposition and federal regulation, although Barnes contends it could have been allowed under the supposedly flexible Northwest Forest Plan. Since 1996, Douglas fir beetle infestation and fire risks have increased on the Umpqua National Forest due to inaction on federal lands, he said.

"Much of that material was just fuel for the fire this year," Barnes said. "What wasn't burned is still out there ready to be burned by future fires."

Ray Jones, vice president of resources for Roseburg Forest Products, agrees that more needs to be done to bring salvage logs to market quickly.

"My personal opinion is that there needs to be a streamlined way to more rapidly put up salvage sales ... caused by fire, windstorm, insects or disease," he said. "Sap rot and checking (cracking) is a problem. In white fir species and hemlock, you start losing wood value very rapidly."

Pine trees are also affected by a fungus that stains wood products blue and drops the value of lumber and veneer if not harvested quickly, Jones said, but federal environmental analysis and citizen appeals can create two-year or larger time spans between fire disturbance and environmentally approved salvage harvests.

Jones added that commercial thinning sales to meet wildfire safety and forest management objectives are of benefit to both good land management and the wood products industry.

Roseburg Forest Products recently purchased the more than 1 million-board-foot Bland Days commercial thinning sale, located 10 miles east of Canyonville. The sale was offered by the Bureau of Land Management and sold at a price of $233,927.

The goal of the sale, said John Royce, a BLM multi-resource specialist and supervisor, is better forest health through removal of suppressed trees and reductions in ladder fuels that allow fire to spread from the forest floor to the crowns of healthy trees.

"We use lots of small diameter thinning-type logs in our operations in veneer, plywood and our stud mill. These thinning sales are definitely a good thing," Jones said. "We are happy to see BLM and the Forest Service provide product and get back into the business of selling something."

If Jake Gibbs, a forester with Lone Rock Timber Co., and Cy Standley, timber manager for Glide Lumber Products, had their way, more salvage opportunities and more direct forest management on the Umpqua National Forest would result.

"My hope is that people will understand we need to be out taking care of this before the fire, not after the fire," Standley said. "Right now, on the North Umpqua past Apple Creek, there is more sedimentation from burned areas than you ever had from logging. It's obvious to see the damage the fire leaves is beyond anything else. It will be worse after we've gotten more rain. It will take a long time to get the forest back to the way you want it."

Gibbs, who also heads the local chapter of the Society of American Foresters, said new techniques, lighter-weight mechanization and increased caution over potential environmental harm are all part of current private logging practices that are compatible with good federal land management.

He said criticisms of the Healthy Forest Initiative - claims it will lead to unhealthy logging - are just plain wrong.

"There is all of this concern that thinning will mean log trucks coming out of the forest. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. What matters is the objective of a healthy forest," Gibbs said. "We're not giving forest workers the opportunity to show what they can do without harming the environment."

 You can reach reporter Jeff Willis at 957-4218 or by e-mail at jwillis@newsreview.info.