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MYRTLE CREEK — Ribbons wrapped around towering evergreens on a hill east of Myrtle Creek signal an ambitious experiment.
The Bureau of Land Management plans to log trees here using principles developed by two Northwest forestry professors. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar endorses the plan, known as the Roseburg Pilot Project, as a way to balance spotted owl conservation and timber harvests.
But besides ambition, controversy blankets this swath of forest like the winter snow. Seemingly, the experiment in pleasing everyone isn't pleasing anyone.
Douglas County leaders on opposing sides of the forest management debate say the pilot project will fall short of its goals.
One of the professors, Jerry Franklin of the University of Washington, says that's to be expected when entrenched interests face something new.
“What we're doing here is threatening to the different positions, to all sides of this,” Franklin said. “It's something different rather than running at each other with the same unacceptable solutions.”
Since the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990, the timber industry has been frustrated by logging restrictions on federal lands. Meanwhile, unhappy conservation groups have sued to stop timber sales.
Into this gridlock re-enters Franklin and Oregon State University professor Norm Johnson, collaborators on the Northwest Forest Plan in the early 1990s.
They wrote a 160-page report with concepts the BLM is using to manage 350 acres of mostly Douglas fir and sugar pine in the Myrtle Creek watershed. The professors also helped plan pilot projects under way in the Medford and Coos Bay BLM districts.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is involved in protecting habitat for the spotted owl and other sensitive species. BLM officials say the Roseburg Pilot Project could produce its first timber sale as soon as July — while preserving old-growth forests.
BLM forester Abe Wheeler said the pilot project will attempt to achieve two contradictory tasks through unconventional clear-cuts that mimic forest fires or other natural disasters. This will create a valuable, but rare, type of habitat and produce an estimated 9 million broad feet of timber.
If the BLM deems the experiment successful, it could shape how the agency manages the rest of the Roseburg district, which covers roughly 425,000 acres, said Steven Lydick, a Roseburg BLM field manager.
The agency can't wait much longer to figure out a way to get more timber to mills, he said.
“That's something we've struggled with a lot on BLM land,” Lydick said. “We're running out of opportunities to thin (trees).”
Lydick said he believes that the project can achieve both its conservation and economic goals.
“We feel very strongly it can be done,” he said.
Interested observers are doubtful.
Strong critics
The Roseburg BLM is taking heat for including in the pilot project part of the hill about 20 miles east of Myrtle Creek. The hill includes old-growth trees, some at least 250 years old, and has never been logged.
“This is probably going to be our most controversial stand,” Lydick said, gazing up at the thick, mossy trees, some wearing green plastic ribbons to indicate they won't be cut. “It's older, more charismatic trees. A lot of folks are uncomfortable with that.”
The board president of the Roseburg-based conservation group Umpqua Watersheds, Ken Carloni, is among the objectors.
Carloni said he has no problem with the type of logging Franklin and Johnson propose in younger stands. But he opposes the same practices in untouched areas, where sensitive species, such as red tree voles, live.
“Come on. That is a rare piece of forest,” he said.
Carloni said he and other members of the conservation community are frustrated that their comments were ignored.
“It has never been collaboration,” he said. “Having all these (public) meetings and dragging us out into the field was window dressing.”
The general manager of the Roseburg-based Southern Oregon Log Scaling and Grading Bureau, Paul Beck, said he's also disappointed with the pilot project.
“The rumors of increased harvests on BLM lands are not true. It's not going to happen,” he said. “It was an opportunity to once more sit down and talk about things. It was a demonstration of just how broken things are. It didn't do anything more.”
Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said the pilot project is a perfect example of how bureaucracy bogs down the BLM.
Two years after it was initiated, the project is still at least six months away from its first timber harvest, he said.
Because of federal logging restrictions, the agency will get tied up in red tape if it attempts to use the pilot project's strategies to manage the rest of its land, Robertson predicted.
“As far as a program that can be replicated across the landscape, we don't think the pilot is going to help that at all,” he said.
Robertson said a plan being crafted by three Oregon congressmen to manage 2.2 million federal acres in Western Oregon offers more hope for increased timber harvests.
Robertson said he likes that Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader and Republican Greg Walden propose that the BLM hand over management of portions of the Oregon and California Railroad trust lands, especially areas containing older trees, to the U.S. Forest Service.
DeFazio said he and the other congressmen hope to release details of their proposal soon, but it's been tied up in the legislative process.
In the meantime, he said he's optimistic about the BLM's pilot projects, which he helped initiate. The projects are a ray of light in what is otherwise a broken system, he said.
“The only thing positive is what we're doing with our pilot projects,” DeFazio said.
Still, it could take years for the experiments to have any effect on federal forest policy because BLM districts would have to incorporate them into their management plans, DeFazio said.
Gaining Salazar's endorsement
About three years ago, Franklin and Johnson were inspired to create a plan after federal lawmakers asked for their advice on breaking the decades-long stalemate over forest policy in Southwestern Oregon.
With the help of DeFazio, the professors' plan reached Salazar's desk.
The interior secretary visited Roseburg at the request of DeFazio and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley in October 2010 and said he had no intention of “kicking the can on down the road” when it came to bringing more timber jobs to Douglas County.
He announced the pilot projects would test the professors' theories.
Franklin said he and Johnson's plan stresses creating “early successional habitat,” forest clearings where flowers and shrubs grow unshaded by trees.
Many native plants thrive in the sunlight. In turn, butterflies, birds and small mammals that feed on the plants thrive.
Such habitat is rare in Western Oregon because commercial logging favors quickly replanting and fire crews suppress blazes that would create clearings, Franklin said.
“We are really losing, have lost and are continuing to lose significant area of early successional,” he said. “No one had been thinking about or talking about how important that period is, where it's not dominated by forest. Turns out, that is really the most biodiverse period on forest sites.”
Wheeler said the BLM can create this type of habitat through logging that produces a “more natural” landscape than does an industrial clear-cut. Some dead trees will be left behind and shrubs planted. To even more closely imitate nature, the BLM plans to control burn logged areas, Wheeler said.
Franklin and Johnson proposed not replanting any trees in logged areas, but they modified their plan after public meetings.
“There was a segment of the public that said, ‘This is not OK. We're afraid,' ” Franklin said. “We said, ‘OK. In this pilot, we will do a low level of artificial regeneration.' We can always cut some of them down. We tried to respond to concerns that people had that we could accommodate.”
The BLM is mapping and building logging roads that will be wiped away once the timber is sold at auction. A first sale is targeted for July and a second sale could take place this fall, Lydick said.
The 9 million broad feet of timber the pilot project is expected to produce will go toward the 45 million board feet the Roseburg BLM is expected to produce each year.
Wheeler said biologists and hydrologists walk through the stands to determine which trees will remain. Harvests will avoid pockets with old-growth trees or vital plant and animal habitat.
Unlike other timber sales, Fish and Wildlife is collaborating with BLM to plan the harvest.
At least 30 percent of each stand will be preserved as wildlife habitat, Wheeler said.
In the stand containing old-growth trees east of Myrtle Creek, about 40 percent will be safe from logging, he said.
Franklin said the beauty of the pilot project is it doesn't go to extremes.
“People need to understand that you have alternatives to those that these well established stakeholders are endorsing,” he said. “You don't have to choose between intensive clear-cuts on one hand and preservation on the other.”
• You can reach reporter Inka Bajandas at 541-957-4202 or by email at ibajandas@nrtoday.com.
The Bureau of Land Management plans to log trees here using principles developed by two Northwest forestry professors. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar endorses the plan, known as the Roseburg Pilot Project, as a way to balance spotted owl conservation and timber harvests.
But besides ambition, controversy blankets this swath of forest like the winter snow. Seemingly, the experiment in pleasing everyone isn't pleasing anyone.
Douglas County leaders on opposing sides of the forest management debate say the pilot project will fall short of its goals.
One of the professors, Jerry Franklin of the University of Washington, says that's to be expected when entrenched interests face something new.
“What we're doing here is threatening to the different positions, to all sides of this,” Franklin said. “It's something different rather than running at each other with the same unacceptable solutions.”
Since the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990, the timber industry has been frustrated by logging restrictions on federal lands. Meanwhile, unhappy conservation groups have sued to stop timber sales.
Into this gridlock re-enters Franklin and Oregon State University professor Norm Johnson, collaborators on the Northwest Forest Plan in the early 1990s.
They wrote a 160-page report with concepts the BLM is using to manage 350 acres of mostly Douglas fir and sugar pine in the Myrtle Creek watershed. The professors also helped plan pilot projects under way in the Medford and Coos Bay BLM districts.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is involved in protecting habitat for the spotted owl and other sensitive species. BLM officials say the Roseburg Pilot Project could produce its first timber sale as soon as July — while preserving old-growth forests.
BLM forester Abe Wheeler said the pilot project will attempt to achieve two contradictory tasks through unconventional clear-cuts that mimic forest fires or other natural disasters. This will create a valuable, but rare, type of habitat and produce an estimated 9 million broad feet of timber.
If the BLM deems the experiment successful, it could shape how the agency manages the rest of the Roseburg district, which covers roughly 425,000 acres, said Steven Lydick, a Roseburg BLM field manager.
The agency can't wait much longer to figure out a way to get more timber to mills, he said.
“That's something we've struggled with a lot on BLM land,” Lydick said. “We're running out of opportunities to thin (trees).”
Lydick said he believes that the project can achieve both its conservation and economic goals.
“We feel very strongly it can be done,” he said.
Interested observers are doubtful.
Strong critics
The Roseburg BLM is taking heat for including in the pilot project part of the hill about 20 miles east of Myrtle Creek. The hill includes old-growth trees, some at least 250 years old, and has never been logged.
“This is probably going to be our most controversial stand,” Lydick said, gazing up at the thick, mossy trees, some wearing green plastic ribbons to indicate they won't be cut. “It's older, more charismatic trees. A lot of folks are uncomfortable with that.”
The board president of the Roseburg-based conservation group Umpqua Watersheds, Ken Carloni, is among the objectors.
Carloni said he has no problem with the type of logging Franklin and Johnson propose in younger stands. But he opposes the same practices in untouched areas, where sensitive species, such as red tree voles, live.
“Come on. That is a rare piece of forest,” he said.
Carloni said he and other members of the conservation community are frustrated that their comments were ignored.
“It has never been collaboration,” he said. “Having all these (public) meetings and dragging us out into the field was window dressing.”
The general manager of the Roseburg-based Southern Oregon Log Scaling and Grading Bureau, Paul Beck, said he's also disappointed with the pilot project.
“The rumors of increased harvests on BLM lands are not true. It's not going to happen,” he said. “It was an opportunity to once more sit down and talk about things. It was a demonstration of just how broken things are. It didn't do anything more.”
Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said the pilot project is a perfect example of how bureaucracy bogs down the BLM.
Two years after it was initiated, the project is still at least six months away from its first timber harvest, he said.
Because of federal logging restrictions, the agency will get tied up in red tape if it attempts to use the pilot project's strategies to manage the rest of its land, Robertson predicted.
“As far as a program that can be replicated across the landscape, we don't think the pilot is going to help that at all,” he said.
Robertson said a plan being crafted by three Oregon congressmen to manage 2.2 million federal acres in Western Oregon offers more hope for increased timber harvests.
Robertson said he likes that Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader and Republican Greg Walden propose that the BLM hand over management of portions of the Oregon and California Railroad trust lands, especially areas containing older trees, to the U.S. Forest Service.
DeFazio said he and the other congressmen hope to release details of their proposal soon, but it's been tied up in the legislative process.
In the meantime, he said he's optimistic about the BLM's pilot projects, which he helped initiate. The projects are a ray of light in what is otherwise a broken system, he said.
“The only thing positive is what we're doing with our pilot projects,” DeFazio said.
Still, it could take years for the experiments to have any effect on federal forest policy because BLM districts would have to incorporate them into their management plans, DeFazio said.
Gaining Salazar's endorsement
About three years ago, Franklin and Johnson were inspired to create a plan after federal lawmakers asked for their advice on breaking the decades-long stalemate over forest policy in Southwestern Oregon.
With the help of DeFazio, the professors' plan reached Salazar's desk.
The interior secretary visited Roseburg at the request of DeFazio and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley in October 2010 and said he had no intention of “kicking the can on down the road” when it came to bringing more timber jobs to Douglas County.
He announced the pilot projects would test the professors' theories.
Franklin said he and Johnson's plan stresses creating “early successional habitat,” forest clearings where flowers and shrubs grow unshaded by trees.
Many native plants thrive in the sunlight. In turn, butterflies, birds and small mammals that feed on the plants thrive.
Such habitat is rare in Western Oregon because commercial logging favors quickly replanting and fire crews suppress blazes that would create clearings, Franklin said.
“We are really losing, have lost and are continuing to lose significant area of early successional,” he said. “No one had been thinking about or talking about how important that period is, where it's not dominated by forest. Turns out, that is really the most biodiverse period on forest sites.”
Wheeler said the BLM can create this type of habitat through logging that produces a “more natural” landscape than does an industrial clear-cut. Some dead trees will be left behind and shrubs planted. To even more closely imitate nature, the BLM plans to control burn logged areas, Wheeler said.
Franklin and Johnson proposed not replanting any trees in logged areas, but they modified their plan after public meetings.
“There was a segment of the public that said, ‘This is not OK. We're afraid,' ” Franklin said. “We said, ‘OK. In this pilot, we will do a low level of artificial regeneration.' We can always cut some of them down. We tried to respond to concerns that people had that we could accommodate.”
The BLM is mapping and building logging roads that will be wiped away once the timber is sold at auction. A first sale is targeted for July and a second sale could take place this fall, Lydick said.
The 9 million broad feet of timber the pilot project is expected to produce will go toward the 45 million board feet the Roseburg BLM is expected to produce each year.
Wheeler said biologists and hydrologists walk through the stands to determine which trees will remain. Harvests will avoid pockets with old-growth trees or vital plant and animal habitat.
Unlike other timber sales, Fish and Wildlife is collaborating with BLM to plan the harvest.
At least 30 percent of each stand will be preserved as wildlife habitat, Wheeler said.
In the stand containing old-growth trees east of Myrtle Creek, about 40 percent will be safe from logging, he said.
Franklin said the beauty of the pilot project is it doesn't go to extremes.
“People need to understand that you have alternatives to those that these well established stakeholders are endorsing,” he said. “You don't have to choose between intensive clear-cuts on one hand and preservation on the other.”
• You can reach reporter Inka Bajandas at 541-957-4202 or by email at ibajandas@nrtoday.com.
