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http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Obituaries Weather Archive Hot Topics Forum Photo Gallery Past Readers Polls Revels Etcetera Backpage O-Zone Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Online Games Movie Preview October 23, 2006 Loggers jammed by red tape EUGENE — Loggers used to drop a tree or two in the water to help coho salmon find shelter, but now that it takes as much as six months to get a permit to put "large woody debris" in a stream, salmon have less shelter, state officials say. The Oregon Department of Forestry would like to make it easier for loggers to create habitat for salmon. The lengthy permit system of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers has stopped a lot of landowners from building the fish shelters, said Ted Lorensen, assistant state forester. "Large woody debris is very important for fish habitat. It creates all kinds of stream complexity and habitat niches," he said. "In the winter, it provides refuge from higher flows." The logs are important for young coho because the fish spend almost a year in fresh water, meaning that they must winter over. "Over-winter survival is quite dependent on stream complexity and reducing high water velocities. Coho are relatively weak swimmers," Lorensen said. Cary Hart, forester for Giustina Land & Timber, said private landowners would be willing to leave logs in the streams because they, too, like the fish. "The opportunity, when we have harvest equipment there, will greatly facilitate positive, good, solid projects," Hart said. Hart said the change in streams is really noticeable after a year. "You catch the gravel, you slow the current, you see the fish using the habitat that's created," he said. Log placement on about 13 million acres of state and private land in Oregon should resume early next year if the Oregon Board of Forestry approves the proposal, Lorensen said. That should speed the reversal of some old state policies that are now considered to be mistaken. In the 1960s, 1970s and up into the early 1980s, state crews went out and removed woody debris from the streams. Some of the wood was remnants of an early-century logging practice. Loggers would build wood crib dams on streams, pile logs in the pooling water behind them then blow up the dams to float the logs down to the sawmills. "The perceptions about those got extended to wood is bad and so wood got removed, so the streams were cleaned," Lorensen said. Even after the state stopped the practice, the streams remained unnaturally bare and fast because it takes a long time for trees to fall and woody debris to accumulate, Lorensen said. That's why the 1996 Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds encouraged landowners to replace the woody debris, and many did. But then, three years later, the corps began requiring the permit that's now under review, he said. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising Inkjet Printers Student Loans Water Filter Helzberg Diamonds Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Advertisement: Copyright © 2006 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved.