Document text
SUNNY Temp: 69 °F Wind: CLM at 0 mph Wednesday, July 17, 2002 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Cyberchef E The People Golf Job Network Headbone Zone Wellness Connection Movie Times Newspaper in Education Oregon CarZone Outdoor Journal Personals Prime Times Real Estate Tempo A & E TV Times W3 Magazine CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Destinations Automotive Communities Employment Entertainment Publications Real Estate Recreation Shopping Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Jobs @ Mail Tribune Email Story to a Friend July 14, 2002 In this area of Hull Mountain, burned in a nearly 8,000-acre fire in 1994, timber was salvaged on both Boise Corp. land, on the left, and Bureau of Land Management land, on the right. Because the BLM was not allowed to follow up with herbicides, thick brush has grown around the replanted trees. Whether to salvage at all after a fire is a debate among the timber industry, federal agencies and environmentalists. Click the photo to see a larger (38k) version; use your Back button to return to the story. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Related stories: � BLM decision restarts argument over salvage . � The debate "all depends on what your values are" Debating salvage The question of whether to log big trees killed by fire becomes more pressing as flames do their seasonal dance across the West By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune The air was still acrid with lingering smoke when log trucks began rolling out of the heart of the hills burned in the Hull Mountain Fire eight years ago next month. "We started delivering logs seven days after the fire was over," said Ken Cummings, chief forester for Boise Corp. The timber company salvaged 2 million board feet from its 1,800 acres burned by the nearly 8,000-acre fire in 1994. "We came up here the day the fire started," he said of the site a dozen miles northwest of Medford. "We were already thinking about what we could do for restoration, for roads, for logging." To salvage or not to salvage was never in question, he said, noting that dead trees quickly succumb to rot or bug infestation. "We grow trees because America uses the product," he said. "That’s our business." Yet the salvage debate is heating up as wildfires scorch hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the West this summer. Salvaging large timber killed by wildfire may make short-term business sense, but it doesn’t make sense in the long term, some argue. "These larger trees are the legacy of the previous stand," said Evan Frost, a forest ecologist and private consultant living in Ashland. The large trees provide a "microclimate" for the immediate area, he said. "By leaving the larger trees, it doesn’t become as hot and dry," he said. "As they decay and eventually fall, they add a structural component and organic component to the recovering site." The trees also provide habitat for plants and animals, he noted. Locally, much of the debate has centered on salvage after last August’s Quartz Fire, which burned 6,000 acres in the Little Applegate River watershed. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, after receiving no bidders for its proposed salvage sale (contractors said it was not cost-effective), has elected not to salvage its land scorched by that fire. The Forest Service is completing restoration and rehabilitation before salvaging its portion. The agencies’ decisions appalled the timber industry but drew the applause of environmental activists. Most private property owners with large tracts of land already have salvaged timber burned by the lightning-caused Quartz Fire. The Hull Mountain Fire area offers a glimpse of what awaits the Quartz Fire lands in eight years, Cummings said. When the smoke had cleared from the arson-caused Hull Mountain Fire, one firefighter was dead, nine structures had burned and thousands of acres of forest were scorched. Like all wildfires, the fire burned in a mosaic pattern. Some areas were turned to ash while islands of trees were left untouched. The BLM salvaged timber on some 975 acres of the 2,845 acres of its land that was burned in the Hull Mountain area. About 1,800 were replanted, mainly with pine and fir. "Some areas were not salvageable," explained John Bergin, a BLM forester who works in the Butte Falls Resource Area. "Those areas didn’t have trees to begin with. A lot of them were old brush fields." The agency also set aside riparian areas, northern spotted owl habitat and other protected sites, he observed. When the helicopter logging was completed, nearly 4.3 million board feet of timber was salvaged, Bergin said. Boise was the purchaser of that salvage sale, buying it for $528,192. The agency had dropped the appraised price by 15 percent after there were no takers when the sale was originally offered. The salvage sale is believed to have been the first federal timber sale sold since the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted in 1994. "We came in and planted the trees, even before we did the salvage," Bergin said, adding that the agency planted about 220 trees per acre. On its property, Boise planted between 300 and 400 trees per acre. It also used aerial applications of herbicides to retard the growth of grass and brush competing with the young seedlings for nutrition, sunlight and water. The result in some areas is a distinct line of vegetation drawn between Boise land and the BLM areas. On one south slope of a small basin, ponderosa pines planted by Boise stand 12 feet high with little competing vegetation. On the other side of the basin, the BLM side, thick brush encircles the conifers that were planted there. A federal court decision in the late 1980s stopped the BLM from using the aerial application of herbicides. As a result, the vegetation is manually removed around individual trees, Bergin explained. "We’ve done that at least once across all the acres," he said of the replanted sites. "In some places, we do it more than once." The agency left wildlife snags as well as woody debris on the ground to help provide habitat and restore and stabilize the soil. "Once the trees grow up, the canopy starts to close up and the brush will start to die off," Bergin said. The agency has a broader objective than most private landowners, particularly timber firms, observed Karen Gillespie, spokeswoman for the BLM’s Medford District. In addition to producing timber on lands earmarked for timber production, the BLM also focuses on restoring biological diversity, she said. "For us, there was never a question of whether or not to salvage," she said. "But we are also meeting our mission of ecosystem management in the long run." Ecologist Frost is concerned that salvaging timber after a wildfire, particularly one that burns intensely, harms sites left vulnerable by the fire. "The soil is exposed and easily impacted by conventional management activities," he said. Although there is no consensus within the scientific community, many scientists have begun to question the wisdom of harvesting large trees after a wildfire, he said. "Most (forest) ecologists side with the fact that removing large, commercially viable trees will not help put the site back into a healthy condition after a fire," he said. That’s not to say there aren’t opportunities for rehabilitation and restoration work in the aftermath of a wildfire, he stressed. "There are lots of things we can do, but taking out big trees isn’t one of them," he said. In addition, he is concerned that man-made tree plantations can create a wildfire hazard, he said. "While no evidence exists suggesting post-fire logging is environmentally beneficial, there is significant evidence that it has created long-term, adverse ecological impacts," said Joseph Vaile, an activist with the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. In particular, he refers to the 1995 Beschta report by several regional scientists that concluded salvage logging may delay forest recovery. "We need to allow Mother Nature to do what she does best," said center director Spencer Lennard. "The ecosystem is self-regulating, self-managing. She knows how to take care of herself." Mankind’s intervention disrupts that delicate balance of nature, he said. "A forest fire is a predatory influence that actually thins the forest and helps create complexity," he said. "Public lands that are burned should be restored and rehabilitated. But salvage logging should be avoided." But Bergin figures the land that was salvaged and restored will be enhanced by mankind’s intervention. "Our goal on matrix land is to have a viable forest," he said of land dedicated for timber production under the Northwest Forest Plan. "We could come in later and do other treatments like thinning." The work will also aid the recovery effort in the long run, he concluded. Boise forester Cummings believes that salvaging timber and replanting increases options. "It’s not the end of the world to cut a few trees while they still have value," Cummings said. "I’m not saying they don’t have any value if they aren’t cut. There is clearly some immediate wildlife value." He rejects those who say the industry is creating a monoculture or doesn’t care about the environment. "Even though we’ve been out here aggressively trying to manage this, you can see the grasses, manzanita sprouts," he said. "You do everything you can to put available moisture and light on your crop trees." But unwanted vegetation will ultimately pop up, vying for the water and sunlight, he said. To prevent erosion on nearby Ramsey Creek, the firm built check dams to slow the flow of water down gullies, he said. Some trees were felled along hillsides to keep the soil in place. In addition, volunteers from a local watershed group working with the firm planted willow and Oregon ash along the stream. In another area, a mile and a half of road was decommissioned. That work was part of the firm’s overall salvage program, not something that was done as an afterthought, he said. "By growing a forest and getting it back on the ground quicker, maybe we can mitigate the long-term ecological consequences," he said. "You can’t make the impact go away, but you can minimize the impact of a fire." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright 1997-2002 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy web master feedback A D V E R T I S E R S