Document text
CLOUDY Temp: 44 °F Wind: W at 4 mph Thursday, February 20, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend February 9, 2003 George Sexton, conservation director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Canter, stands next to a tree that the Bureau of Land Management cut before 1999 as a sample to determine the board feet of a timber sale. That sale has yet to be logged. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Court halts sample felling By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will no longer cut down large sample trees as part of a timber cruising method used to determine how many board feet a proposed timber sale contains. In a mid-January settlement reached in U.S. District Court in Portland, the agency agreed to stop employing the fell, buck and scale sampling method unless it meets strict guidelines. Judge Anna J. Brown presided. For the past 30 years, the agency has relied heavily on sample felling in its Western Oregon forests, citing its accuracy. In this method, individual trees are randomly selected based on stand variability. After the amount of merchantable wood is estimated by diameter and height measurements, sample trees are then felled and bucked before environmental regulation requirements are met or the sale is sold. Under the agreement, the sample felling method can be used only if it meets certain stipulations. The sampling must be in areas set aside for timber management, on previously logged land or on tree plantations, and it can occur only after the agency has completed all surveys required by law for plant and wildlife species, such as those required under the Northwest Forest Plan and Endangered Species Act. Sample felling cannot be used on trees over 80 years old or those 15 to 20 inches or more in diameter at breast height (see sidebar). The settlement was the result of a 2001 lawsuit challenging the legality of the practice brought by the Ashland-based Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Umpqua Watersheds, the Oregon Natural Resources Council and the American Lands Alliance. "This agreement will handicap us a little," said Pat Madden, a forester who is the timber cruiser for the BLM’s Medford District. "We have other ways of doing it, but they are less accurate," he added. "When you fell (sample) trees, it helps you find out if there is any interior defect. A lot of trees have cross checking (splitting) or pitch pockets." Cutting sample trees is the only sure way to find those defects, he said. If a sale didn’t sell, the agency made a point of harvesting the sample trees that already had been cut and bucked, he said, although adding that harvest depended on whether the trees were readily accessible. Cutting the trees before the unit was sold bypassed environmental laws as well as common sense, said George Sexton, conservation director for the Wildlands Center. "The BLM would send crews out to a potential timber sale and fell up to 10 percent of the trees," Sexton said. "We’ve gone out to field-check a timber sale, a sale that has been withdrawn for various reasons. And we find that the BLM had already felled those (sample) trees, biggest and best, before the sale was even approved." The plaintiffs have no quarrel with small-diameter sample felling before the sale is sold, he said. "We do not have any problem with small-diameter matrix thinning," he said. "That’s explicit in our settlement. But if the BLM continues to focus on 4-foot-thick, 300-year-old Doug firs, they are going to have a fight. "We’ve got so much small-diameter plantation volume crying out for treatment that the BLM could be getting for local mills," he added. "But the BLM paradigm is to go after the biggest and best trees, causing the most social conflict and heaviest environmental impact." As evidence, he pointed to a 4-foot-diameter fir cut on the Flying Lost timber sale in the Butte Falls Resource Area. BLM officials have confirmed it was one of several cut as part of a sample cruise on the sale located a half-dozen miles east of Lost Creek Lake. The sale was later sold to the Rough and Ready Lumber Co. of Cave Junction on Aug. 10, 1999. The sale has yet to be logged. The firm announced late last year that it would be closing this spring unless a buyer could be found. The U.S. Forest Service does not use the sample tree felling method before a timber sale is sold as part of its cruising program, said forester Bob Thomas, the acting natural resource assistant for the Rogue River and Siskiyou national forests. Like the BLM, it uses a variety of timber cruising methods to estimate the board footage contained in a timber sale. "All timber cruising methods are based on a statistical average," he stressed. Any method used, such as plot cruising or 3-P — which stands for probability, proportional and prediction — is also based on what is most efficient for that particular unit, he said. Plot cruising involves estimating how many board feet is contained in a particular plot and expanding on that estimate. 3-P cruising involves randomly selecting trees for measurements to determine an estimate. "For instance, if a stand’s variability went from 2-inch (diameter) trees to 1,000-inch tree, a plot sample wouldn’t be used," Thomas said, noting that it would be less accurate than the 3-P method. "Overall, we use more plot cruising," he said. "When you do 3-P, it’s generally on a fairly large unit." In the past, Forest Service cruisers in the two forests sometimes felled two to three trees in a unit to check cruise statistics, he said. However, that was after the sale sailed through the regulatory process and already had been sold, he said, although adding that practice is no longer done. Cutting sample trees as part of a timber cruise isn’t generally done in the private industry, according to Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "Most land owners will conduct a timber harvest without using the sampling process," he said. "But if he is real familiar (with the harvesting process), he might try something like that so he has some indication he is getting a fair return for what is removed. "The sampling method used by the government is also an assurance it is getting the value for the volume removed," he added. He disagrees with the plaintiffs that any laws were being skirted by the sampling method. "This just made them (cruises) more accurate for the BLM," he said. "I would think it would be a good thing for the agency to have if they need it. "This lawsuit seems like another effort to slow or hamper the work of public land management agencies involved in commercial management activities," he added. With reduced timber harvesting coupled with the fact trees being cut on BLM forests are smaller than those cut in the past, agency officials say they can cope without cutting sample trees as part of the 3-P cruising method. "We have other cruising methods available to us," Madden said. "We will probably expand on those. We just won‘t be able to use the fell, buck and scale sample method now." The 3-P method can still be used, sans the tree sampling, he said. To offset the loss of felling sample trees, cruisers may use ladders to enable them to climb up and cut into a standing sample tree to check the condition of the wood, he said. "For us, the 3-P method has always been more accurate," he said. "We’ve been using it since the early ‘70s." But Sexton, noting that the plaintiffs’ principal concern was the cutting of the largest trees which are fire resistant, reiterated there is no opposition to removing the small-diameter trees in the stands that have grown unnaturally dense because of decades of fire suppression. "The green groups are willing to allow the pre-decisional felling of young, small-diameter trees" on BLM forests officially dedicated to timber harvests under the Northwest Forest Plan, he said. But he is concerned the agency will attempt to change the laws to get out of the agreement. That was the tack taken when it was found the agency was not following the species survey and manage requirements contained in the Northwest Forest Plan, he said. "The track record we’re seeing from the agencies under the Bush administration is that when they are found to violate the law, they don’t change their behavior," Sexton said. "Instead, they just change the law they were violating. "We want them to follow the environmental laws that are already in place," he added. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Conditions apply to sample felling Under the federal court agreement ending the BLM’s practice of felling large sample trees, the practice would not be permitted unless the laws are changed. Specifically, the agreement states that legislative, regulatory or other authority would have to adopt a National Environmental Policy Act procedure for sample tree felling or exempt the practice from NEPA. As it stands today, no sample tree felling is allowed under the following conditions: In reserve land use allocations under the Northwest Forest Plan, such as late-successional reserves and riparian reserves. Any regeneration timber sales or cutting units. Any wilderness study area. Any tree over 80 years old. Any Douglas fir tree 20 inches in diameter or more at breast height. Any other tree species 15 inches in diameter or more at breast height. In lands north of the Rogue River and west of the confluence of Grave Creek, known as the "Zane Grey" area. In the agreement, the plaintiffs were also to be reimbursed by the BLM for their attorneys’ fees and expenses, which came to $14,028. 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 webmaster feedback A D V E R T I S E R S