Region 1 Annual Year in Review

Here’s the link:

This article shows some of the numbers we have been interested in..

“We’re a relatively small player in overall forest dynamics,” said Gene DeGayner, the region’s director of renewable resource management. “This year, we’ll treat with commercial timber sales about 12,000 acres a year, regionwide. We’ll do maybe another 8,000 acres of pre-commercial thinning.
“But we’re looking at 6 million acres of beetle kill. Last year, we had more than 1 million acres burned. What we can affect with mechanical treatment is 1 percent of 1 percent of the region. We are a small player. We cannot move the needle on a lot of these issues.”

The 2012 Year in Review publication released last week on the Internet features 24 pages of stories of projects, awards and accomplishments in Region 1. In its introduction, Regional Forester Faye Krueger invited readers to “look at this publication as the bridge to how much more we can accomplish in 2013.”
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The agency cast a somewhat bigger shadow in less labor-intensive efforts like noxious weed management and prescribed burning. But DeGayner said a large chunk of its expected timber harvest stalled in lawsuits challenging the Colt-Summit forest restoration project near Seeley Lake.

That project was the keynote of the Forest Service’s latest tactic for getting stuff done in the woods: the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. These pilot projects got special funding from Congress to see if a combination of including community members in the planning, bartering timber for restoration work, and seeking matching funds from state or private sources might speed up workflow.
In Region 1, CFLRP provided about $9 million in operating funds, which was to be matched 1-to-1 in partnership agreements. The biggest local effort was the Southwestern Crown Collaborative, to do logging and landscape restoration in the Lolo, Helena and Flathead national forests. It claimed credit for producing 32 million board feet of sawlogs, 18,834 acres of noxious weed treatment, 19 miles of stream restoration and 268 miles of trail maintenance between 2010 and 2012. It’s allocated $4 million a year in CFLRP funding for 10 years.
“We’ve got a good portion of that program tied up in litigation, but we hope to prevail on those this year,” DeGayner said.

A federal district judge ruled in favor of the Forest Service on nine of 10 claims, but ordered it to provide more explanation how the project might affect threatened lynx habitat. DeGayner said that extra paperwork would not change the size or scope of the project.

The other main way the Forest Service cut trees last year was through travel safety projects that clear beetle-killed stands along roads. In 2012, it tallied about 500 miles of easement clearing, which paid for itself by the sale of timber.

Here’s a link to the press release from Region 1, but there is a warning that it is a large file. The actual link to it is imbedded from the press release page.

3 thoughts on “Region 1 Annual Year in Review”

  1. Here’s a link to the actual “2012 year in review” for the Northern Region….

    http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5407537.pdf

    Once again, many of us are calling into question the accomplishment claims of the Southwestern Crown Collaborative. We believe that this collaborative group is taking credit for everything these three districts of these three national forests do…regardless of whether it’s a direct result of the SWCC or not. For example, unless the SWCC is counting pre-SWCC projects like the Meadow Smith timber sale, and other pre-SWCC timber sales, there is no way the SWCC is directly responsible, or can claim credit for “producing 32 million board feet of sawlogs” and the associated jobs, income, etc that goes along with it.

    I also will say that it’s sort of interesting to me how something that’s billed as a “Year in Review” for the entire Northern Region (which encompasses 25 million acres and is spread over 5 states, and includes 12 National Forests located within the perimeter of northeastern Washington, northern Idaho, and Montana; and the National Grasslands in North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota) sort of gets boiled down in this article to a lawsuit over the Colt Summit timber sale, which is the first Lolo NF timber sale lawsuit in 6 years. Also, I have to believe that tons of great stuff is happening over this 25 million acre span of public lands. We have world-class Wilderness areas, world-class hiking and camping areas, world-class wildlife habitat, etc….but most of the article focuses on some of the “negative” aspects of fire, bugs or a timber sale lawsuit. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees. Why do we oftentimes view these public national forest lands only in a negative light?

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  2. I wonder what percent of region one is in the WUI zone. And what percent of the WUI is being treated every year? I’m glad to see the USFS using percentage based perspectives instead of raw acres to tell the public how much is being logged. The actual number is .8% of the forested acreage logged per decade! I bet Yellowstone logs more than that 🙂

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