An aerial image made by drone shows cutting alongside Road 2209 in the Willamette National Forest on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Courtesy of Green Oregon (FWIW this doesn’t look bad to me)
From this article on OPB (note the reference to “so-called danger trees”):
The U.S. Forest Service has abandoned a plan to log along more than 400 miles of roads in burnt areas of the Willamette National Forest.
In a written statement issued Wednesday, Willamette National Forest supervisor Dave Warnack said mounting legal costs influenced his decision to withdraw the plan.
“Our work to safely restore public access to areas burned in the 2020 Labor Day fires continues to be top priority,” Warnack said. “Upon withdrawal of this decision, my staff will conduct another review of the purpose and need of this project and will consider a new approach to addressing this important issue.”
The federal agency crafted the plan following the Beachie Creek, Lionshead and Holiday Farm fires of 2020, saying roadside trees killed or injured in the fires posed a safety risk to recreators and motorists.
The plan drew a legal challenge from environmental groups Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and Willamette Riverkeeper, who argued the plan was a thinly veiled attempt at commercial salvage logging of some 20,000 acres of public lands, and that carrying it out would degrade water quality and wildlife habitat.
U.S. District Judge Michael McShane in November ordered an immediate stop to the roadside logging just days before cutting was set to begin, indicating the environmental groups were likely to win their case.
McShane wrote in his order that the Forest Service could cut trees at imminent risk of falling onto roads, but noted that most of the trees slated for felling didn’t fit that description.
Areas within the Willamette National Forest that burned in recent wildfires, such as the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, Opal Creek and Breitenbush, will remain closed to the public until further notice while the Forest Service develops a new plan.
It seems to me that this approach (the usual proposal- litigation hamster wheel) is not working for cases like these. And with the idea that fires will become more frequent, larger and more intense, what we see now could be just the tip of the iceberg (to mix metaphors). Plus concerns about climate change via bark beetles or directly killing trees, plus non-native insects and pathogens .. there could be many reason for dead trees.
1. Having observed many roadside hazard tree projects, I note that cutting roadside hazard trees doesn’t seem to be (as) controversial elsewhere (except in Region 5 perhaps). The discussion seems to be about “how far from the road” “how dead or likely to become dead how soon” and “which roads”.
2. It seems to me (but perhaps not) that the FS would be following R-6 roadside hazard tree guidance, developed by their own technical experts, who don’t stand anything to gain from more trees or fewer trees. Is the judge overruling that “expert guidance” ” latest science” or “agency discretion”?
3. It seems like it would be fairly easy to achieve some kind of common ground because there are so many variables to consider… distance from the road, which roads, how likely to die and so on. So… let’s get creative and think of easier, less costly ways to arrive at future decisions, considering the environmental, recreation, products and equity consequences. It’s probably the recreationists (equity) who suffer while all this is taking too long to decide (and taxpayers of course, and the opportunity costs of having employees involved instead of other work.. and so on)
I’m not sure the timber industry is waiting on unexpected fire salvage from the Williamette, but perhaps they are.
A. A Hazard Tree GMR approach, round up all the best information via PNW/PSW. Would future judges consider that? What is the track record on current GMRs?
B. A Regional (or national?) Hazard Tree Programmatic from which forest decisions can be tiered. I recall having used those for certain pesticides back in the old days.
C. The latest science for peace-making… get a variety of experts in conflict resolution to suggest methods of resolving the issue (how much, where, how far from roads, what characteristics?).
D. Congressional Help. Round up info and make recommendations for contents of a legislative CE. While this is the best solution from the finality perspective, often Congressional staff don’t analyze in depth and have little public involvement. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. They could put one or more proposals online and get analysis and engagement from interest groups, agencies, and the public to reduce the “behind closed doors” or “doing our buddies favors” aspect.
36 thoughts on “Beyond Roadside Hazard Tree Litigation: What Could We Do Instead?”
Personally I believe keeping these areas closed was the goal all along, probably for both sides. The Forest Service made a half hearted attempt to reopen the area and then probably coordinated with environmental groups to quickly capitulate as soon as they were sued, knowing that if the area remains too hazardous for the Forest Service to reopen the roads, they will just stay closed. Eventually the Forest Service will decide these roads never had a purpose and are low value because no one is using them anymore and they are “naturally reclaiming”. They will then be decommissioned, instantly creating a new “roadless area” that will then turn into a “recommended wilderness area” in next forest plan, which will be rolled into the next big wilderness bill a few years after that. And bingo. More Wilderness.
Fires are the best tool out there for driving out existing uses and manufacturing Wilderness, and both the Forest Service and environmental groups love that.
For some of these roads, maybe the Forest Service should choose to go with the “No Action Alternative”, then keeping the roads closed until the hazards are no longer in play. Just to show the public what is really at stake. Of course, hikers could still choose to walk to their destinations, if they want. *smirk*
Haul road and spur road densities on the Willamette National forest are off the charts… We’re talking about the biggest old growth tree producer in all the National forests for decades. At the peak of logging just the Fall Creek watershed alone on that National Forest produced a billion bd. ft. of timber in less than a handful of years.
There’s so many roads that we no longer need access to/can afford to provide access to and there’s some roads that we do need access to on this massive landscape. Having an honest conversation about that is what this supervisor wisely decided on because from a long term planning perspective the WNF lacks the resources to thoroughly deploy a more aggressive option.
Since I am not a local, I’m just fine with closing those roads, no matter what trailheads they go to. I’m not going to support road decommissioning on roads that would be needed, in the future, after the hazards are remedied, by ole Mom Nature. Sure, it might take 20 years but, that IS what some people (who file lawsuits) want. If culverts get plugged, due to fallen snags, we’ll just have to fix it, when the courts allow it. Lessons need to be learned, the hard way, it seems. Why not SHOW the public what happens when the “No Action Alternative” is selected. Not just tell them what is predicted to happen.
As often the case, the litigants are spending more time than the Forest Service ground truthing the plans, which is why their lawsuit has enough traction to get the supervisor to withdraw the plan.
In forestry site-specifics are essential and the notion that they can write up a plan for hundreds of miles of roads without thoroughly evaluating sensitive areas for additional retention requirements beyond the general requirements is a non-starter. Add to this the fact that we’re looking at more catastrophic wildfires in 2020 being equal to acres burned in past 35 years combined, with what little remains of local and regional sawmills, means there’s a supply glut and makes economic analysis of the plan suspect as well.
A better way is to focus on long term plans for haul road and spur road decommissioning via preliminary gate closures in areas that don’t require much culvert removal, as well as considering the expansion of roadless area and wilderness areas to decrease USFS long term costs and increase long-term land management efficiency. As in if you’re hazard tree clearing a road you’re obligating yourself to spending money on future maintenance of that same stretch of road and there’s no enough funding to do that to all the roads, just the high priority ones.
Had the above objectives been considered and the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth properly applied, there would be no legal challenge of the plan and the plaintiffs would support its responsible conservation values. But instead USFS thought they could just irresponsibly write a plan that looked like a blank check to loggers under the guise of an “emergency” that does NOT give enough time for thorough analysis and thus they lost/failed.
Remember, Region 6 has a formal hazard tree training program for its employees who select the hazard trees. Either a tree can hit the road, or it can’t. There shouldn’t be much controversy over that. When the litigators get to choose which roads will be never needed again, where is the formal scientific site-specific analysis of each and every road they want to close?!? Of course, there isn’t any study done on the specific roads they want to close.
Yes, and conversely there isn’t any study of sensitive areas that require greater retention levels in the logging plan or in the hazard tree training program, which is why the plan failed and was withdrawn. Bad leadership in this case in an unwillingness to collaborate with potential plaintiffs before they become plaintiffs. Now that the plan is withdrawn they can finally do that.
I’d hope that leadership would collaborate with everyone, including folks like me who are unlikely to sue. I’d hope that they listen to their own experts (even when they disagree with each other BTDT)
What you’re suggesting sounds like FS folks should listen more to people who are likely to sue. I don’t agree with you.
If a dead/dying tree can hit a road, why would we want to retain it? It will always be a judgement call by the person with the paintgun. Additionally, such a tree could be felled, and be required to be left in place. Another judgement call.
I concur 100%. It is also important to remember that “litigators” are the tax paying public these forests belong to and have every right to hold the USFS feet to the fire. After all, they are the ones ultimately paying the USFS bills.
Maybe a non-profit doesn’t pay taxes but every single member of said organizations do. Besides which an enormous number of timber sales are sold at a deficit at tax payers expense and the timber industry’s profit.
Aaaaannnnddd, we are going to jumpstart massive fuels treatments and harvests? I don’t think so; site specificity was a big obstacle to overcome in 4-FRI, and allowed the Planning to move to a fantastic, collaborated Decision. Of course the trouble with 4-FRI was no industry capable of meeting the rigors of that Decision.
Unless, and until, something major changes in the Courts, or Law, or public opinion, the FS is going to be constrained to the pinnacle of “analysis paralysis”….
Another massive sell out by the FS to the enviros, and the large timber companies. (Who right now want small green trees.) So all this timber resource goes to waste. Our investment in all those roads goes to waste. The roads are closed, the trees fall down, culverts blow out, the brush grows, and then it all burns again. No management, no restoration, no anything. Goodbye forests, so glad we pretend to protect them. So glad the local enviros pretend to care. These people think Trump is evil, well so are they.
Who gets hurt by this? The small local mills, the small local communities, and in the end our national forests, but who really cares?
I believe it is first time a judge has stopped hazard tree removal. The FS will have no choice but to close the roads and keep them closed. More people will be confined to fewer areas. Are we having fun yet?
It makes me lose all hope,,,
Bob, I see the “judge deciding which trees should go” as something that may prompt coevolution.. perhaps toward standardized legislative CE for hazard trees. Sometimes things have to get bad before it’s clear to the powers that be that there is a need for change.
This case was not about run-of-the-mill (pun accepted) hazard trees. From an earlier article:
“Oregon Wild brought this case to defend the simple proposition that when a wildfire burns through an ongoing timber sale, the Forest Service needs to pump the brakes and involve the public in deciding how to move forward,” Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild said.
With regard to the hazard tree issue, I think Sharon missed one factor that generates controversy – how many trees/acres. A long, thin timber sale can still have significant effects. (Which has been an issue in other court decisions rejecting the use of existing categorical exclusions.)
With regard to the question of “how many roads, and which,” the Travel Management Rule required a “travel analysis,” which should have provided answers to these kinds of questions. Maybe those answers are in this 2015 document that is what the Willamette says is its response to the roads analysis requirement: https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd486402.pdf
The lawsuit reported on by OPB is the same one discussed in this Forest Policy blog post from November of last year. The legal issue is straightforward — there is no NEPA categorical exclusion that authorizes the proposed tree cutting. The “road maintenance” CE, which the FS relied on, just doesn’t cut it (sorry). The Forest Service had already lost this legal issue not once, but twice, including in the 9th Circuit, so it’s a head-scratcher as to why this project ever saw the light of day.
These trees are not “hazardous,” at least no more so than any other tree is a danger. Consider:
1) Trees pose the same level of danger to people on federal lands as do bears — on average one person per year dies from each cause.
2) Most tree-related deaths occur east of the Mississippi. Why? Tornadoes and hurricanes blow trees over. We don’t prophylactically cut trees east of the Mississippi because of tornadoes and hurricanes because people like trees and are willing to accept the inherent very small risk.
3) Cutting trees down, especially dead trees, is much more dangerous than is walking or driving under trees. The Forest Service sought to trade an infinitesimal risk to the public for a large risk to private contractors. Why?
4) Most trees that fall down are green and alive when they do so. For example, western Oregon was blessed with a delightful snowstorm last month. Trees fell over littering our Cascade mountain passes and highways. The trees blocked roads, hit vehicles, and otherwise made a mess. The trees were green and alive when they fell over due to the snow load on their live, green branches. Duh.
I hope the Forest Service recovers its senses and restores public access to our national forests. People love hiking in old-growth forests notwithstanding the many dead snags that characterize them. People love cross-country skiing through burned areas in the Three Sisters and Mt. Jefferson wilderness areas notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands fire-killed trees.
There are numerous trees across the road in the distance. More of these burned and dead trees will fall as they rot. Maybe the danger to people driving and walking on that road isn’t great, but there IS a danger. Absent cutting along the road, there also will be maintenance — removing trees that fall and block the road. From my point of view, it makes sense to cut the trees along the road that are potential hazards. Any open ground will quickly sprout shrubs, grasses, wildflowers, and trees — maybe it’ll even be planted — so it won’t be black for long.
FWIW, last month the manager of a local county park — I’m a trail maintenance volunteer — asked me to cut down a dead alder — ~20 inches DBH, 100+ feet tall, that had died, probably from age and insects. The tree was next to a bridge we were in the process of repairing. Why cut the tree? It was a danger to hikers and the bridge. The park manager does all he can to avoid cutting trees and snags, as he favors keeping them as wildlife habitat, but in cases like this, there is no hesitation. FWIW, I dropped the tree into a stream where coho and steelhead spawn, so there was another benefit to cutting the snag — fish habitat.
By your logic, Steve, we should cut all the trees that might fall onto roads, trails, or anywhere else, for that matter. What part of green trees kill more people than dead ones do is so hard to understand?
I hear you, Andy, but we’re not talking about live, green trees. We’re talking about millions of roadside trees that were killed by wildfires in the western US in recent years — unprecedented numbers of dead trees along thousands of miles of road. There is a likelihood that many of these dead trees will fall onto roads, bridges, power lines, buildings, and maybe even cars and people. And even if no damage is done, fallen trees will need to be removed from roads to keep the roads open, which means higher costs. In a previous thread I posted a link to and an excerpt from a study, “Spatial and temporal assessment of responder exposure to snag hazards in post-fire environments,” which notes that:
“Snag hazard increased significantly immediately post-fire, with severe or extreme hazard conditions accounting for 47%, 83%, and 91% of areas burned at low, moderate and high-severity fire, respectively. … After 10 years, snag hazard declined rapidly as snags fell or fragmented, but severe or extreme hazard persisted for 20, 30 and 35 years in portions of the low, moderate and high-severity fire areas.” https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/publications/spatial-and-temporal-assessment-responder-exposure-snag-hazards-post-fire-environments
There are valid reasons, backed up by science and common sense, for removing hazard trees along roads and other infrastructure. Sure, there are good reasons for leaving fire-killed trees as wildlife habitat and to avoid disturbing soils, for example, but in many areas the risks far outweigh the benefits of leaving fire-killed roadside hazard trees standing.
Why do you single out dead, burned trees as hazardous? Green trees are hazardous; in fact, more so! A teen was killed recently by a bottom-land, deciduous green tree in the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area (tragically, he was planting seedlings). Last month, a green tree fell over on Hwy. 126 near Walton damaging a passing emergency vehicle. The proximate cause? Snow loading.
During normal stand development in westside Douglas-fir forests, most of the seedlings at stand origin have fallen over by the time the stand is 100 years. Wind and snow loading are the major causes for these tree falls. So where’s the hue and cry over that risk?
It is a fact of physics (you know, entropy and gravity) that all trees fall over. Most do so when they are alive and green. A minor fraction do so after they are killed by insects, root rot, lightning strike, or fire. So why do you discriminate against the dead trees when it’s the live ones that pose the bigger (albeit still trivially minor) risk? I don’t get it.
This paranoia about dead trees is unhealthy. An HJ Andrews employee told me that the local FS district staff informed him that a majestic snag located along a scenic trail in the experimental forest would have to be felled. The snag was next to an interpretive sign explaining the ecological role dead wood plays in the old-growth forest the trail traversed. Is irony dead, too? The experimental forest staff removed the sign to save the snag.
Shouldn’t the question be whether being dead makes a particular tree more hazardous? If green trees are more hazardous (as a group) might that be because there are more of them, and more people among them, than dead trees?
A “particular” tree is not a helpful point of reference for a meaningful risk analysis. The first task is to understand the magnitude of the public health risk. When it comes to trees (dead, alive, big, small, whatever), that risk is trivially small. It is small in the absolute sense (about 1 death/year in the backcountry) and it is small relative to other backcountry hazards, as this Washington Post article makes clear. Worrying about trees when it comes to public safety on federal lands is like worrying about the common cold during a SARS pandemic.
If only one visitor dies annually from falling trees on federal land (as past experience suggests), how many deaths can be abated by cutting a particular tree? At most, one. Now consider the odds that your particular tree is the one tree in the entire forest/region/nation that was destined to cause that one death on public land. Pretty darn small, right?
Now imagine the thought process that goes through a “trained” hazard tree evaluator as she sizes up each dead tree. “Hmm, that tree is leaning toward the road, it’s only 100′ away from the road, and it’s dead, so it’ll fall down some day (nb: of course, all trees fall down some day). If I cut it down now, it won’t hit anyone when it falls down of its own accord.” True enough, but also irrelevant. The odds of this particular tree hitting anyone when it falls down are so infinitesimally small as to be non-quantifiable. The tree evaluator is abating a virtually non-existent risk. On the other hand, her decision to cut the tree is exposing a logger to a real risk of being hit by that snag during the falling operation when it is a 100% certainty that a person (the faller) will be in the tree’s kill zone.
I’m not disagreeing that absolute risk is low. I am disagreeing that it is lower for a burned tree than for a live one. I would agree if your point is that the comparison is irrelevant because the absolute risk is so low (but you’re the one who said “live ones pose a bigger risk”).
The demographics of trees is an interesting ecological/biological question. Post-fire snag studies in western Oregon’s Cascades show that persistence of dead trees is a function of tree size and species. For example, persistence is positively related to tree diameter; large snags remain standing for decades, while smaller snags fall apart more quickly. Fire-killed Douglas-fir remains standing longer than hemlock. The snags don’t generally fall from the roots, i.e., in one fell swoop. Rather, they fall apart over time from the top down, chunk-by-chunk. That’s the sort of physics that’s relevant to evaluating distance from roads for public safety purposes IF doing so made any sense in the first instance :). Bottom-line is that post-fire tree fall is a long process that takes decades to play out. These findings come as no surprise to students of old-growth forests who study dead wood.
Now consider the demographics of green trees. When the casual observer looks at a green tree, your first thought is not “it’s about to fall over!” In truth, however, that green tree is about as likely to fall over in the next ten years as the dead tree next to it is. What’s my evidence for this counter-intuitive claim?
First, the physics of tree fall are distinctly different for live versus dead trees. Dead tree dismemberment occurs when the force of gravity exceeds the diminishing holding strength of the dead tree’s decaying wood. In contrast, most live tree topplings result from episodic wind and snow/ice events that impose forces far exceeding the day-to-day tug of gravity. While tornadoes, which can rip trees from the ground, and hurricanes are extreme examples of wind events, vanilla-flavored ice and snow storms also fell large numbers of live trees. In fact, ice storms are so significant in some regions that they exert a strong selective influence on live tree species range and forest composition.
Like many ecological parameters, it is the relatively rare “catastrophic” event that really moves the tree demography needle. For example, the 1962 Columbus Day storm (which I’m old enough to remember well!) tipped over on the order of 20 million live trees in half-a-day. Although you would not want to have been walking around in the woods that day, the Forest Service closed not a single acre of our national forests during that storm.
Even a normal winter snowstorm fells many live trees. The magnitude of tree fall from snowstorms isn’t evident to the casual observer because few people are out in these storms watching trees topple over. However, anyone who has ever done Spring-time trail maintenance after the snow recedes knows that LOTS of green trees fall over from snow loading. [I learned this lesson the hard way, hiking the Pacific Crest trail in the spring of 1972 before trail crews had gotten in to clear the down wood. Sheesh! The memory of walking over, under, and bushwhacking through mile after mile still gives me PTSD nightmares.] Snow topples live trees disproportionately because a live, green branch system holds much more snow than do a dead tree’s naked branches.
It would be a fun actuarial exercise to test my heretical claim. Please, readers, have at it!
Knowing that, I’m now more certain that Warnack’s excuse about “legal costs” really means “we screwed up” by using a CE that has already been found illegal in similar situations.
There are multiple benefits to these hazard tree projects. Those dead and dying trees will fall, with many bad possibilities, especially to us humans. There is infrastructure to protect, especially through directional felling. It would not be good for snag debris to plug up culverts or damage waterbars. Bridges, canals, powerlines and other human improvements are also at risk. Logging contractors are well-equipped to mitigate the dangers of cutting hazard trees, Yes, they do have the right to refuse to cut down an especially dangerous tree, as well, with OSHA rules followed. Additionally, some of those green trees that fell in the snowstorm would have been cut under hazard trees guidelines. Finally, there are OSHA rules for Forest Service employees regarding safe workplace environments, too.
When litigation is expected in post-fire projects, maybe it is a good idea to get as many trees felled as possible, making some legal points “moot”. Did they exercise this idea in these hazard tree projects? It does appear to be a valid ‘loophole’.
This may seem a bit off the wall, but in the spirit of the “What Could We Do Instead?” theme of this thread….
What if segments of the most-used roads on the Willamette (for example) that were burned were hazard-harvested ~150 feet on either side, maybe leaving some snags leaning away from the roads, then stocked with native rhododrondron, beargrass, oceanspray, paintbrush, and other flowering plants? That might sound silly, and not “natural,” but 20 years ago or so I attended a series of public meetings ahead of a widening of the state highway through my community, from 2 lanes to 4 plus a center turn lane. It’s a highway heavily used by national forest users and others. One dept. of transportation rep proudly described the agency’s plans for replanting the area cleared during construction with native trees — Douglas-fir, mostly. I said, “Wait, we have lots and lots of trees around here. How about planting native rhodies? After all, one of the towns in the area is Rhododendron. The few rhodies already in the corridor are beautiful. By adding more,” I said, “you’d create a corridor that would become famous for its spring-time floral grandeur.”
The engineer/planner looked at me like I was crazy — for a moment. And then I could see his wheels turning, and he said he’d look into it.
Well, they didn’t plant many rhodies, and they did plant mostly Doug-fir, but they did leave some small open areas along the highway and the trail alongside it – miniature meadows. It’s nice variation from the dense forest of tall timber with little understory.
I write all this to suggest that perhaps there’s an opportunity to do the same sort of thing along some of the roads through burned areas. Restoration of the sites in a way that is more visually appealing than a wall of conifers? With turnouts and interpretive signs along the way that inform folks about the fire, recovery, changed and new habitat, etc.? Seems to me this a plausible middle way. And one the public would enjoy and benefit from.
Where Oregon’s 2020 fires in the Cascades burned hot, the rhododendron root crowns were likely killed preventing this fire-adapted species from re-sprouting. Planting rhododendrons and other native perennial grasses, forbs, and shrubs is a great idea. Doing so would be a welcome departure from throwing out some hay bales and sprinkling annual grass seed.
During scoping for the Willamette’s roadside salvage logging project, several NGOs asked the FS to focus on highly-traveled roads. The FS rejected that approach because it wouldn’t produce the logging revenue the Willamette wanted to spend on removing the worthless trees.
In the end, only a portion of hazard tree projects are about human safety. In the end, it is more about if a dead/dying tree can hit and damage a human improvement. If a fallen tree blocks a culvert or waterbar from functioning, that is damage. That kind of damage could wash out a section of road. That kind of damage could impact hydrological features, leading to even more damage. Yes, those dead trees will eventually fall, and pines tend to fail in the root system, while the bole remains intact.
Apparently, the court action is merely procedural. The Forest Service should have jumped through a few more hoops but…..
Personally I believe keeping these areas closed was the goal all along, probably for both sides. The Forest Service made a half hearted attempt to reopen the area and then probably coordinated with environmental groups to quickly capitulate as soon as they were sued, knowing that if the area remains too hazardous for the Forest Service to reopen the roads, they will just stay closed. Eventually the Forest Service will decide these roads never had a purpose and are low value because no one is using them anymore and they are “naturally reclaiming”. They will then be decommissioned, instantly creating a new “roadless area” that will then turn into a “recommended wilderness area” in next forest plan, which will be rolled into the next big wilderness bill a few years after that. And bingo. More Wilderness.
Fires are the best tool out there for driving out existing uses and manufacturing Wilderness, and both the Forest Service and environmental groups love that.
For some of these roads, maybe the Forest Service should choose to go with the “No Action Alternative”, then keeping the roads closed until the hazards are no longer in play. Just to show the public what is really at stake. Of course, hikers could still choose to walk to their destinations, if they want. *smirk*
Haul road and spur road densities on the Willamette National forest are off the charts… We’re talking about the biggest old growth tree producer in all the National forests for decades. At the peak of logging just the Fall Creek watershed alone on that National Forest produced a billion bd. ft. of timber in less than a handful of years.
There’s so many roads that we no longer need access to/can afford to provide access to and there’s some roads that we do need access to on this massive landscape. Having an honest conversation about that is what this supervisor wisely decided on because from a long term planning perspective the WNF lacks the resources to thoroughly deploy a more aggressive option.
Since I am not a local, I’m just fine with closing those roads, no matter what trailheads they go to. I’m not going to support road decommissioning on roads that would be needed, in the future, after the hazards are remedied, by ole Mom Nature. Sure, it might take 20 years but, that IS what some people (who file lawsuits) want. If culverts get plugged, due to fallen snags, we’ll just have to fix it, when the courts allow it. Lessons need to be learned, the hard way, it seems. Why not SHOW the public what happens when the “No Action Alternative” is selected. Not just tell them what is predicted to happen.
Deane… does the Williamette have a travel management plan? Isn’t that where the “honest conversation” with all interested parties should occur?
As often the case, the litigants are spending more time than the Forest Service ground truthing the plans, which is why their lawsuit has enough traction to get the supervisor to withdraw the plan.
In forestry site-specifics are essential and the notion that they can write up a plan for hundreds of miles of roads without thoroughly evaluating sensitive areas for additional retention requirements beyond the general requirements is a non-starter. Add to this the fact that we’re looking at more catastrophic wildfires in 2020 being equal to acres burned in past 35 years combined, with what little remains of local and regional sawmills, means there’s a supply glut and makes economic analysis of the plan suspect as well.
A better way is to focus on long term plans for haul road and spur road decommissioning via preliminary gate closures in areas that don’t require much culvert removal, as well as considering the expansion of roadless area and wilderness areas to decrease USFS long term costs and increase long-term land management efficiency. As in if you’re hazard tree clearing a road you’re obligating yourself to spending money on future maintenance of that same stretch of road and there’s no enough funding to do that to all the roads, just the high priority ones.
Had the above objectives been considered and the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth properly applied, there would be no legal challenge of the plan and the plaintiffs would support its responsible conservation values. But instead USFS thought they could just irresponsibly write a plan that looked like a blank check to loggers under the guise of an “emergency” that does NOT give enough time for thorough analysis and thus they lost/failed.
Remember, Region 6 has a formal hazard tree training program for its employees who select the hazard trees. Either a tree can hit the road, or it can’t. There shouldn’t be much controversy over that. When the litigators get to choose which roads will be never needed again, where is the formal scientific site-specific analysis of each and every road they want to close?!? Of course, there isn’t any study done on the specific roads they want to close.
Yes, and conversely there isn’t any study of sensitive areas that require greater retention levels in the logging plan or in the hazard tree training program, which is why the plan failed and was withdrawn. Bad leadership in this case in an unwillingness to collaborate with potential plaintiffs before they become plaintiffs. Now that the plan is withdrawn they can finally do that.
I’d hope that leadership would collaborate with everyone, including folks like me who are unlikely to sue. I’d hope that they listen to their own experts (even when they disagree with each other BTDT)
What you’re suggesting sounds like FS folks should listen more to people who are likely to sue. I don’t agree with you.
If a dead/dying tree can hit a road, why would we want to retain it? It will always be a judgement call by the person with the paintgun. Additionally, such a tree could be felled, and be required to be left in place. Another judgement call.
I concur 100%. It is also important to remember that “litigators” are the tax paying public these forests belong to and have every right to hold the USFS feet to the fire. After all, they are the ones ultimately paying the USFS bills.
Non-Profits don’t pay taxes…. but they do profit. For some, it is more important to preserve the controversy…. and keep those donations coming in.
Maybe a non-profit doesn’t pay taxes but every single member of said organizations do. Besides which an enormous number of timber sales are sold at a deficit at tax payers expense and the timber industry’s profit.
Aaaaannnnddd, we are going to jumpstart massive fuels treatments and harvests? I don’t think so; site specificity was a big obstacle to overcome in 4-FRI, and allowed the Planning to move to a fantastic, collaborated Decision. Of course the trouble with 4-FRI was no industry capable of meeting the rigors of that Decision.
Unless, and until, something major changes in the Courts, or Law, or public opinion, the FS is going to be constrained to the pinnacle of “analysis paralysis”….
Another massive sell out by the FS to the enviros, and the large timber companies. (Who right now want small green trees.) So all this timber resource goes to waste. Our investment in all those roads goes to waste. The roads are closed, the trees fall down, culverts blow out, the brush grows, and then it all burns again. No management, no restoration, no anything. Goodbye forests, so glad we pretend to protect them. So glad the local enviros pretend to care. These people think Trump is evil, well so are they.
Who gets hurt by this? The small local mills, the small local communities, and in the end our national forests, but who really cares?
I believe it is first time a judge has stopped hazard tree removal. The FS will have no choice but to close the roads and keep them closed. More people will be confined to fewer areas. Are we having fun yet?
It makes me lose all hope,,,
Bob, I see the “judge deciding which trees should go” as something that may prompt coevolution.. perhaps toward standardized legislative CE for hazard trees. Sometimes things have to get bad before it’s clear to the powers that be that there is a need for change.
This case was not about run-of-the-mill (pun accepted) hazard trees. From an earlier article:
“Oregon Wild brought this case to defend the simple proposition that when a wildfire burns through an ongoing timber sale, the Forest Service needs to pump the brakes and involve the public in deciding how to move forward,” Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild said.
With regard to the hazard tree issue, I think Sharon missed one factor that generates controversy – how many trees/acres. A long, thin timber sale can still have significant effects. (Which has been an issue in other court decisions rejecting the use of existing categorical exclusions.)
With regard to the question of “how many roads, and which,” the Travel Management Rule required a “travel analysis,” which should have provided answers to these kinds of questions. Maybe those answers are in this 2015 document that is what the Willamette says is its response to the roads analysis requirement: https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd486402.pdf
The lawsuit reported on by OPB is the same one discussed in this Forest Policy blog post from November of last year. The legal issue is straightforward — there is no NEPA categorical exclusion that authorizes the proposed tree cutting. The “road maintenance” CE, which the FS relied on, just doesn’t cut it (sorry). The Forest Service had already lost this legal issue not once, but twice, including in the 9th Circuit, so it’s a head-scratcher as to why this project ever saw the light of day.
These trees are not “hazardous,” at least no more so than any other tree is a danger. Consider:
1) Trees pose the same level of danger to people on federal lands as do bears — on average one person per year dies from each cause.
2) Most tree-related deaths occur east of the Mississippi. Why? Tornadoes and hurricanes blow trees over. We don’t prophylactically cut trees east of the Mississippi because of tornadoes and hurricanes because people like trees and are willing to accept the inherent very small risk.
3) Cutting trees down, especially dead trees, is much more dangerous than is walking or driving under trees. The Forest Service sought to trade an infinitesimal risk to the public for a large risk to private contractors. Why?
4) Most trees that fall down are green and alive when they do so. For example, western Oregon was blessed with a delightful snowstorm last month. Trees fell over littering our Cascade mountain passes and highways. The trees blocked roads, hit vehicles, and otherwise made a mess. The trees were green and alive when they fell over due to the snow load on their live, green branches. Duh.
I hope the Forest Service recovers its senses and restores public access to our national forests. People love hiking in old-growth forests notwithstanding the many dead snags that characterize them. People love cross-country skiing through burned areas in the Three Sisters and Mt. Jefferson wilderness areas notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands fire-killed trees.
Here’s a photo of burned trees across a road on the Willamette NF in 2020.
https://forestpolicypub.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/WNF-Trees-Road-After-Fire.jpg
There are numerous trees across the road in the distance. More of these burned and dead trees will fall as they rot. Maybe the danger to people driving and walking on that road isn’t great, but there IS a danger. Absent cutting along the road, there also will be maintenance — removing trees that fall and block the road. From my point of view, it makes sense to cut the trees along the road that are potential hazards. Any open ground will quickly sprout shrubs, grasses, wildflowers, and trees — maybe it’ll even be planted — so it won’t be black for long.
More info and photos:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/willamette/home/?cid=FSEPRD936105&width=full
FWIW, last month the manager of a local county park — I’m a trail maintenance volunteer — asked me to cut down a dead alder — ~20 inches DBH, 100+ feet tall, that had died, probably from age and insects. The tree was next to a bridge we were in the process of repairing. Why cut the tree? It was a danger to hikers and the bridge. The park manager does all he can to avoid cutting trees and snags, as he favors keeping them as wildlife habitat, but in cases like this, there is no hesitation. FWIW, I dropped the tree into a stream where coho and steelhead spawn, so there was another benefit to cutting the snag — fish habitat.
By your logic, Steve, we should cut all the trees that might fall onto roads, trails, or anywhere else, for that matter. What part of green trees kill more people than dead ones do is so hard to understand?
I hear you, Andy, but we’re not talking about live, green trees. We’re talking about millions of roadside trees that were killed by wildfires in the western US in recent years — unprecedented numbers of dead trees along thousands of miles of road. There is a likelihood that many of these dead trees will fall onto roads, bridges, power lines, buildings, and maybe even cars and people. And even if no damage is done, fallen trees will need to be removed from roads to keep the roads open, which means higher costs. In a previous thread I posted a link to and an excerpt from a study, “Spatial and temporal assessment of responder exposure to snag hazards in post-fire environments,” which notes that:
“Snag hazard increased significantly immediately post-fire, with severe or extreme hazard conditions accounting for 47%, 83%, and 91% of areas burned at low, moderate and high-severity fire, respectively. … After 10 years, snag hazard declined rapidly as snags fell or fragmented, but severe or extreme hazard persisted for 20, 30 and 35 years in portions of the low, moderate and high-severity fire areas.”
https://www.fs.usda.gov/rmrs/publications/spatial-and-temporal-assessment-responder-exposure-snag-hazards-post-fire-environments
There are valid reasons, backed up by science and common sense, for removing hazard trees along roads and other infrastructure. Sure, there are good reasons for leaving fire-killed trees as wildlife habitat and to avoid disturbing soils, for example, but in many areas the risks far outweigh the benefits of leaving fire-killed roadside hazard trees standing.
Why do you single out dead, burned trees as hazardous? Green trees are hazardous; in fact, more so! A teen was killed recently by a bottom-land, deciduous green tree in the Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area (tragically, he was planting seedlings). Last month, a green tree fell over on Hwy. 126 near Walton damaging a passing emergency vehicle. The proximate cause? Snow loading.
During normal stand development in westside Douglas-fir forests, most of the seedlings at stand origin have fallen over by the time the stand is 100 years. Wind and snow loading are the major causes for these tree falls. So where’s the hue and cry over that risk?
It is a fact of physics (you know, entropy and gravity) that all trees fall over. Most do so when they are alive and green. A minor fraction do so after they are killed by insects, root rot, lightning strike, or fire. So why do you discriminate against the dead trees when it’s the live ones that pose the bigger (albeit still trivially minor) risk? I don’t get it.
This paranoia about dead trees is unhealthy. An HJ Andrews employee told me that the local FS district staff informed him that a majestic snag located along a scenic trail in the experimental forest would have to be felled. The snag was next to an interpretive sign explaining the ecological role dead wood plays in the old-growth forest the trail traversed. Is irony dead, too? The experimental forest staff removed the sign to save the snag.
Shouldn’t the question be whether being dead makes a particular tree more hazardous? If green trees are more hazardous (as a group) might that be because there are more of them, and more people among them, than dead trees?
A “particular” tree is not a helpful point of reference for a meaningful risk analysis. The first task is to understand the magnitude of the public health risk. When it comes to trees (dead, alive, big, small, whatever), that risk is trivially small. It is small in the absolute sense (about 1 death/year in the backcountry) and it is small relative to other backcountry hazards, as this Washington Post article makes clear. Worrying about trees when it comes to public safety on federal lands is like worrying about the common cold during a SARS pandemic.
If only one visitor dies annually from falling trees on federal land (as past experience suggests), how many deaths can be abated by cutting a particular tree? At most, one. Now consider the odds that your particular tree is the one tree in the entire forest/region/nation that was destined to cause that one death on public land. Pretty darn small, right?
Now imagine the thought process that goes through a “trained” hazard tree evaluator as she sizes up each dead tree. “Hmm, that tree is leaning toward the road, it’s only 100′ away from the road, and it’s dead, so it’ll fall down some day (nb: of course, all trees fall down some day). If I cut it down now, it won’t hit anyone when it falls down of its own accord.” True enough, but also irrelevant. The odds of this particular tree hitting anyone when it falls down are so infinitesimally small as to be non-quantifiable. The tree evaluator is abating a virtually non-existent risk. On the other hand, her decision to cut the tree is exposing a logger to a real risk of being hit by that snag during the falling operation when it is a 100% certainty that a person (the faller) will be in the tree’s kill zone.
I’m not disagreeing that absolute risk is low. I am disagreeing that it is lower for a burned tree than for a live one. I would agree if your point is that the comparison is irrelevant because the absolute risk is so low (but you’re the one who said “live ones pose a bigger risk”).
The demographics of trees is an interesting ecological/biological question. Post-fire snag studies in western Oregon’s Cascades show that persistence of dead trees is a function of tree size and species. For example, persistence is positively related to tree diameter; large snags remain standing for decades, while smaller snags fall apart more quickly. Fire-killed Douglas-fir remains standing longer than hemlock. The snags don’t generally fall from the roots, i.e., in one fell swoop. Rather, they fall apart over time from the top down, chunk-by-chunk. That’s the sort of physics that’s relevant to evaluating distance from roads for public safety purposes IF doing so made any sense in the first instance :). Bottom-line is that post-fire tree fall is a long process that takes decades to play out. These findings come as no surprise to students of old-growth forests who study dead wood.
Now consider the demographics of green trees. When the casual observer looks at a green tree, your first thought is not “it’s about to fall over!” In truth, however, that green tree is about as likely to fall over in the next ten years as the dead tree next to it is. What’s my evidence for this counter-intuitive claim?
First, the physics of tree fall are distinctly different for live versus dead trees. Dead tree dismemberment occurs when the force of gravity exceeds the diminishing holding strength of the dead tree’s decaying wood. In contrast, most live tree topplings result from episodic wind and snow/ice events that impose forces far exceeding the day-to-day tug of gravity. While tornadoes, which can rip trees from the ground, and hurricanes are extreme examples of wind events, vanilla-flavored ice and snow storms also fell large numbers of live trees. In fact, ice storms are so significant in some regions that they exert a strong selective influence on live tree species range and forest composition.
Like many ecological parameters, it is the relatively rare “catastrophic” event that really moves the tree demography needle. For example, the 1962 Columbus Day storm (which I’m old enough to remember well!) tipped over on the order of 20 million live trees in half-a-day. Although you would not want to have been walking around in the woods that day, the Forest Service closed not a single acre of our national forests during that storm.
Even a normal winter snowstorm fells many live trees. The magnitude of tree fall from snowstorms isn’t evident to the casual observer because few people are out in these storms watching trees topple over. However, anyone who has ever done Spring-time trail maintenance after the snow recedes knows that LOTS of green trees fall over from snow loading. [I learned this lesson the hard way, hiking the Pacific Crest trail in the spring of 1972 before trail crews had gotten in to clear the down wood. Sheesh! The memory of walking over, under, and bushwhacking through mile after mile still gives me PTSD nightmares.] Snow topples live trees disproportionately because a live, green branch system holds much more snow than do a dead tree’s naked branches.
It would be a fun actuarial exercise to test my heretical claim. Please, readers, have at it!
My mistake. They didn’t give the case name, and I was referring to another post-fire Willamette case that is not about categorical exclusions, Cascadia Wildlands v. USFS, and was enjoined in December.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2021/12/20/nfs-litigation-weekly-december-17-2021/
I couldn’t tell what case you were referring to, but I assume it is Cascadia Wildlands/FSEE v. Warnack, which was enjoined in November and was introduced here.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2021/11/12/nfs-litigation-weekly-november-12-2021/
Knowing that, I’m now more certain that Warnack’s excuse about “legal costs” really means “we screwed up” by using a CE that has already been found illegal in similar situations.
“…really means “we screwed up” by using a CE that has already been found illegal in similar situations.”
Indeed. It makes me think someone (who likes Trump) went with the idea of just do it “and we’ll see what happens”.
There are multiple benefits to these hazard tree projects. Those dead and dying trees will fall, with many bad possibilities, especially to us humans. There is infrastructure to protect, especially through directional felling. It would not be good for snag debris to plug up culverts or damage waterbars. Bridges, canals, powerlines and other human improvements are also at risk. Logging contractors are well-equipped to mitigate the dangers of cutting hazard trees, Yes, they do have the right to refuse to cut down an especially dangerous tree, as well, with OSHA rules followed. Additionally, some of those green trees that fell in the snowstorm would have been cut under hazard trees guidelines. Finally, there are OSHA rules for Forest Service employees regarding safe workplace environments, too.
When litigation is expected in post-fire projects, maybe it is a good idea to get as many trees felled as possible, making some legal points “moot”. Did they exercise this idea in these hazard tree projects? It does appear to be a valid ‘loophole’.
This may seem a bit off the wall, but in the spirit of the “What Could We Do Instead?” theme of this thread….
What if segments of the most-used roads on the Willamette (for example) that were burned were hazard-harvested ~150 feet on either side, maybe leaving some snags leaning away from the roads, then stocked with native rhododrondron, beargrass, oceanspray, paintbrush, and other flowering plants? That might sound silly, and not “natural,” but 20 years ago or so I attended a series of public meetings ahead of a widening of the state highway through my community, from 2 lanes to 4 plus a center turn lane. It’s a highway heavily used by national forest users and others. One dept. of transportation rep proudly described the agency’s plans for replanting the area cleared during construction with native trees — Douglas-fir, mostly. I said, “Wait, we have lots and lots of trees around here. How about planting native rhodies? After all, one of the towns in the area is Rhododendron. The few rhodies already in the corridor are beautiful. By adding more,” I said, “you’d create a corridor that would become famous for its spring-time floral grandeur.”
The engineer/planner looked at me like I was crazy — for a moment. And then I could see his wheels turning, and he said he’d look into it.
Well, they didn’t plant many rhodies, and they did plant mostly Doug-fir, but they did leave some small open areas along the highway and the trail alongside it – miniature meadows. It’s nice variation from the dense forest of tall timber with little understory.
I write all this to suggest that perhaps there’s an opportunity to do the same sort of thing along some of the roads through burned areas. Restoration of the sites in a way that is more visually appealing than a wall of conifers? With turnouts and interpretive signs along the way that inform folks about the fire, recovery, changed and new habitat, etc.? Seems to me this a plausible middle way. And one the public would enjoy and benefit from.
I like your thinking here, Steve.
Where Oregon’s 2020 fires in the Cascades burned hot, the rhododendron root crowns were likely killed preventing this fire-adapted species from re-sprouting. Planting rhododendrons and other native perennial grasses, forbs, and shrubs is a great idea. Doing so would be a welcome departure from throwing out some hay bales and sprinkling annual grass seed.
During scoping for the Willamette’s roadside salvage logging project, several NGOs asked the FS to focus on highly-traveled roads. The FS rejected that approach because it wouldn’t produce the logging revenue the Willamette wanted to spend on removing the worthless trees.
Andy, if they’re worthless, how would the Williamette get “logging revenue”?
The Willamette proposed to sell the valuable trees and use the sale proceeds to hire contractors to remove the worthless trees.
So you are thinking that they are using the trees with value to fund the project instead of another pot o’ money?
What exactly do you mean by “focus on”? Do nothing on the rest or…???
In the end, only a portion of hazard tree projects are about human safety. In the end, it is more about if a dead/dying tree can hit and damage a human improvement. If a fallen tree blocks a culvert or waterbar from functioning, that is damage. That kind of damage could wash out a section of road. That kind of damage could impact hydrological features, leading to even more damage. Yes, those dead trees will eventually fall, and pines tend to fail in the root system, while the bole remains intact.
Apparently, the court action is merely procedural. The Forest Service should have jumped through a few more hoops but…..