This article from Missoulian reporter Rob Cheney offers a real-world look at a thinning/restoration project.

James Stoker compared his log landing piles to sorting change in his pocket.

“That’s the nickels, that’s the dimes, that’s the quarters,” he said, pointing at stacks of de-limbed trees destined to become tipi poles, fence posts, firewood and lumber. “The pennies go to Bonner.”

Those “pennies” — trunks too spindly to make a single 2×4 — used to remain on the hillsides above Gold Creek when Plum Creek Timber Co. and its predecessors were cutting massive pine trees for the plywood mills in Bonner. Today, the mill yard is covered in pennies, and Stoker and his brother Mike make a living cutting, sorting and selling the logs they once left behind.

Instead, what they leave behind are slopes with mature western larch, Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir trees spaced 30 to 50 feet apart at random intervals. The spacing mimics the stumps of the old-growth trees cut in the industrial logging days.

“This is not a timber sale,” BLM Forester Kyle Johnson said. “It’s a stewardship project. It’s based on the relationship we have built with the Stokers, and the relationships they have with small mills.”

Without those relationships, BLM would need to spend between $700 and $1,500 an acre to thin the forest. Finding markets for the little trees, and loggers to cut them, brings the taxpayer cost down to $60 an acre, Johnson said.

…

“KEEP OUR FORESTS” is the title of the “A Declaration, and Call to Action, from California’s Scientists, Land Managers and Former Government Leaders.” It’s named for the historic Venado district of West Colusa County, where a meeting was held and the document was signed. Signatories include former Gov. Jerry Brown, former CAL FIRE Director Ken Pimlott, and a number of scientists, timber company reps, and NGOs. Among 4 key principles is:

Address forest resiliency on every acre. We know that fire will eventually impact all of the landscape,
so we must have a plan to address forest resiliency on every acre. Planned fuels treatments should
include the use of fire whenever possible to increase the amount of forestland treated. For example, a
proactive policy and regulatory strategy is needed to maintain future forest health. NEPA and CEQA
should be updated to consider the detrimental impacts of decades of fire suppression on our forested
landscapes and the importance of beneficial fire on maintaining forest health.

The last sentence is a great one for discussing here on Smokey Wire. How might NEPA be “updated to consider the detrimental impacts of decades of fire suppression on our forested landscapes and the importance of beneficial fire on maintaining forest health”?

That’s the title of an article in The Oregonian today. “Faulty” can be debated, but so can the reporting.

“A large-scale barred owl removal program is not in place and officials said the best science shows protecting older forests is critical.”

Protecting older forests from logging? Most of the high-quality older forest is already off limits to harvesting.  But what about protecting them from wildfire?

“The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than logging.”

Not only the “logging industry,” but the US F&WS and a range of scientists say that the barred owl and wildfire are the main threats.

Nick Smith has a link in his Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities news roundup about a lawsuit filed against the Sage Hen Integrated Restoration Project on the Boise National Forest in Idaho. The project would include timber harvests on up to 19,900 acres and 11,200 acres of fuels reduction and non-commercial thinning in a 67,800-acre project area over 20 years.

The plaintiff’s petition is here. The forest’s planning docs are here. A Dec. 2020 Letter of Objection from the Boise Forest Coalition is here.

This project involves a topic we’re discussed here on Smokey Wire: Whether an EA is adequate or if an EIS is needed. In this case, the Boise Forest Coalition says an EIS is needed.

Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest Plan nears completion

Bill Gabbert at Wildfire Today recently posted a USFS video on the Caldor Fire. This scene from the video illustrates the fuels problem in the Sierras. Larry might tell us if this amount of fuel is as widespread as I think it is. In any case, the image shows so many piles that burning them might kill some of the green trees. If the fuels had been left in place, a prescribed fire might have killed even more trees, and a wildfire might kill all of them. The material could be removed mechanically, but at what cost? There’s no easy or cheap solution.

Here’s an interesting paper from the PNW Research Station….

Reducing Fuels and Advancing Equity: Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Hazardous Fuels Management

“The researchers … assess the distribution of benefits to local populations created by 10 years of fuels management on 12 national forests in the Western United States. They found that, for the most part, the 12 national forests equitably distributed benefits from fuels reduction projects. However, each for­est had one or more “hotspots” where a localized lack of benefit for concentrated racial or ethnic minority populations raised environmental justice concerns. Interviews with Forest Service manag­ers provided insight into why hotspots occurred and revealed how environmen­tal justice could be more effectively inte­grated into land management procedures.”

To what extent, if any, do forest plans look at future fires and other disturbances, and how to respond to them? Would it be beneficial to address this at the forest plan level?

Excerpt from an editorial by The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board:

Century-old forest management practices by the Forest Service, Cal Fire and the logging industry have led to intense standoffs in recent decades among environmentalists, scientists and fire experts who believe we have managed our forests under a profit motive, not resiliency.

They are not necessarily wrong. As The Bee’s Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler noted in a recent story about this conflict, “much of the sturdy old-growth was cut down, and what grew back in its place were dense stands of small trees and brush,” they wrote. “The stage was set for an era of catastrophic fires like the sorts California is experiencing every summer.”

In addition to fighting fires instead of controlling them, the Forest Service allowed logging companies to decimate California forests for much of the 20th century, with little concern about the ecological harm they were causing. This gave environmentalists all the ammunition they needed to question the motives of an agency that oversees millions of acres of California forestland.

But now is the time for the environmental left to stand down. California’s forests are in terrible shape after decades of unchecked commercial logging and aggressive fire suppression. Conditions have only gotten worse as climate change dries our forests and reduces rainfall, aiding recent record-breaking megafires that threaten populated areas and wipe out entire habitats.

By weaponizing federal protections — such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act — to obstruct or outright kill various wildfire prevention projects, environmentalists imperil the very ecosystems they wish to protect.

Organizations like the John Muir Project, Conservation Congress and other allied groups have been accused by leading experts of spreading “agenda-driven science” that promotes specific unsupported narratives and avoids data to back up their litigious claims. At least 111 scientists have co-authored at least 41 scientific papers to rebut their dubious methods, The Bee reported, an extraordinary sign of how problematic these groups have become. Some of their disputed claims have caused the courts to delay important fire prevention projects.