Beware of the Ghost (Timber) Industry!

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As I’ve said, in some places (perhaps most?) the timber wars are so over. As much as some people think “the timber industry” is big and scary.. in many places you would look hard to find it. And where you find it, it is only a dim reflection of its former self. Perhaps, like a ghost, the industry exists, but just like we don’t run our lives with a strategy of ghost-avoidance, we shouldn’t be developing policies to avoid having a functioning timber or biomass industry. In my view, we should do what we jointly decide needs to be done on forested lands, public and private, for a variety of mutually chosen reasons, and help facilitate that financially by selling the products where feasible- oh , and by the way, providing jobs in Elk Country and other parts of rural America where jobs are scarce.

At least where I live, “commercial” is not a scary word; quite the opposite. It’s even “green.” See the link here.

Here’s a recent and well-researched story about the bark beetle problem in Colorado from the New York Times.

Loggers bidding for Forest Service contracts to clear out beetle kill typically anticipate that a second payday will come from selling the wood, defraying some of their costs. But when the housing bubble popped, lumber demand dropped off and production numbers at Western sawmills tumbled.

Considering there is only one large sawmill in Wettstein’s zone, it normally processes much of the beetle-kill wood. But Colorado-based Intermountain Resources LLC defaulted on some of its loans and was forced to shut its doors in May.

The mill, which is currently in receivership, is accepting wood again, but it is only working through about 75 percent of the timber it once did, said Pat Donovan, the court-appointed receiver for the mill.

The wood pellet industry has also taken a dive. Just several years ago, converting beetle-kill wood into pellets that could be used to heat homes or co-fire coal plants was eyed as an ideal way to dispose of some beetle-killed timber.

The recession and cheaper natural gas play a role

But pellet plants in Wettstein’s area suffered a blow last year when natural gas prices dropped. Market conditions forced both the Confluence Energy facility and the Rocky Mountain Pellet Company Inc. plant — then the only pellet mills in Colorado — to close up shop from December to May. While both plants are open again — though Confluence Energy is only up at half-mast — future operations hinge on demand and natural gas prices.

The outlook may not be bright. A fireplace products trade group that tracks how many pellet stoves are sold to retailers (though that may not translate into homeowners buying them) indicates that in 2009 sales were down 67 percent from where they had been in 2008. Making matters worse, the federal tax credit for purchasing pellet stoves — allocated from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars — expires at the end of the year.

With less revenue available to offset logging costs, contractors’ asking price to clear an acre of beetle kill is on the rise. Where the Forest Service used to be able to find loggers willing to clear an acre of beetle kill for $1,500, now it can cost as much as $3,500 — meaning the Forest Service can do less with its existing pool of funds.

Should Wilderness Be Made Safe?

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Next week the Forest Service plans to explode some trees. With dynamite. In a wilderness. To protect hikers.

The 150 large, dead or dying hemlocks lie along the Joyce Kilmer trail that snakes through the 17,394-acre Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness in North Carolina. The trees are victims of the hemlock woolly adelgid, a non-native insect. The Forest Service proposes to blast the tops out of the trees, lessening their chance of falling on someone, while preserving the appearance that the trees were snapped by wind and not cut by saw.

The Wilderness Act requires the Forest Service to preserve wilderness character. The Act also bans certain uses (e.g., roads, commercial enterprises, motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, landing of aircraft, mechanical transport, and structures) “except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this Act (including measures required in emergencies involving the health and safety of persons within the area).”

Removing trees does not fall within any of the prohibitions for which the “emergencies involving health and safety” apply. But, even if the safety allowance was relevant, i.e., tree detonation is one of the prohibited uses that has an emergency safety allowance, the case law would not support the agency’s view that this is the kind of emergency Congress had in mind. In a safety case involving structures (and thus relevant to the emergency safety allowance), the court quoted from the National Park Service’s environmental assessment:

The Wilderness Act and current NPS Management Policies encourage wilderness users to prepare for, and encounter the wilderness on its own terms, striving to provide “primitive and unconfined” recreation opportunities, complete with the risks that arise from wildlife, weather conditions, etc. NPS wilderness management policies do not support the provision of facilities in wilderness specifically to eliminate these risks.

Olympic Park Assocs. v. Mainella, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 44230 (W.D. Wash. July 29, 2005).

Tree falling is precisely the kind of danger that inheres in primitive recreation; it is a risk that arises from an act of Nature.

What makes the Forest Service decision to blow up these trees particularly ironic is that the agency took precisely the opposite position in litigation brought by hikers injured in this same wilderness when a “huge rotten tree” fell on them. In that case, the Forest Service argued that “the wilderness objectives of ‘solitude, physical and mental challenge, spirit of adventure and self-reliance,’ mean ‘that any trees — including rotten ones — should not be tampered with whatsoever.'” Wright v. United States, 868 F. Supp. 930, 931 (E.D. Tenn. 1994). The plaintiffs’ tort case for damages was dismissed on other grounds.

Why has the Forest Service reversed course 180 degrees to conclude that dead trees must now be dynamited to make the wilderness safe for hikers?

The 1905 Use Book for the Forest Service- Have Ideas Stood the Test of Time?

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I was waiting for a phone call in someone’s office in DC last week, and leafed through a copy of the 1905 Use Book. It was fascinating how the concepts of public forest administration have developed in 105 years. Here are some quotes.

“In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies. All the resources of the forest reserves are for use, and this use must be brought about in a thoroughly prompt and businesslike manner, under such restrictions only as will insure the permanence of these resources.

“The vital importance of forest reserves to the great industries of the Western States will be largely increased in the near future by the continued steady advance in settlement and development. The permanence of the resources of the reserves is therefore indispensable to continued prosperity, and the policy of this Department for their protection and use will invariably be guided by this fact, always bearing in mind that the conservative use of these resources in no way conflicts with their permanent value.

“You will see to it that the water, wood, and forage of the reserves are conserved and wisely used for the benefit of the homebuilder first of all, upon whom depends the best permanent use of lands and resources alike. The continued prosperity of the agricultural, lumbering, mining, and live-stock interests is directly dependent upon a permanent and accessible supply of water, wood, and forage, as well as upon the present and future use of these resources under businesslike regulation, enforced with promptness, effectiveness, and common sense. In the management of each reserve local questions will be decided upon local grounds; the dominant industry will be considered first, but with as little restriction to minor industries as may be possible; sudden changes in industrial conditions will be avoided by gradual adjustment after due notice, and where conflicting interests must be reconciled the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

Do you think the italicized statements are still true? How do you think the FS is living up to these ideas and principles?

Forest Service – Friend of the Environment in Oregon

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I thought this piece was interesting as environmentalists are claiming the FS is more environmentally sensitive than the BLM. It’s nice to be liked. Even only relatively.

The environmental groups argue some federal agencies have had a harder time adapting to new forest management goals in the Northwest Forest Plan, specifically noting that the U.S. Forest Service has done a better job transitioning to non-controversial restoration-based timber thinning projects while the BLM “has struggled to modernize.”

That may be why Oregon Wild’s Andy Kerr asked Salazar yesterday to transfer the BLM’s Oregon and California Railroad forestland in western Oregon to the Forest Service. Of course Salazar’s Department of the Interior oversees the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but not the Forest Service, which is couched under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Kerr’s request was met with a quick rap from Salazar: “Don’t go to disagreements,” he said. “Go to agreements.”

I put a call into the Fish and Wildlife Service to get their reaction to this lawsuit and some more information on the Spencer Creek timber sale. I also have some extra sound bites and background from yesterday’s roundtable that I’ll post soon.

Also the photo, by the Oregon BLM, is lovely.

Dead Trees Burning (or Burnt)

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A guest post by Michael Dixon

These two photos were taken in the spring of 2008 from approximately the same spot, one looking up slope and one down slope. This area is on the Payette NF in the Flat Creek drainage of the Secesh River about 30 miles northeast of McCall, Idaho. This was an un-managed (no stumps) mature lodgepole pine stand. The area that is burnt down to bare soil was burned in the Burgdorf Junction Fire in 2000. That fire just killed the lodgepole but did consume the wood. The area re-burned in 2007. The down slope photo shows an adjacent lodgepole pine stand that was not burnt in 2000, but was burned in 2007. This gives an idea of what the stand that burned twice looked like after the 2000 fire.

This is likely an extreme example but it can and does happen. Any lodgepole pine seedlings that came in after the 2000 fire were consumed and no seed source left, so it will take many years before it becomes reforested. There was about 350 acres of the hotly burned area. I would think that a fire killed lodgepole pine stand would be less prone to burning that a beetle killed stand as fire would consume the duff and fine fuels that would remain in a beetle killed stand. Re-burns are often are hotter than the initial fire which killed the trees, since a lot of the wood is on the ground and much more bio mass is consumed. The burning conditions in 2007 were extreme, so I would not expect this to happen every time a dead lodgepole stand burns. Many areas will not re-burn if the fuel loading is lighter. I have seen where a fire stopped where it came into a fire killed lodgepole stand with a lot of waist high seedlings. Only some of the down wood was consumed, but the fuel loading of the standing and down dead trees was much lower.

In the on going debate over what to do with the bug killed lodgepole pine forests, I hope we get past the rhetoric and advocacy and start looking at actual on the ground conditions, such as terrain, fuel loading, fire history, access, and resource values. Treatments or non-treatments are going to be different in different areas. Letting nature take its course is appropriate in some areas, salvage logging and fuels treatment s are appropriate in some areas, it all depends on where it is and what it is, there is no one right answer.

More Fire Disturbance Impacts on Anthropogenically-Affected Forest Vegetation

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for these.. what can explain both sets of fire impacts? (these and Derek’s). Perhaps the fire was more extreme, or Plum Creek didn’t have large openings of different ages?

Two links..
First, Mineral Primm Fire Complex:
Comparing Plum Creek Timber Company Lands with
US Forest Service Wilderness and Unroaded Lands

and Plum_Creek_8mile

Note: I couldn’t pull the photos out of the pdfs to post so posted one that looks similar from this virtual tour of the Mineral Primm Fire- SF

Bob Berwyn on the Hausberg- Building Regional Identity

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Great post by Bob Berwyn on the idea of Hausberg or ski commons in the Summit County Citizens Voice here.

Why does it all matter? Skiing is a sport that forges community, cutting across political lines and ethnic distinctions and ideological boundaries. That’s important for the American West, a region that has long been managed as a resource-rich colonial outpost by an East Coast government. A Hausberg, as a community commons based on sport, is one potential starting point for building a sense of regional identity, a step on the way toward self-determination.

And

A Hausberg, or ski commons, is a place to re-affirm the roots of the sport, born not of commerce, but of athletic and aesthetic idealism, something that’s done not for money but for love, for the physical ideal it represents, pure and simple.

Reality Check: Rainforest Site and the Sequoia National Monument

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Ran across this letter..

I know that what they (The Rainforest Site?) say is not true, taken literally at face value, but I can’t even figure out from this what is statement really going on ..

Despite all of its commanding beauty, the Sequoia Monument is in grave danger. The US Forest Service has revealed plans to log the forest, creating space for commercial and residential development.

Note the commenter’s responses. They seem to believe what is written. Wonder if there’s a quality control department at the Rainforest Site?

Impacts of Fire Disturbance on Anthropogenically- Induced Vegetation Mosaics

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This is a guest post from Derek Weidensee

If Derek Weidensee were writing for academic journals, he would probably title these photos the above. But he calls them “clearcuts don’t burn.”

Look at photo-39. It’s my attempt at objective reporting. It’s a clearcut that burned. You can see the burned part to the left of the green island. Of course, in 85% of the cases the fire stopped at the edge-stark contrast like-but where it did burn into the regen it soon dropped to the ground and piddled out.

(photo 39 is below)

From Derek:

I’ve spent the last four years photographing the phenomenon on 8 Montana wildfires. The “green islands” are regenerated clearcuts 20-40 years old. They are all of the 2008 Rat Creek fire and the 2000 Mussingbrod fire both west of Wisdom Montana.

If you’re into “google earth”, you can see the location and also another “striking visual” of the Phenomenon by typing the following latitude and Longitude into the “fly too” box. “45 44 56.65N, 113 44 10.71W”. Also try 45 41 34.44N, 113 45 13.15W.

I think you’ll find them interesting. In light of the MPB epidemic, I think it goes a long ways towards answering the question “does salvage logging mitigate fire hazard”. I’m certainly not saying you need to clearcut it all, but there is research that shows “strategically placed” salvage clearcuts on 20-30% of the project area can limit the spread of the fire.

The following is a link to all the research I’ve found regarding the clearcuts don’t burn phenomenon.
http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2010/05/14/clearcuts-dont-burn/

If anyone would like to see more photos of the phenomenon, here are two links- they are posted in Google documents. Clearcuts don’t burn I and Clearcuts don’t burn II.