Seeing the forest for the trees

Groups react to Toll Joe project on Willamette National Forest as Oregon Wild hopes for common sense thinning and protection of roadless areas.

“Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good.”
— Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the U.S. Forest Service
 
On a steep, south-facing mountain slope about 20 miles east of Sweet Home, two dozen people are talking ideas for the management of 1,600 acres of mostly 40- to 110-year-old Douglas firs.

They represent the U.S. Forest Service, Oregon State University, private timber land owners, environmental groups and loggers.

Twenty years ago, such a meeting could have resulted in a shouting match or brawl.
But this group — which took place last Monday and included both tree huggers and tree cutters — had a shared goal of determining how to help the area in the long term.

At issue is the  Toll Joe Project, which calls for logging in 2014.

Forest Service veteran Cindy Glick has headed up the 200,000-acre Sweet Home Ranger District since April 2011. She hopes this collaborative process will fend off a possible stalemate that could result if lawsuits are filed to halt proposed timber sales within the project.

Although layers of government regulations and public sentiment complicate any timber sale, the giant elephant in the room is that portions of the area provide habitat and nesting areas for the northern spotted owl.

“The goal is to get the public involved and connected before we put something out for NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) review,” Glick said. “This collaborative process is used in eastern Oregon and has been used on the Siuslaw National Forest for 15 years. We believe it leads to better results because we hear a broader spectrum of ideas earlier in the process.”
Glick admits that due to the spotted owl restrictions and critical habitat unit designations on portions of the project, she expects any timber sale proposal “will be contentious.”

Initial tour

The group first met for an introduction to the project and an initial field tour in December. Participants met again Monday at the Sweet Home Ranger District compound to review what was learned at the first meeting, offer more comments and embark on another trek into the forest.

About 60 percent of the area is composed of Douglas fir trees that are less than 80 years old.
Another 40 percent is composed of 80- to 110-year-old trees that followed the human-caused Sevenmile Burn of 1911. About 1,200 of the 3,000 acres that burned were planted from 1915 to 1917, and the remainder regenerated naturally.

Of Toll Joe’s 1,600 acres, about 1,100 are considered to be late successional reserve (forests that are on their way to exhibiting old growth characteristics), and the remaining 500 are in the district’s timber sale matrix.

There are 11 spotted owl centers in the area, but the site lacks “vertical and horizontal diversity,” leaving a question as to whether long-term it will provide good habitat for the owls and botanical species unless managed properly today.

Downed timber and coarse woody debris are a carbon resource and adds nutrients to the forest soil as it decays.

The project has three main goals, Glick said:

• Accelerating development of stand complexity, structure and diversity. Currently, the stand is dense and even-aged and does not provide natural canopy gaps necessary to support a variety of wildlife species. Understory development is limited.
  
  Canopy gaps are important for the development of mixed-age stands. Standing snags are used as hosts and as food sources for many species, including woodpeckers. Spotted owls like to nest in standing snags.
• Managing hazardous fuels along a 200-foot wide section of Highway 20 to reduce the potential for large-scale fires that could affect the late successional reserve, riparian reserves, the scenic byway, the nearby Santiam Wagon Road and adjoining private lands.
• Improving stand health and vigor, plus contributing wood products to local markets through matrix allocations, which is federal property that can harvested.

Before the listing of the spotted owl as an endangered species, the Sweet Home Ranger District sold as much as 120 million board feet of timber annually. Glick said the district’s target for 2012 is about 8 million.

Fewer rodents?

District biologist Tiffany Young is concerned that opening up the tree stands too much will result in fewer numbers of voles and flying squirrels, which are the owl’s natural prey and primary food source.

Adding even more pressure is the effect increasing numbers of barred owls — hoot owls — are having on the spotted owl population. Barred owls traditionally inhabited Eastern and Midwestern states but since the 1960s have ventured farther and farther west to the point they are now common in Pacific Northwest forests.

The barred owl is more aggressive than the spotted owls when it comes to foraging, which may be contributing to a steady decrease of 3 to 5 percent annually in spotted owl numbers.
They also interbreed with spotted owls.

So, the group wants to know, what short-term risks are or aren’t acceptable to achieve long-term benefits in the late successional reserve?

Nanci Curtis, district assistant fire management officer, said the site could benefit if ladder fuels — woody materials that allow fire to burn from tree to tree — were removed.

“It would not only reduce wildfire timber loss, but also increase firefighter safety,” Curtis said. “The goal would be to keep fire on the ground and out of the tree canopy.”

A map indicates there have been dozens of human and naturally caused fires in the area since 1960. Some were caused by auto accidents on nearby Highway 20 and others were caused by lightning strikes.

Getting at the timber sold would require construction of some temporary roads, the longest about 2,400 feet. After the timber is harvested, the roads would be torn up and the land returned to its natural state.

A ground-based logging system would be the least expensive way to harvest the timber, but it also leaves the biggest environmental footprint. Helicopter logging results in the smallest footprint, but is expensive. Because there have been fewer and fewer federal timber sales, helicopter owners have moved away from logging to other work, reducing the number of companies that might be interested in the project.

Multiple benefits

Some group members believe offering the timber for sale would be good for the forest and for business.

Andy Geissler of the American Forest Resource Council, which is composed of companies that rely on forest products, said the Forest Service needs to take a closer “look at sustainable timber production. You need to look for more opportunities to regenerate areas. You need to pull more timber volume off the matrix.”

Ranger district botanist Alice Smith reminds the group that opening up the site with a timber sale could also affect native plants and offer a starting point for noxious weeds to take root.
Mike Melcher’s family has lived in the Sweet Home area since the early 1950s.

His companies, Melcher Logging and Timber Harvesting Inc., were among the first in the mid-valley to use state-of-the-art mechanical harvesting equipment more than 20 years ago. They have also been leaders in helping Central Oregon forest districts thin and improve timber health through selective harvesting prescriptions.

Those projects have involved extensive community input long before harvest begins.
“I think we need to open up some corridors for the owls, but we should also create timber production,” Melcher said. “The Forest Service needs income and economics should be considered in this.”

Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild — formerly the Oregon Natural Resources Council — said his 7,000-member group “has serious concerns about the Toll Joe Project,” especially about the potential harvest of older trees and construction of new roads.

“We are supportive of a lot of the work the Willamette National Forest is doing, especially when they are focusing on young stands,” Heiken said Friday morning by telephone. “There are tens of thousands of acres that were clear-cut in the 1960s and ’70s that were replanted densely and can now be opened up to produce habitat, wood and jobs.”

Heiken added, “Unfortunately, the Toll Joe Project includes some of that thinning, but also treads into logging of tree stands that are more than 80 years old and late successional reserves that are supposed to be protected.”

Heiken said Oregon Wild believes there are both positive and negative effects from logging, but most of the positives occur in younger timber stands and most of the negatives occur in older ones.

Logging would also necessitate construction of about three miles of new roads, and Heiken said that’s a big concern because roads can have long-term adverse environmental effects.
“Roadless areas are rare because there were so many roads built in the past,” Heiken said. “There’s a roadless area up there and it should be left to natural processes.”

Glick said the next step will be compiling the public comments and developing alternatives proposals for the site.

“We will probably go to NEPA by the end of August,” Glick said.

The Forest Service welcomes public input on the project. To obtain more information, or to provide input, contact Anita Leach, Sweet Home Ranger District Planner, 4431 Highway 20, Sweet Home, OR 97386, or call 541-367-5168.