Healthy Forests Act - is it helping?

[wagonwheeler]

Wondered what perspective some of you have on how this is affecting thinning of overgrown forests. You may have to cut and paste the link.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/255xnrqk.asp

Chaser

 

[clearance]

Pretty good article, one glaring error, Douglas Fir does not like shade, will not grow in shade. It comes on strong after a fire or a big clearcut. I have worked thinning here in BC, we call it spacing. Commercial thinning is what is going on there, that is, viable sawlogs. Spacing is just cutting down all the non-merch and prioritizing the merch, in order of value, Doug fir, Cedar, Hemlock, while they are small, to build a better forest. I believe in patch clearcutting, reforestation and silviculture. Course the do-gooders are going to freak, years of propaganda and Disney films since childhood has taken away all thier critical thinking skills.

 

[ShoerFast]

It is clearly working here in Colorado.

Maybe as much in the Forest as it is reflected in the surrounding area of adjacent dwellings.

In order to get a building permit, even for a deck, your property needs to comply with definable space and fire mitigation standards.

It is part of my long term goal, as I know I will not be able to keep my currant day job for maybe another 10 years, and hope to get more involved with the thinning that is so needed.

To give you an idea, from here, I can see the beginning of the Pike National Forest, it is 1,000,000 acres of tender-box, standard bore samples of standing timber measure at just above 10% moisture,,,,,when fires start, if the wind picks up to even 15 MPH, the fires get into the tops and travel at exactly the speed of the wind, and can not be put out!

With out the Act, tree-huggers just had too much pull, some of the off shoots from the act is the un-lawfulness of obstructing logging and thinning operations.

The BLM and Forest Service now admit that 100 years of fire suppression did not work, but now there are just too many home and people in the way, and way too many acres involved when fires do ignite.

Just the term Healthy suggest it all, I had the good fortune to have meet one of the planers from the National level, and he gave me the description that Healthy is the same as Natural in many cases, and just removing the excess fuel wood will work in many areas.

Picture a hike in the mountains through an area that has grass growing between the trees, the huge old trees being the old pumpkin-colored bark pines and Douglas-fir, a few stands of saplings and the sun reaching most of the ground,,(as opposed to 150 year old stands of dog-haired Lodge-pole Pine),,,, for most of Colorado, that is the only way there is enough water to make everything grow the way nature intended.

Kevin

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

The real question is, will it survive a leftist administration? Al Gore with a Democrat Congress would have this off the books and most logging effectively outlawed within 60 days of swearing in.

 

[smokechase II]

worse than Al Gore

Best way to shut down a healthy forest plan is to not fund it.
Logging can occur. It is often an important first step to commercially thin.
That slash gets cleaned up at the landing, typically.
Then a post sale non commercial thin occurs and that slash is dealt with. Possibly this is finalized by a prescribed burn that does take us back to a more natural setting. (This only applies to some eco-systems).

Great stuff. Common sense wood utilization, healthy forest, jobs and all that good.

Enter the war in Iraq, Katrina/Rita and an administration focused on oil.

With a greatly reduced budget to not finalize the deal. We've got slash left out there and students at Oregon State University raising a ruckus about that in their scientific papers. (OK; that wasn't the reason that slash was left, but it does fill a niche in this argument).

We are doing a good - maybe fair effort in some places at the healthy forest thing. But it is long way off from adequately serving the public land trust the way we should. Understood, FS/BLM land acreages are so vast we couldn't do a complete job.

It’s just that there is more than one way to shut down healthy forest management. The Republicans have found theirs.

Isn’t it great to be an Independent? Being able to poke fun at both sets of idiots?

 

[ranchjn]

Best way to shut down a healthy forest plan is to not fund it.
Logging can occur. It is often an important first step to commercially thin.
That slash gets cleaned up at the landing, typically.
Then a post sale non commercial thin occurs and that slash is dealt with. Possibly this is finalized by a prescribed burn that does take us back to a more natural setting. (This only applies to some eco-systems).

Great stuff. Common sense wood utilization, healthy forest, jobs and all that good.

Enter the war in Iraq, Katrina/Rita and an administration focused on oil.

With a greatly reduced budget to not finalize the deal. We've got slash left out there and students at Oregon State University raising a ruckus about that in their scientific papers. (OK; that wasn't the reason that slash was left, but it does fill a niche in this argument).

We are doing a good - maybe fair effort in some places at the healthy forest thing. But it is long way off from adequately serving the public land trust the way we should. Understood, FS/BLM land acreages are so vast we couldn't do a complete job.

It’s just that there is more than one way to shut down healthy forest management. The Republicans have found theirs.

Isn’t it great to be an Independent? Being able to poke fun at both sets of idiots?

slash isnt all bad. left over slash can create perfect homes for small rodents. As the small rodent population soars because of an increased amount of potential niches, so does the predator population. This increases the wildlife population within the logged area.

of course too much of anything is never good. We unfortunately have tons of left over slash from our logging operation due to poor tractor logging (the cable logging went better, but still there is a lot of clean up work to be done). Removing slash (especially slash that has been mixed up with dirt) is no fun/easy task. Has anyone had any experience with the GyroTrac GT-25? The movie of it in action looks very impressive. I dont want to buy one as a property owner, because i log once every 15 years, but if i could rent one in my area that would be great. check out their website http://www.gt-25.net/

 

[1I'dJak]

thinning forests has been around for hundreds of years.. the indians in interior bc and south island bc would burn areas to promote meadow like conditions to enhance browse and therefore hunting... the garry oak savannas of south van isle flourished because of this tradition... it also got rid of a lot of fuel... a series of small fires prevented big catastrophic ones... i have been involved in a thinning project whose intention was to thin the forest in order to mimic old growth stand characteristics in riparian zones... it opened up the thick dog hair stands, allowed light penetration invigorating herbaceous growth which in turn creates more habitat for deer and elk... thinning also creates stands which are of varied ages... problem with clearcuts and fire suppression is that they lead to even aged stands which are then susceptible to diseas or infestations... this is one of the problems that has fueled the pine beetle outbreak here in bc.... if you see old growth forests (especially on the coast where fires are more infrequent) the stands are of varied ages... i'm all for thinning forests.... maybe not at the 15-25 yr age which was when much of the thinning took place here in bc in the 80'2 and 90's, but at a 50-70 yr age when the logs can be merch and hauled fairly easily

 

[smokechase II]

rodents and forest health

Ranchjn:
Rodents are a good deal for critters like the spotted owl. Except when that becomes over emphasized in forests like Eastern Oregon and the fuel loading keeps building.
Every time we put out a fire, we add fuel to the next fire.
Failure to manage a greater portion as Native Americans or Nature did is helping create these huge fires that seriously remove most everything.
Check out these photos of a spotted owl nest before a fire, and one after.
Balance is the key. Nature didn't remove all the slash. But she sure didn't have the catastrophic fires we do now. In the dryer forest ecosystems where I live. Different story in Western Oregon.
Logging and thinning to me are just intelligent first steps to get back to a forest health condition where the large fires are rare.

 

[smokechase II]

Opps here are the photos

Here are the photos.

I can't give you the exact numbers. But we have lost around 60% of the spotted owl nests locally. Primarily from large fires in the last few years.
The biologists locally are converting over to advocates of more fuels work. Typically they are strongly in favor of some prescribed burning. This represents change and had been brought on by fires like Davis (21,000 acres) and B & B (91,000 acres).

 

[ranchjn]

Ranchjn:
Rodents are a good deal for critters like the spotted owl. Except when that becomes over emphasized in forests like Eastern Oregon and the fuel loading keeps building.
Every time we put out a fire, we add fuel to the next fire.
Failure to manage a greater portion as Native Americans or Nature did is helping create these huge fires that seriously remove most everything.
Check out these photos of a spotted owl nest before a fire, and one after.
Balance is the key. Nature didn't remove all the slash. But she sure didn't have the catastrophic fires we do now. In the dryer forest ecosystems where I live. Different story in Western Oregon.
Logging and thinning to me are just intelligent first steps to get back to a forest health condition where the large fires are rare.

i completely agree. too much of anything is never good. Slash build up from previous logging operations is a diaster waiting to happen. it takes a LONG time for slash to completely decompose when it is above the ground all piled up. While it provides a nice habitat for the smaller critters, it also provides the fuel needed for a forest fire. balence is key. In the timber harvest operation prior to the one this summer, we noticed a huge increase in wood rats due to all of the left over slash. The problem with slash is that it gets dirt on it which makes it less than ideal to lop up. Slash removal after a logging operation is a difficult task. i believe that if fallers and loppers worked together at the same time, things would turn out better. In my experience, the fallers want to cut as much as possible as fast as possible because they get paid by the board foot. For this reason, they dont concentrate on cutting up all of the branches into little pieces. I think that fallers need to work with loppers, so that when the tree comes down, the loggers can buck it up and the loppers can use their chainsaws to lop up all the branches. Of course this would cost more for the property owner, but i would be willing to pay for my forest to look better and to know that the slash will decompose faster so that the chances of a huge forest fire are diminished. Right now i just have slash laying all over the forest. Chipping it isnt effective, since its 400 acres and the slash has already been mixed with dirt. I think that my best bet right now is to hire someone who is a competent mulcher operator and go that route. otherwise i can enjoy the critters until a forest fire sweeps through the area and destroys my entire timber stand

btw i really do enjoy your pictures... do you have a gallery somewheres? i think pictures of forest fires are really amazing, as much as they suck!