New Approach to Salvage Logging – Opinions Still Clash

SEELEY LAKE - More than a million acres of Montana burned this fire season. Of the more than 750,000 federal acres that burned, nearly 160,000 acres were on the Rice Ridge Fire near Seeley Lake.

Due to the large geographical area and scope of the post-fire recovery efforts, Region 1 of the Forest Service launched a new approach to assessing the burned areas and pursuing salvage logging opportunities. While many people, including Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Inc., want to see the process expedited, others see salvage logging as a burden to taxpayers and one that harms critical habitat.

This is the first time the Forest Service has assigned an Incident Management Team (IMT) at the regional level to help coordinate post-fire recovery efforts amongst all the forests in the region. The IMT will oversee the Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) assessments and will determine the opportunities for salvage across forest boundaries.

The intent of the team is to provide for employee safety using the newest technology available and improve coordination and consistency across each forest. The team will be able to leverage resources and look at the large fires as a whole even when they burned on multiple forests.

"What that means is [the IMT] is going to help us with consistency, try to streamline by using similar templates, sharing technology and providing that support to streamline the process for all of us," said Rachel Feigley, Seeley Lake District Ranger. "At the Forest and District level [the IMT] is helping to organize us. We are looking at all of the fires across the [Lolo National] Forest and which of them have salvage opportunities."

Salvage opportunities are evaluated by criteria including: the intensity of the fire; steepness of slope; volume available; forest plan management direction; and location and distance to existing roads.

The Lolo National Forest Plan already specifies what management areas are suitable for timber harvest. The management areas identify the best use for the area and activities that can occur in the area.

"We are not going into the wilderness or into inventoried roadless [areas, for example]. That is part of our strategy to be efficient and streamline the process," said Feigley. "That said, there is still a lot of opportunity on the Rice Ridge Fire."

Due to the hazards of dead trees (snags) and the large area that needs to be assessed, drones and other remote sensing technology will be used. The technology can provide fine detail of an area including burn severity, general tree size, stems per acre, road integrity and other problems the fire may have caused with road infrastructure that could affect salvage opportunities.

"This will give us an idea of where we need to focus people and minimize exposure to risk," said Carol McKenzie, Forest Service assistant director of renewable resources management program in the Northern Region.

If it is determined that there is a salvage opportunity and the resources are available to implement the project, the Lolo National Forest will begin the National Environmental Protection Act process. The district will identify the purpose and need. Feigley said the purpose will include recovering the economic loss of the timber and look at creating vegetative resilience and removing trees that are susceptible to insect and disease.

"We want to be in line with what our management direction says so we can show the court, if it comes to that, that we followed our own law and policy and that we are still able to find these salvage opportunities," said Feigley.

Once the areas are identified and the purpose and need written, the project will go out for public scoping which may include a community meeting. Even with the regional team in place, the public process will remain at the local level. The District hopes to start the scoping period by the end of October.

"We are looking for substantive comments that help inform the issues or have an alternative that looks at that issue," said Feigley. "It's not a vote yes or no that people like salvage."

The Missoula County Commissioners wrote a letter dated Sept. 14 to Lolo National Forest Supervisor Tim Garcia requesting an Emergency Situation Determination (ESD) from the chief of the Forest Service for the Lolo Peak and Rice Ridge Fires.

An ESD allows the Forest Service to implement a decision in a shortened period of time. Following the NEPA process and public scoping, which is the same as the regular process, a final decision is made and implementation can begin immediately. Under the normal NEPA process, a draft decision is released, and then there is an objection period followed by a final decision.

"We believe this determination would help recover the value of substantial timber resources while also enhancing public health and safety and the forest ecosystem," stated the Commissioners in their letter. "The determination would also assist with reforestation, water quality and water quantity protection, and help provide new areas of wildlife security. Salvaging merchandisable timber will support funding the mitigation of flood hazards, protect vulnerable soils, and provide an economic stimulus to our rural communities."

If the region requests an ESD from the chief, it would be site-specific and meet three conditions: have a compelling reason for relief of hazards that threaten human health and safety; mitigate threats to natural resources on Forest lands or adjacent lands; avoid the loss of commodity values sufficient to jeopardize the Forest Service's ability to accomplish their objective.

Even if the ESD is granted, someone can still file a complaint or intent to sue. If the court grants a preliminary injunction, the timber sale would be suspended. Without a preliminary injunction, activities can continue while the project goes through the courts.

"At this time we have not determined if [the ESD] is the route we are going," said McKenzie. "We are still in the preliminary assessments of what is out there on the ground and how much."

The public will be notified during the scoping if the ESD is going to be requested or not.

"We have totally adjusted the program of work on this forest because we are focusing our efforts on post-fire work," said Feigley. "We realize that this wood that we are salvaging does have a lower shelf life than green wood so [the Forest Leadership Team] will strive to build a timeline that takes advantage of that."

* * * *

Pyramid Mountain Lumber, Inc. Resource Manager Gordy Sanders said anytime Pyramid can acquire high-quality logs close to home it benefits the mill and local contractors. To recover the value in the timber through salvage logging, harvest has to occur within a maximum of two years. The length of time is dependent on species, the fire intensity and the second order fire effects is where trees appear alive but die the next year.

"We look forward to expedited stewardship on the ground and getting as much work done as possible before the value totally disappears," said Sanders.

Logs harvested during a salvage sale will tend to be a little bit larger because the top sized, small end of the log is increased from 5.6 inches to 6.6-7.6 inches. This is because trees become brittle after being burned. When the top hits the ground, they break.

Sanders said that burned trees are not accepted by chipping facilities, making the non-merchantable timber worth nothing. The chips are used for pulp mills which produce paper. If there is char in the process, it leaves a hole in the paper. This reduces the value of the timber because there is more waste.

"From Pyramid's perspective, there is a lot of volume that was future volume over the next 50-100 years that disappeared," said Sanders. "Our expectation is that we need to recover some of this volume that is right here in our backyard as quick as we can because it will not be available in the future for a number of years. We look forward to the agency moving forward quickly and doing the right thing on the ground and not getting tangled up in a complicated analysis."

Mike Garrity, executive director for Alliance for the Wild Rockies, has a different view and said there are several myths surrounding salvage logging.

First, based on figures Garrity has found in the Forest Service's budget and in documents for various timber sales, salvage logging is subsidized by the taxpayers.

"The Forest Service loses money because they sell the timber at a very low price that doesn't cover their costs," wrote Garrity.

The second is the notion that wildfire destroys the forest.

Garrity explained that many scientists agree that fire is essential to maintain ecologically healthy forests and native biodiversity. This includes large fires with patches of intense fire that create dead trees, called snags, and naturally stimulate regeneration of new stands.

"These areas of 'snag forest habitat' are ecological treasures, not catastrophes, and many native wildlife species, such as the rare black-backed woodpecker, depend on this habitat to survive," wrote Garrity.

Snags attract beetles species. Woodpeckers eat the larvae of the beetles and create nest cavities in the dead trees. The male black-backed woodpecker will create two or three nest cavities of which the female picks the best one. The rest are left to be inhabited by other forest wildlife species, such as bluebirds, that need cavities to survive but cannot create their own.

The final myth Garrity highlighted, is the idea that the west is currently experiencing an unnatural excess of fire.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote Garrity. "There is a broad consensus among scientists that we have considerably less fire of all intensities in our Western U.S. forests compared with natural, historical levels, when lightning-caused fires burned without humans trying to put them out."

Garrity feels logging corporations, their allies in Congress and the Administration demonize fire for one reason. "Their 'catastrophic wildfire' political narrative is the cornerstone of their campaign to roll back environmental protections on our National Forests and dramatically increase logging and clearcutting under the guise of fire management."