Monthly Archives: February 2018

Lisa Murkowski

If one had to choose a theme for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s roundtable discussions on the Tongass National Forest, it would be “Access.” Over and over, the senator and U.S. Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke heard panelists say they need more access to the forest. Through roads, through less-cumbersome permitting, through whatever means. They want access. It was a nearly three-hour discussion Friday at the Ketchikan public library. Below is a summary. …Another recurring theme for many panelists was the plan for transitioning to a young-growth timber industry. The Forest Service went through a long process to come up with a transition plan that calls for a complete switch in 15 years. Timber industry representatives have said, and continue to say that’s not feasible.

The U.S. Forest Service is cutting the number of large air tankers. With their Fiscal Year 2018 budget, the Forest Service is only allowing for 13 large air tankers on exclusive contracts – down from 20 the previous year. Those aircraft are used to fight fires across the United States and were used on the Rankin Fire and Legion Lake Fire in South Dakota in 2017. These changes could reduce the likelihood of South Dakota receiving air resources if multiple wildfires burn at the same time across the country. The Forest Service also plans to further reduce the size of their Type 1 helicopter fleet, but they have yet to announce how many helicopters they’ll keep. A 2009 study by the National Interagency Aviation Council had projections for the optimum number of Forest Service assets in 2018. The study concluded that there should be 35 Type 1 helicopters and 32 large air tankers.

The recent response to my editorial on the ecological value of dead trees by Russ Vaughn and Mike Peterson demonstrated exactly the problem I was attempting to address: that the Industrial Forestry Paradigm, not ecological understanding, drives forestry on the Colville National Forest.  Their last paragraph illustrates this industrial bias. Vaughn and Peterson wrote: “The logs delivered to area mills are simply the byproduct of creating healthy forests. On our public lands, the focus is no longer on resource extraction, but on creating a healthy, resilient forest that can be used and enjoyed for generations to come.” The problem is that neither Vaughn or Peterson seem to understand what constitutes a “healthy” forest ecosystem.

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission made the right decision to follow the best science and move the marbled murrelet seabird from threatened to endangered (“Marbled murrelet officially listed as endangered species in Oregon,” Feb. 9). The murrelet nests in Coast Range old growth trees, flying up to 100 miles daily to the sea and back to fish for its young. Protecting murrelets as endangered will help ensure this amazing animal’s survival. Fish and Wildlife’s status review, which formed the basis for increased protections, showed that continued logging of mature and old-growth forests, particularly on state and private lands, threatens murrelets. Clearly, more needs to be done.

Drier summers and a decline in average snowpack over the past 40 years have severely hampered the establishment of two foundational tree species in subalpine regions of Colorado’s Front Range, suggesting that climate warming is already taking a toll on forest health in some areas of the southern Rocky Mountains. The findings, which were published today in the journal Ecology, show that spruce and fir tree establishment was limited to a handful of years with above average snowpack and cooler, wetter summer conditions — all of which have grown scarcer in recent decades. The study is believed to be the first to reconstruct establishment frequency on an annual basis for the two conifer species.

Chad Hanson

Earlier this month, California’s Little Hoover Commission released a report that proposed increased logging as a way to save our forests from dead trees and address climate change. However, the report omits key scientific information that points to very different conclusions. …The commission also fails to mention that the “mechanical thinning” logging projects it promotes actually reduce carbon storage. Logging trees and burning them in “bioenergy” plants, as the report advocates, produces even more carbon emissions than burning coal for an equivalent amount of energy produced. Increased logging is not a climate change solution. Further, the report simply assumes that more logging will somehow reduce fire intensity, but this is strongly contradicted by the most comprehensive and current scientific analysis, which concludes that forests with the most logging actually burn more intensely. 

After two years of low timber harvest on the Colville National Forest, forest officials are saying that 120 million board feet (MBF) could be harvested this year due to federal programs and private initiatives. According to CNF Public Relations staffer Franklin Pemberton, programs in the 2014 Farm Bill have been utilized to help forest management work more efficiently.  …The Mill Creek A to Z project has been a unique program designed to allow private business to partner with CNF staff to clear some of the regulatory hurdles associated with timber harvests and restoration projects. The private mill company Vaagen Brothers Lumber, which was awarded the 10-year contract for the A to Z project, addressed the cost of the National Environmental Protection Act study required for timber work on the forest by hiring a private company to do the study.