Fall 2003. Dubious salvage sale in the Sierra takes big trees, leaves small ones that will burn. Out, Out! Outsourcing

Postfire Salvage Logging: Is It Restoration?

In forest stands with high mortality following wildfire, land managers have typically responded by salvaging the blackened timber as quickly as possible before the wood decays. In recent years, salvage logging has become highly controversial, but a number of people have questioned its economic benefits in light of a growing body of scientific evidence about the ecological benefits of large snags and decaying wood in the recovering forest.

An interesting twist to the controversy is that the U.S. Forest Service is taking care to no longer refer to postfire logging as salvage and to justify it primarily in ecological rather than economic terms. One example of this new approach to salvage is the Star Fire of 2001 that burned 17,000 acres, mostly in California’s Tahoe and Eldorado national forests. According to the agency, about 70 percent of the area burned severely and more than 40 percent of Tahoe’s burned acreage was in the Duncan Canyon roadless area, which has been proposed for wilderness designation.

The Forest Service asserts that the fire burned uncharacteristically, that prior to the advent of fire suppression during the twentieth century, the area was subject to frequent fire in a mosaic of low to moderate severity burn patches. This point of view, however, does not take into account research indicating that infrequent crown fires in the region have also been important in shaping vegetative patterns and maintaining species diversity.

In response to the Star Fire, the Tahoe National Forest formulated the Red Star Restoration Project. This year, the Tahoe is salvage logging many of the stands of timber with high mortality. However, Tahoe National Forest personnel rarely describe the Red Star project as salvage or logging. The project’s decision states that the goal is to reduce “predicted surface fuel accumulations” and “help move fuel conditions toward natural fire regimes.” District Ranger Rich Johnson says that generating revenue is mostly incidental to that purpose. “For us in our analysis, we are looking to the future in terms of restoration,” Johnson says. “We are looking to 150 years from now and restoring old-growth characteristics.”

Johnson and other forest personnel claim that postfire logging will lessen the risk of another high-severity fire. They reason that removing the dead standing trees that otherwise would decay and fall to the forest floor over a period of several decades will significantly decrease future fuel loads and help ensure regeneration and survival of the mixed-conifer forest. Another stand replacement fire, they worry, may prevent long-term recovery of the forest ecosystem.

They appear mostly unconcerned about the possibility that the postfire salvage logging may be detrimental to the forest. Last year’s 500,000-acre Biscuit Fire in southwestern Oregon is an example where some of the most severely burned areas were previously salvage logged.

When asked about the science that supports their hypothesis that salvage will reduce the risk of severe fire over the long term and promote forest recovery, Johnson and his fuels specialist, Wayne Sindel, could not point to any supporting scientific literature. Instead, they recalled anecdotal evidence from their many years of fighting fires. Sindel said large, downed woody material has hampered his firefighting and led to more severe fire effects.

As Sindel stood in a tractor-logged portion of the fire area that largely resembled an old-fashioned clear-cut, he said, “This is what I am looking for. This is what I need if I am to manage the fuels and use prescribed fire.” Later, he looked at another severely burned area that had not been logged but that contained a dense patch of mostly smaller snags lacking commercial value. Sindel seemed at a loss about what to do. He said the fuel loads here were way too high, but he lacked options to deal with it without salvage as a viable tool.

The perspective of Johnson and his staff hardly fits with a 1995 scientific paper by Robert Beschta of Oregon State University and others, who recommend allowing natural recovery as an important postfire management principle. The Beschta paper states, “There is little reason to believe that postfire salvage logging has any positive ecological benefits.” It also cites a number of potentially deleterious effects associated with postfire logging unless care is taken to protect water quality and other aquatic values.

In another paper, published in 2000, James McIver and Lynn Starr of the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station reviewed the scientific literature on the environmental effects of postfire logging. They found that research on the subject is scanty and that no studies have specifically looked at postfire logging. McIver and Starr suggest, based on studies of green tree stands, that “postfire logging may increase short-term fuel loads and fire riskÉbut reduce intermediate and long-term fire risk.” However, this hypothesis remains untested.

One question about the Red Star project is whether it will achieve its stated goal of meaningful fuel reduction. Chad Hanson, an environmentalist with the John Muir Project, fears it will not. His group, an affiliate of Earth Island Institute, recently obtained a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court to stop salvage logging. He points to the agency’s environmental impact statement, which states that fuel reduction activities after the initial salvage are funding-dependent and that fuel loads will average eighty-five tons per acre across the fire area in the absence of follow-up treatments.

Most everyone agrees that eighty-five tons per acre is much too high: the stated goal is to reduce fuel loads in severely burned stands to about twenty tons per acre. But will the agency obtain the congressionally appropriated funds needed to treat the smaller, more flammable fuels that will remain after salvage logging? Johnson acknowledges that obtaining funding may be difficult, yet says, “It is our intent to treat the full spectrum of fuels.” He and his staff have prioritized about 2,900 acres of “strategically placed area treatments,” or SPLATs, along Red Star Ridge to help stop the spread of a future large fire.

Much of the controversy about salvage logging is due to the fact that large snags and downed logs serve a number of important ecological functions in recovering forests. For example, a number of wildlife studies have demonstrated that large snags provide key habitat for cavity-nesting birds such as black-backed woodpeckers. After logging, these and other woodpeckers are much less likely to use a burned area. Decaying large-diameter logs provide valuable material for soil organisms that help replenish essential nutrients in forest soils. Downed wood also provides ground cover for reducing soil erosion following fire.

James Brown, retired research forester with the Forest Service’s Intermountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana, believes these ecological functions are extremely important, yet he cautions that they must be balanced against the future fuel problem that large numbers of dead standing trees represent.

He says that the key is to manage for an optimal level of fuel and that postfire logging can sometimes play a role in achieving that, assuming care is taken to protect soil, aquatic and hydrological values. He published a paper this summer with a Forest Service colleague, Elizabeth Reinhardt, that examines optimal fuel loads for forests recovering from fire. Brown believes it will be important for the Tahoe National Forest to get the fuel loads considerably lower, to perhaps thirty tons per acre, if it is to optimize conditions for forest recovery.

That remains a big if. If the Forest Service follows through with its fuel treatments and does not limit its postfire activity to logging only the largest dead trees, it may be that Red Star will provide valuable information about the dynamics of forest recovery—something we currently know very little about. Getting this information will require careful monitoring over decades. It’s a story that can be told only by a future generation of scientists. For now, we must recognize that calling Red Star “restoration” equates to management hubris. It pretends we have the answers, when scientists tell us we have lots of questions. —Bob Dale

Out, Out! Outsourcing

Our western senators have introduced legislation that would end the corporate outsourcing of U.S. Forest Service workers. The anti-outsourcing provision is contained in these Senate Democrats’ alternative to President Bush’s so-called Healthy Forest Initiative, which would dramatically cut back on environmental reviews and citizen oversight of most Forest Service logging decisions.

In addition to barring outsourcing, the Collaborative Forest Health Act, S 1314, lessens the paperwork associated with small thinning, prescribed fire and other hazardous fuel reduction projects. The bill also imposes new responsibilities on the Forest Service to collaborate with local governments, tribes, landowners, community and other groups in devising its strategies for reducing hazardous fuels.

For small fuel reduction projects near communities, or within a municipal watershed, that propose no logging or road construction, the bill “conclusively determines” that an environmental review is unnecessary, so long as there are no extraordinary circumstances present, such as threatened or endangered species. This provision would prevent citizens from seeking court review of such projects solely on the grounds that the projects have a significant environmental effect. However, all other court challenges under other environmental laws would remain in place.

To ensure the bill focuses the Forest Service’s attention on places where fire poses the most risk to communities, the bill’s allowances for cutting environmental analysis would not apply to projects that build roads in roadless areas or degrade the integrity of old-growth forests. Any Forest Service revenue from the bill’s thinning must be deposited in the general Treasury rather than siphoned by the Forest Service into one of its off-budget slush funds.

The bill’s combination of outsourcing reform with responsible forest health provisions makes it unique among the panoply of forest health legislation now under consideration by Congress. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics endorses S 1314 as the best of the alternatives and is working with Senators Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat; Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat; and Washington Democrats Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to ensure it becomes law. —Andy Stahl

Forest Magazine | FSEEE