The Antiplanner’s friend, Andy Stahl–who frequently comments on this blog–recently appealed a timber sale on the Bighorn National Forest. That takes me back to the 1970s and 1980s, when Andy and I appealed timber sales, forest plans, and other national forest and BLM projects almost on a weekly basis. Sometime around 1980, I held the distinction of having appealed more BLM timber sales than anyone, but Andy soon eclipsed me.
Recent aerial photo of timber cut from the Bighorn National Forest in about 1985.
During the 1980s, the Forest Service sold nearly 11 billion board feet of timber each year, but in the 1990s this rapidly declined, partly due to Andy’s activities protecting the spotted owl and–I’d like to think–partly due to Forest Service employees reading my book, Reforming the Forest Service, and deciding they didn’t want to be that kind of an agency any more. (As I describe in this article, this is greatly oversimplified and a lot of other factors were involved, some of them quite surprising).
National forest timber sales bottomed out at about 1.5 billion board feet in 2001, and averaged a little more than 2 billion board feet since then. Since so little timber was being cut, neither of us have been interested in appealing timber sales.
However, one of the members of the organization Andy directs was upset with a proposed timber sale in Wyoming because, they feared, it intruded on a roadless area. The Forest Service responded that it wasn’t roadless because it had built roads into the area for timber sold and cut in 1985. Andy looked at aerial photos and, sure enough, the areas cut in 1985 were plainly visible–just as if they had been cut last year.
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Which immediately raised the question of why weren’t there 20- to 25-year-old saplings growing on this sale that should have been reforested by 1990? Federal law requires the Forest Service not to cut timber unless it knows it can reforest it within five years. Not only are few to no saplings visible in the photos, a large pile of unmerchantable logs that had been piled for burning remained unburned (and would have hindered reforestation of that portion of the cutting unit if anyone had bothered to reforest any of it).
More 1985 cutting units on the Bighorn National Forest.
When Andy raised this issue with the Forest Service, agency officials said, “We don’t cut that way any more.” Now that really takes me back. Whenever we would catch the Forest Service cutting in high elevations or other areas where they had failed to reforest previous cuttings, they always replied, “We don’t do it that way any more.” The reality is that it is extremely difficult to reforest timber at very high elevations, and this particular sale on the Bighorn Forest is between 8,000 and 9,000 feet high.
The Antiplanner remembers when top Forest Service officials in Colorado and Wyoming argued that they had to cut high-elevation spruce-fir forests because otherwise they would burn and be replaced by aspen. They also argued that they had to cut aspen forests because otherwise spruce and fir would eventually grow in and shade out the aspen. Of course, taxpayers lost money on both spruce-fir and aspen sales, so the whole point of the timber sale program was to keep Forest Service employees working to maintain the status quo in the ecological battle between spruce-fir and aspen.
I suppose the 80-percent reduction in timber sales left me complacent about the likelihood of the Forest Service to continue foolish programs such as losing money cutting timber above 8,000 feet. Although firefighting has become the Forest Service’s main source of dollars, the incentives that rewarded Forest Service managers for losing money on timber sales remain in place. I’m glad people such as Andy are keeping an eye on the agency.
The primary skill of civilian Federal employees is inventing another demon to fight so they can keep their fat benefits and pensions. The only Federal employees laid off these days are from the Defense Department.
Wow. This is surprising thinking from the Antiplanner.
I didn’t know we had whole government agencies where the employees just decide what they want to do. No wonder they mostly decide to do nothing. Must be nice.
I didn’t know we had whole government agencies where the employees just decide what they want to do.
No.
What Randal is describing is a situation where a politician wants some timber cut for one reason or another. He tells the agency to cut it and make up a reason. After so many instances of this, the biologists on the ground – and activists like Randal – said ‘enough is enough’. Many books have been written about this. Yet the exposure of certain politicians’ use of public land wasn’t enough to bring them down – having a ‘wide stance’ was. Priorities!
DS
“… working to maintain the status quo in the ecological battle between spruce-fir and aspen.” What would Darwin do?
Our government schools are forced teach Darwinism. No other science allowed.
I would like our government agencies such as the EPA , forest service etc to be forced to actually follow Darwinism and stop trying to play God and decide which species are the ones “nature” intended to win out. A few examples beyond the “spruce/aspen war” mentioned above:
1. The government is killing birds in the northwest because the birds eat fish. Darwin expected the birds to eat fish-and nature would balance it out over time. If the fish become extinct, others will take their place – Darwin.
2. The government prevents water being used for crops in California because some tiny fish “may” be harmed. If this fish needs the government to starve people to survive, this fish is on its way out and Darwinism is being ignored.
3. The government has dumped thousands of tons of Agent-Orange like defoliants in rivers to fight off “invasive” grasses. We all know that government defoliants don’t hurt other wildlife. Darwin would let the grasses decide who wins.
The current thinking and implementation of the Endangered Species Act is that if any one species becomes extinct, all species will follow. You don’t need Darwin to tell you that is bad science.
I don’t know if any readers saw this story in the L.A. Times over the weekend, but some of the goings-on in the aftermath of the Rim fire in California impress me as, well, nutty.
I am curious what others think about it.
Extensive salvage logging proposed for Rim fire area – The U.S. Forest Service project would be one of the largest federal salvage efforts in California in years. Not everyone approves.
A few quotes:
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing an extensive salvage operation to log dead trees on about 46 square miles of timberland charred in last year’s massive Rim fire in the Sierra Nevada.
The project would be one of the largest federal salvage efforts in California in years. If approved, it could yield more lumber than the combined annual output of all the national forests in the state.
But it is already triggering a fight by some environmentalists who argue that the post-fire logging would destroy valuable habitat for rare birds and other species that thrive in blackened forests.
CPZ, extensive salvage logging is nutty. Funny that this comes up in CA every few years after a big fire – it was put to bed after the Cleveland Fire that salvage logging is harmful, so after that fire they helicoptered a few trees out of there. I guess they hope everyone forgets.
DS
It is so nice that wealthy Americans leave their burned trees on public land to rot and released their CO2. Much better to get virgin timber from other countries where they waste far less wood printing worthless EISs and planning documents.
leave their burned trees on public land to rot and released their CO2.
As we all know, if you log post-fire, you screw up the soil so trees don’t like to regrow. But that doesn’t matter because now.
And standing dead fall and release their carbon into the soil, which is good so you have that right. That’s what you meant by ‘release’, amirite?
DS
As we all know, urban planners in Colorado know all about the local soils in California, because planners think everything is the same everywhere.
The environmental effects of not logging in national forests is that wood is either created by windmills and solar panels, or else it is being logged somewhere else. Out of sight, out of mind to planners.
Sandy and Dan, I am not qualified to speak about the effects of removing (or not removing) “salvage” timber from an area that has burned, so I won’t.
My comment above about the nuttyness of this was more about the process involved, which must keep a lot of Forest Service employees busy.
CPZ – Yes, I thought it was about process, and how the local environmental groups even agreed with the salvage, but wanted a few trees left behind for woodpeckers. The very tiny environmental group, taking its funding and inspiration from a turtle planning the entire earth’s future, made snark comments, but even they didn’t oppose the harvesting. The only person opposing the harvesting is a planner in Colorado who loudly proclaims he knows everything about everything everywhere.
I hope that helps the Colorado Planner understand without resorting to the ignorant acronyms ingrained in the planning class myopia.
The only person opposing the harvesting is a planner in Colorado who loudly proclaims he knows everything about everything everywhere.
He even loudly proclaims that he does not live in a suburban detached house in the fringes of Denver suburbia while denouncing said suburbia and proudly promoting the new urbanism he doesn’t live in.
As we all know, urban planners in Colorado know all about the local soils in California, because planners think everything is the same everywhere.
I got my undergrad in CA, including courses in fire ecology and CA botany and CA ecosystems, so don’t have a sadz because I studied and backpacked in those ecosystems!
He even loudly proclaims that he does not live in a suburban detached house
Now you’re just lying about it. Get a hold of yourself.
DS
And standing dead fall and release their carbon into the soil, which is good so you have that right.
Apparently the A-1 California School of Truck Driving and Urban Planning teaches that rotting wood is just gnomes tearing off pieces of carbon and burying it in the soil a little at a time. If you can’t see decomposition giving off CO2, why would truck drivers/urban planners need to know it to graduate?
Sandy, I don’t know what that…um….comment…is supposed to convey, but if you think decomposing forests aren’t part of the carbon cycle – and their wood cycles into the soil supplying essential carbon (which would be absent if logged) – then I don’t know what to tell you.
DS
I really regret making that pledge the other day about name calling.
per Dan: “[dead trees] release their carbon into the soil” and “their wood cycles into the soil”.
In two separate comments no less.
What a colossal error from the man who knows everything. Except that plants get their carbon from the CO2 in the atmosphere and that dead wood inevitably oxidizes and becomes CO2.
Dan’s parenthetical comment that the essential carbon would be absent if the trees were logged reveals an ignorance so profound it could only come from A-1 California School of Truck Driving and Urban Planning , with many thanks to Sandy Teal.
But really Sandy, recant your name calling pledge. Leftists like Dan always name-call and insult, it’s the way they reason. Further, if you don’t call him a dumb fucking putz, he thinks that you don’t really believe your own argument.
Dan, I know nothing about forest management except that I manage my own 11 acre parcel of fir in BC, but you are a dumb fucking putz and your arguments are shite.
Fred, if you don’t think soil C comes from dead trees cycling their material thru the soil, I know someone who has a bridge to sell you.
But go ahead and have a sadz. It’s OK.
Second, the literature has been quite clear for well over a decade about the issues surrounding postfire logging – much more must be done to ensure you don’t screw up the soil. Every few years it comes up. Since you are clearly so brilliant and knowledgeable, you’ll remember what happened in OR a few years ago when a grad student dared bring up the problems with postfire logging. Even the Wayerhauser-dependent dean of the Forestry School at UW had to harrumph about it. That died down and here we are again.
But you were saying about the benign nature of postfire logging again?
DS
According to the A-1 California School of Truck Driving and Urban Planning educators, there must be a God because there is NO way trees could grow anywhere without there already being trees there before them to die and leak their C into the soil to provide new trees with “C”.
The A-1 California School of Truck Driving and Urban Planning is of course the nation’s leading trainer of urban planners and has done cutting edge research into discovering what the “C” in “CO2” means.
Thank you Sandy. I appreciate the dissembling away from the fact postfire logging has been shown to be a bad idea, and that soil carbon comes from trees, and no trees, much less soil carbon and much less fertility (hence the bad idea).
DS