Hello everybody welcome to The County Seat
I'm your host Chad Booth. Today we are going
to talk about forest management this is very
timely in the fact that the country is
experiencing another catastrophic wildfire and
many are claiming that the purpose or the
cause of that is poor management of forests.
We saw it earlier this year with the Dixie fire in
Southern Utah that started at Brian Head and
moved its way over to Pang itch. So we are
going to talk about the role that good forest
management plays in keeping fires in check.
Joining us today for our conversation Kane
County Commissioner Jim Matson who has a
prior life in the forestry business and joining us
from Portland Oregon is Tom Partin who is a
forestry consultant in that neck of the woods
and thank you for making the trip down here to
join us for this conversation.
Thank you for inviting me and I am looking
forward to it.
your background and why you can speak with
authority about forest. Jim we will start with
you.
I started out with my interest in this with my
deduction in the early 60's so in 1966 I attained
a degree in forestry and I promptly went to
work in the forest products industry and in
southern Utah and northern Arizona and did
that for 30 years and 30 grand years doing that
as we went through our processes there that
was back when the forest service was actually in
the business of managing its lands.
Okay, Tom how about you?
I graduated from Oregon State in 1975 I worked
7 years with the forest service actually working
on their marking and timber crews and got a
little bit of a sense of the arrangement
techniques they were using. I went to work for
a small company called lumber company in
Prineville Oregon and in 1983 we built a second
mill in John Day Oregon and I went over there
and managed that mill and over the course of
about 20 years and the forest service started
cutting back on their harvest our mills got shut
down at least 2 of the 3 did and then I had to
take another job as forestry association and
executive in Portland I oversaw the American
Forest Resource Council from 2001 to 2015 I
have a base of management saw milling and
policy work.
used to be managed primary by commercial
activity to thin forests some people have in the
back of their mind clear cutting but that really
stopped about the time forest series was
established if I am not mistaken. Can forests be
financially self-sustaining without destroying
the resource that is my first question?
Yes without a doubt if we remove all the
bureaucracy and still keep our hearts and minds
and focus on what the landscapes and water
sheds are in need of if you get hung up on
bureaucratic processes then the next thing you
know we have lost the whole battle and we get
back to the basics on the ground and they can
function in such a fashion that these processes
these projects will actually pay their way and
provide a tremendous benefit with little or no
risks to the public.
You came from a company who had 3 sawmills
and you had to close two of them in some of
the most timber rich area in the country.
The county was probably 70% owned by the
forest service and yes their harvest went from
130 million down to roughly 15 to 20 million
and so that is why we had to close our mill at
least in the Prineville Oregon area. The
Malheur National Forest over in John Day
Oregon at one time had was cutting over 300
million board feet and it went down to
somewhere around 40 million.
So an average guy listening to that say you are
cutting down 300 million board feet will think
you just clear cut the forest there could not
possibly be a tree left.
Well I think we have to understand the forest
rule out of fiber. The forest is growing that
amount of fiber each year and what we have is
a sustainable harvest level and I think the
problem we got into in the 80's and early 90's
is the management techniques were focusing
on just removal of the larger trees and not
doing the full gambit of work we needed to do
on thinning and maintaining and restoring our
forests so when the environmental community
said we were overcutting our forests it seemed
like everything just came to a stop and the
pendulum swung way to the other side of the
management which was basically no
management.
point one would think you want to cut the big
trees because you get the most logs out of it
but what is a good forest management plan.
You take baby trees middle trees like the three
bears.
tree individually there are trees that are healthy
if you need to continue to grow we will leave
them regardless of size diameter or height. If
you have a forest that has sick and disease trees
in them regardless of their size diameter they
need to come out so I was always an advocate
of managing all ages and all sizes of trees on a
selective basis and not just having one
prescription.
You can understand what is at risk here. Just
take your own circumstance with your own
home and front and back yards. Leave the
water turned on and leave and come back in 15
or 20 years and see if you can get in the front
door providing it does not burn down first it
continues to grow we have to be able to take
each one of those situations and make sure that
we add value to it at the same time protections
that are necessary. The means are there they
are not that hard to do this stuff was invented 2
to 300 years ago.
One thing I would like to add the focus has been
on forest restoration on the last tone or 15
years and harvesting and cutting trees of all
diameter classes. The forest product industry at
least on the west coast is very resilient and very
adaptive and so now we are back into a
program of more thinning of the smaller timber
to cover all of the acres and we have sawmills in
place that handle that type of wood and we
have gone away from strictly harvesting the
larger older trees and not focusing on all of the
forests. I think industry has converted and we
are really doing a good job there.
Why is timber the product of active forestry
such a valuable building commodity?
For several reasons. First of all, it's a renewable
resource, it's always growing. If you look at
building with concrete and steel, we're taking it
out of the earth, its not replenished. Trees
grow back, were going to have them forever.
Secondly you can put trees into a variety of
forms, you can put it in to lumber, you can put
it into plywood, you can put it into cross
laminated timbers and build big panels and big
buildings with them. It has diverse usages so its
by far the best building material. Again, its
renewable, and its going to be around forever.
So, people who want to save resources should
be promoting active timbering?
Absolutely. And it takes a lot less energy to
make a board that it does to make steel or
concrete.
Excellent we are going to take a break and sets
us up when we come back. We are talking
about forest management here on The County
Seat. We will be right back after the break.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking about forest management we left off
begging this question I am going to throw it out
there in an annual basis I'd like to know which
takes more trees. A catastrophic wild fire or
commercial harvest?
I'll take a poke at that one. You can actually
take a look at acres treated over time and you
can see where as catastrophic wildfires been
occurring its taking place at the time the
harvest level went down as the harvest levels
went down fire acres went up and past that
level we have lost more than what we were
taking.
In your neck of the woods what does that turn
into numbers Tom?
Nationally I think if you look at the voice of
interagency fire numbers we burned over 7
million acres of timberland this past year. I
think the forest service record show that they
mechanical treated somewhere between 250
thousand and 500 thousand acres though that
is mechanically treated so, but they do
prescribe fire and pre-commercial thinning but
by far wildfire will damage or decimate a lot
more acres than what we are trying to do
managing them in a proper manner. That takes
a second to sink in you burn 7 million acres and
you commercially treat 300,000 not 3 million
300,000 Holy Smokes no pun intended.
At that rate of travel we will soon be about of
the forestry business.
effects downstream after a fire., obviously it
looks different if you are in a unpopulated area
like Panguitch Lake and Brian Head than Santa
Barbara what sort of things are impacted by a
fire?
Just start out by saying that a lot of the
amenities that we have in the forest we like a
green forest. When you have forest and it is
charred you lost a lot of the amenities people
go out there to travel for you lose a lot of the
riparian buffers where you had for fish and
other aspects and then a lot of damage to the
soil when you get a hot fire and it takes all ate
trees out it really just cooks the soil it creates a
hard layer on top water especially when you
have heavy rainfalls following the fire cannot
penetrate the soil and it just instantly runs off in
sheets and that is why we are seeing so much of
the devastation in southern California right now
and we can have that right here in this
neighborhood.
So it's the heat of the fire crusts the soil to
make in impenetrable it's not the loss of plants
per say it's just that water cannot get into the
terraform so it collects father downstream.
Right it changes a lot of the chemistry of the soil
with the heat and it just creates a real heavy
layer that water cannot penetrate through.
In the case of the Brian head fire for the acres
burned and lost it ended up losing the
Panguitch water shed they had to end up
funding municipal water system by drilling wells
up there to replace what they were getting in
terms of normal runoffs from the Dixie forest
that are prior to that fire.
So what is that going to cost Garfield County
you neighbors to move to wells. Is that millions
of dollars?
It is millions of dollars and they have already
had to come to the state for grants to be able to
replace that water it's been significant.
What other downstream down fire problems
can arise from this?
I think all of us are interested in a green forest
as I mentioned. If we are not managing our
forests after the fire and collecting some fees
we don't replant our forests and so it maintains
itself out there as nothing but a brush field and
we do not have a green forest for decades.
since the fire and now is starting to look like
forest would that have happened quicker if
managed cut and reseeded?
You would not have had a complete loss like we
had in the lodgepole pine that was burned up
there so it has taken all this time to replace that
and to get it into a position where they can go
back to growing forests again.
Good we will talk about the nature of this
industry when we come back here on The
County Seat.
Welcome back to The County Seat we are
talking about forest management. A little
conversation happened during the break here
that I think is worthy of mentioning and that is
about the question of how long does it take for
a tree to grow up to a point as to where it looks
like a forest tree or is commercially harvestable.
I do not want to keep it all not the money but
the two are kind of related what is your
answer?
I'll start by saying it depends on where you are
growing the tree and how much moisture that
area gets for instance in some of the dryer
climates in eastern Oregon, Washington
California a tree you might plant it and it might
take 80 to 100 years to grow to size that it can
bae a commercial product. On the west side of
Oregon and Washington and California where
you have some of the larger fur and of course
the red wood that gets a lot of moisture go in
and harvest an area go in an replant it you can
make a commercial product in 35 years. So it is
all about the site of the area how much
moisture it gets and how well you manage it
once you plant the tree.
The forest series does do some clear cutting
they open up areas as large as I think 20 acres
commercially the private land-owning
company's timber companies do clear cut and
the reason they clear cut in Washington and
Oregon is to allow Douglas Fir trees to regrow
they need full sun light and, so it is economic
reason number one but number two it's a
reason to grow Douglas fir trees.
So you keep going back to something we are
talking about redrawing we are talking about
redrawing is there a point when we no longer
can have forests.
No just in spite of us. We are going to end up
with forests and forests growth as we go
forward and it think as you look at this question
is burning a large group are burns acceptable or
you ask the question about clear cut I would
rather have a clear cut more so than I would a
fire. I would rather have the smaller cuts that
Tom was talking about so that we can manage
patches and species as we go forward.
It also sounds that's true we have not even
talked about wild life. When you go in to
selectively cut or clear cut 20 acres what direct
impact happens to wildlife in that period of
time?
A lot of wild life species deer and elk species like
the early sterile plant stages they like the
shrubs that come and the grasses and so
actually it helps the wild life because it creates
more food. The forests when they are off limits
to the management grow very dense they grow
with a lot of trees coming in that blocks the
sunlight there is no food on the grounds so
really the animals have a lot of thermal cover
they don't have food so what we are doing by
creating opening is creating food.
Habitats for spotted owl and goes hawks and
alien species of that sort they in turn need a
prey base that comes from the squirrels the
rabbits and all the rests that grow in the
understory so it's a complex system.
So in the process of saving the owl who is
actually being decimated by some other bird if I
recall barn awl it turns out that we are hurting
them by just making them off limits to forests
because they will eventually become too dense
to support wildlife for them to feed on.
I think it's like anything they need a balance of
open areas they need some forage areas they
need some cover areas.
300. What does a healthy forest look like? If
you had a text book case this is a healthy eco
system what would it look like.
I think it would be multiple species to begin
with and not just a single species, but you can
get those. We talked about lodge pole pine
actually and the rest of it I think the healthy
forests has to have different heights and
different number of tress per acre and a
mixture of species between hard woods and
conifers as a mixture.
Good answer. I agree. I think if you limit
yourself to a forest of one species and you get
an insect or a disease outbreak you run the risk
of having that totally wiped out by for instance
in ponderosa pine if you have the western pine
beetle come in and it can take out a whole
stand so if you have a variety of age classes a
variety of species and again going back to
managing that forest on a tree by tree basis I
think that is really where we need to get to in
forestry and not have a cook book approach.
Very good we have run out of time in this
segment. We will be back with our final wrap
up on The County Seat I think there is going to
Welcome back to The County Seat our
conversation about forest management we
talked about what a good forest looks like now
let's talk about what good forest management
looks like from your expert opinion with 30 year
careers in the industry. What is a good forest
I think we have to recognize and realize we
have human communities that are right next
door or directly involved of forest settings such
they are mutually dependent we cannot do one
without the other we have to be able to figure
out how they interrelate and work together and
what I best for the forest.
I think the key is going back to your statement
what is forest management and its
management. We have not had management
on our forests lands much of them for the last
30 years. If you look across the west we have
had the northwest forest plan we have had the
east side screens which limited the size of the
trees you could harvest we had the sierra
Nevada framework in California we had a lot of
funding cutback in region 4 in the Utah area we
have not managed our forests and we have had
30 years of ingrowth and 30 years of collective
fuel on the ground and growing to fuel our fires.
There will be a whole bunch of forest service
employees saying we are managing the forests I
am at my desk every day doing NEPA analysis.
What would your answer be to that?
Again we earlier how much it is costing just to
do the planning and these folks are doing the
planning but 70% of the dollars that go into a
forestry project goes into planning 30% of it
goes into implementation on the ground so we
have people involved at their desk doing the
planning but we have very small percentage of
the dollars actually going to the ground to
getting the work done.
Do you want to venture a guess as to how much
be going into that planning process when you
guys both started in this business.
I bet it was less than 20%.
I think early on in the 70's and 80's when Jim
and I started you could do an environmental
assessment or an environmental impact
statement with 20 pages often times now an
environmental impact statement might be 600
pages 700 pages takes a year to 2 years to do
half million dollars to million dollars and it's the
planning to make sure that they have
everything right because if they face litigation
and as you know they have litigation they want
to make sure they have everything their I's
dotted and t's crossed to win in court and it
really puts them in a difficult situation.
What kind of impact has the Roadless initiative
had on forest management?
That is another attempt to extend the
wilderness philosophy as to keeping humans off
of the landscape and access out of the forest.
Jim and I can remember we had the rear one
and rear 2 the wilderness areas reviews and
both of those additional land and set them
aside in the Clinton Roadless rule you can do
some management if it is for safety for bug
outbreaks very little and very few forests have
done any management in Roadless areas so
basically it's almost like a wilderness it's a hands
off and its acres set aside that will continue to
grow and continue to add fuel and at some
point in time will burn up Chad is how I view it.
Do we face that with our precious wilderness
areas that they are because we are completely
hands off that they may eventually become
that.
Absolutely and then the water sheds are gone
and the whole works and it really serves little in
the way of utility and purpose I think even for
the forests and wild life to exist out there.
If you look closely at where some of the large
fires are occurring many of them start in the
wilderness areas where you cannot use
mechanized equipment they will get a wind to
blow the fire out of the wilderness and blow it
out onto the general forested area by then it
has such a head of steam up and some much
heat that it just balloons into thousands more
acres so part of the problem is we are not
addressing our fires in the wilderness we are
burning a lot of our wilderness and that is
creating problems on the general forested area.
Do you think a district forest manager would be
better decision maker on how to handle this
forest than policy from Washington?
I think it all starts at the ground level. I think a
good forest supervisor know his forest and I
think he knows what the forests needs and
certainly we need some kind of improvement in
legislation for him in Washington DC to give him
the tools but the real decision maker needs to
be the forest supervisor.
me what a stewardship agreement is?
A stewardship agreement is unlike a timber sale
where you just sell a timber sale for certain
amount of money. A stewardship agreement is
where you have work to do in the project you
sell it and the contractor has to perform all of
this work and then the dollars come back to the
forest as retained receipts. And the retained
receipts go to getting the improvements done
like in the riparian areas commercial thinning
and this type of thing it's totally different than a
Gentlemen, we are out of time thank you for
being here and thank you for watching The
County Seat we will continue this conversation
on our website and on our FB page we will see
you next week on The County Seat.
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