Too Many Trees with Nowhere to Go

by Angie Many

The government is finally starting projects

to restore National Forest health. Is the risk

industry must take to gear up too great?

In February, I attended a meeting, sponsored by Colorado Timber Industry Association (CTIA), with GMUG (Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre-Gunnison) National Forest personnel. There were more agency personnel in attendance than loggers, illustrating the facts that few loggers remain and those few are tired of years of meetings that, so far, have not spurred any positive changes to their ever-shrinking incomes.

The GMUG, like many others National Forests across the West, needs management, and the agency is looking for ways to get the work performed. Several problems exist, however.

First is that the Forest Service timber program is understaffed and underfunded. Some timber personnel and funding have been diverted to other programs over the last two decades; some timber program employees took early retirement from an agency which they perceived as having lost its mission, draining the Forest Service of much expertise. While the Healthy Forests Restoration Act provided some good tools to aid the Forest Service in getting projects from the drawing board through the sale process, minimal funds were appropriated to actually accomplish the goals of the Act.

The second problem is that National Forest timber sale levels have not been enough to sustain a healthy industry for years, and the current offerings are also not enough. In many places, there are simply no mills remaining within reasonable hauling distance to process logs. When there’s no place to process the wood, there’s no profit in harvesting it.

Some places are also short of experienced loggers to perform management. Many former loggers found other employment and not many young people, understandably, have gotten into the profession. Recent newspaper articles from the Vail, Colorado area note that many more bug-infested trees need to be removed before Vail becomes engulfed in flames, but there are not enough loggers or mills to process the logs. No one has bid on several sales. This problem is widespread.

The Forest Service, too late, recognizes the problem. A 2003 USFS Rocky Mountain Region paper notes that: “In order for timber harvesting to be available as a cost-effective option for meeting land management objectives, it is essential that industry-milling capacity be available. Unless the trend of shrinking capacity is reversed, the Region will be faced with virtually no tools to manage the vegetation resource. Rebuilding such a tool from the ground up would likely take considerable time and expense. Processing facilities... need to be within reasonable haul distances of timber sale offerings.”

Nowhere to Take the Trees

At the February meeting, GMUG personnel wondered why one of their sales had no bidders. Some pine of mediocre quality could be removed, but the successful bidder would have to perform management work and pay the agency for the pine logs. Not enough logs would be removed to compensate for the other work required, but the real stickler is that there is no longer a local facility available to process pine. Of course no loggers want to do the management, pay the Forest Service, and then have no saleable product.

The third problem is the cost of management. The agency is trying to get management work done at minimal cost, which is a worthy goal. However, the work has to be profitable for loggers. Either there has to be a sufficient volume of merchantable timber to cover the costs of management processes, or the Forest Service is going to have to pay for the management. The taxpayers are going to have to decide whether they want National Forests to die and burn, or whether they will allow loggers to take out sufficient trees to make a management job profitable, or whether they want to foot the whole bill for forest management procedures.

One Forest Service employee, in discussing a project that would be coming up for bid, stated that “We think we’ve designed this so that you can make a little money at it.” As one logger responded, “We don’t want to make a ‘little’ money. We want to make a living.”

A fourth problem is the long-term reliability of the timber supply. Many of the management sales now being offered require specialized machinery. With most types of logging equipment costing well over $200,000 per machine, and with sawmills costing in the millions of dollars, people are understandably hesitant about investing in equipment again. They’ve been burned, badly, by a government which refused to stand up to the zealotry of radical environists, and which let forests thicken, sicken, die, and burn while loggers stood in food lines.

How many people will be willing to invest megabucks when they consider past experiences? Loggers need at least five years of good profit to pay off equipment; sawmills need even more. Even if the federal government gears up projects now, what will happen when the drought breaks? Those residents pressing for their local forests to be made more fireproof will tend to forget the urgency after a few years with no fires. The Forest Service, as we’ve learned, is a political agency. What will happen then to the Forest Service’s determination to thin and manage? Will the agency be willing to once more let loggers go down the tubes in response to the loud outcries of extremists?

What Should Loggers Do?

I have, for years, been disappointed at the refusal of the U.S. Forest Service to promote timber management. As Women In Timber started telling the agency chiefs in D.C. back in the mid-1980s, the Forest Service knows that timber should be managed and it knew what the devastating consequences of non-management would be. It knows how to promote. Smokey Bear was an outstanding success at reducing wildfires started by careless people. Woodsey Owl did a great job at stopping thoughtless litter. The agency should have started promoting the benefits of forest management 20 years ago, but they preferred to bend to the vocal minority winds instead. And now, the resource that they could have protected with the support of an educated citizen base is dying and burning, but they waited for public outcries before starting management projects again.

So where do we go from here? Our forests desperately need management, some mills need wood, other mills could gear up to run a second or third shift, and loggers need work. In many places where trees need to be removed, there are no mills remaining. Biomass plants to generate heat and power from small trees are almost non-existent. The costs of gearing up, re-tooling, and buying new equipment to handle the small-diameter, crooked, dead wood that the Forest Service wants removed are astronomical, and there is no guarantee that the supply would be available long enough to pay for the equipment. Environists will still use every tool in their considerable arsenal to stop any project that they can. Do we take a chance -- again? Do we invest hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of dollars -- again?

I don’t have the answers. I wish I did. But there are some changes needed before people will feel comfortable investing again.

Changes Needed:

1. The Forest Service must engage in a nationwide advertising campaign. It must show the public that forest management is necessary to have healthy forests. It must create an educated public which understands forest management and will support it even after the smoke from forest fires has dissipated.

2. The agency must change its logging cost projection system to better reflect actual logging costs when it is creating bid proposals.

3. The agency must outline long-term output goals for each Forest -- and commit to them. Timber supplies must be reliable as well as adequate to sustain local industry.

4. Congress must understand that unless loggers are allowed to take a lot of big, straight trees, forest management is going to cost the government. It must appropriate funds for management, which will save fire suppression costs in the long run. I understand that with the terrorist threat, money is tight. But this country spends money to support PBS, NPR, and a lot of programs that are completely unessential and outside the role of government. We must tell Congress to dump those programs and appropriate money to protect our National Forests, or transfer ownership of the Forests to the states.

4. The agency must pull money away from other programs to protect forest health. Without a healthy forest, recreation and other uses will be diminshed and other resources, lands, lives, wildlife, homes, and incomes will be jeopardized.

The onus of protecting the ability to perform management also lies with industry. Sawmills are going to have to do a better job of working with loggers. They need to buy logs from only those who perform well on the ground, and they need to make sure that those loggers are adequately compensated and sufficiently secure in their contracts. They also need to have active timber management education and promotion programs on local levels.

Loggers must do the best job possible. When they leave an area, it should be obviously improved. Signage explaining processes should be used, and tours explaining the processes used and the reasons for them should be welcomed. Workers should be well-trained professionals.

We currently have a President who understands that timber management is important to the country, a Republican majority in Congress, and a public that has been traumatized by massive forest fires. This may be the best chance that we have to revitalize forest management and the timber industry. It just might be worth taking that financial chance. But unless we’re all prepared to spend our time supporting forest management, writing letters and educating the public and politicians, it could all go down the drain again. If we all make a commitment to join loggers’ associations, Women In Timber organizations, multiple-use groups, to participate in Forest Service processes, to work hard to support responsible forest management, to support other aspects of the industry, and to do a darn good job in the woods, we could just make a go of it this time. 

Trees for Power

The Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington) recently reported that a process has been developed to quickly convert small trees, branches, and even pine needles into methanol, an efficient power source for fuel cell technology. Kristiina Vogt, professor at the University of Washington’s college of Forest Resources, said that the technology will provide power without adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

The article by James Hagengurber quotes Vogt as saying that the process would be available within a couple of years. With the rising costs of oil, Vogt believes that methanol-powered fuel cells will be an affordable source of power that will also increase the demand for and affordability of forest thinning. 

Colorado Logging Days!

Colorado Timber Industry Association (CTIA) is sponsoring Colorado Logging Days in Delta, Colorado on Saturday, April 23, 2005. The competition will take place at Confluence Park, with axe, crosscut, choker, chainsaw, modified stock saw, and open hot saw events. Contests are limited to 10 contestants per event, so contact CTIA for more information and to register as soon as possible. Even if you don’t want to compete, bring your lawn chairs and watch loggers do what they do best, browse the arts, crafts, and information booths, and spend the day having fun with good folks.

The event will be preceded by the CTIA annual meeting on April 22 in Delta. For more information, contact Eric or Linda Sorenson, PO Box 32, Delta, CO 81416; 970/874-5418; elsoren@bresnan.net.  

We Warned Them!

The steady disappearance of wood-processing facilities and a skilled work force to support those facilities “can really hamper our ability to complete some of our fuel reduction projects and some of our forest management projects.”

Daily InterLake article by Jim Mann, quoting Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Bob Castaneda 

 

ALF Saboteurs Hit Again

An online posting by veganliberation stated that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) targeted the GNK Deer Farm (address and phone number given in the posting, so that it can be hit again, no doubt) outside of San Miguel, California in January. ALF members cut through and removed fence, allowing all of the deer inside to escape. According to a local newspaper, said the posting, the deer farm owner is now planning to go out of business as soon as he sells off the deer that he was able to recapture. “Chalk up another victory for the Animal Liberation Front!” said the posting.

It noted that about a dozen deer farms operate in California, and other deer are “imprisoned on farms throughout the United States.” The posting said that the ALF communique encouraged “compassionate people everywhere to locate farms in their area and tear down their walls.” 

Eco-terrorists Suspected in California Arson

Eco-terrorists are blamed for a recent arson fire in the Sutter Creek apartment complex. The complex was still under construction when seven firebombs were set off, causing an estimated $100,000 in damage. The words; “We will win - ELF,” were sprayed on a storage building on the site.

This is the third incident in the area north of Sacramento in the last two months. Three unexploded bombs were found at a home construction site in Lincoln, December 26, 2004, and five explosive devices were discovered at an office building site January 12 in Auburn.

An agent with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Sacramento recently met with local builders and law enforcement people to devise methods to make the construction sites more secure. An organization formed to counter eco-terrorist strikes on building construction, the Construction Industry Crime Prevention Program, sent out packets to its 300 Northern California members with tips on how to prevent such attacks. “I want to emphasize that this will not be the last one (eco-terrorist strike),” said program director, Vicki Schlechter. “This pattern is far from over in this area. It’s just a miracle no one’s been hurt or killed.”

(Reprinted from www.libertymatters.org)