New-Style Logging Planned In Boise Forest Project To Reduce Fire Danger But Leave Giant Trees Standing

A timber harvest that would leave giant ponderosa pines standing but remove fire-prone trees aims to make the Boise National Forest healthier and safer.

Motorists along state Highway 21 east of Lowman should notice the difference between this harvest and conventional logging when the project begins by early next summer.

Instead of chopping down all the usable trees and leaving an ugly patch of stumps, loggers will cut smaller live trees and diseased or burned timber. They will leave giant yellow pines that give the route from Boise to Stanley its name: the “Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway.”

“We hope to reduce the risk of killing wildfires like the Lowman fire that burned across Lowman and along the highway in 1989,” said Lowman District ranger Walt Rogers.

He said the project will restore the forest to its 1800s’ condition and will be repeated elsewhere in the forest.

Decades of fire suppression have created a forest thick with lodgepole pine and Douglas fir instead of widely spaced ponderosas with their fire-resistant bark. That has primed the timber for insect infestations and fires like last year’s, which burned 190,000 acres in the Boise forest. The timber project is to be put up for sale in about two months, barring a legal challenge or administrative appeal.

Healthy ponderosa pines 22 inches in diameter or larger will be left standing.

The concept is supported by John McCarthy of the Idaho Conservation League.

“This is one (project) where I have positive things to say, where they can demonstrate that careful, sensitive logging is compatible with scenic values and recreation,” he said.

“It will be good for some people and not for others,” said Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association in Coeur d’Alene.

It will be good for companies such as Boise Cascade, with high-tech mills that can handle smaller logs, he said, but not so good for old-time sawmills that process larger logs.