Industry Ads Push Salvaging Of Burned Timber Forest Advocates Say Industry Deliberately Causing Hysteria To Gain Quick Access To Trees

The snow is melting off the vast expanse of Idaho forest burned last summer, and the timber industry is going to the airwaves to win public sentiment for logging those blackened trees.

“Restore charred forest before fires recur. Salvage dead trees before they go to waste - because there’s no time to burn,” declare Intermountain Forest Industry Association radio and television advertisements.

“I’m not sure if we’re trying to sway public opinion,” said association spokesman Ken Kohli. “Our surveys show the Idaho public supports the salvage timber efforts. We want to make sure the public knows we shouldn’t leave dead and dying timber in our forests.”

Forest advocates charged the industry with deliberately causing hysteria so it can gain quick access to huge tracts of burned evergreens, which Congress may exempt from full environmental studies or administrative appeals.

“If people think this is a little gardener’s approach to cleaning up the forest, it’s not,” said Craig Gehrke, Idaho director for The Wilderness Society. “This is big logging, wide-scale logging.”

The U.S. Senate has approved a salvage measure that does not mention the amount of timber that would be harvested. A House-passed version calls for 6 billion board feet in the next two years nationwide, Kohli said. Congressional negotiators will reconcile the two.

The House proposal sets two-year targets of 260 million board feet on the Boise National Forest and 200 million board feet on the Payette. While the typical cut on both forests could be as much as 80 million board feet a year, the salvage targets amount to less than a third of the timber burned in 1994.

Whether even those cuts are justified depends on who is talking.

Kohli said the dead wood loses its value quickly. Left to the elements for another year, it may not even repay the companies’ expenses, especially if they have to hire helicopters to carry the logs off and avoid damaging the forest floor.

Federal forester Tracy Beck agreed that much of the charred timber left standing after this season would likely be undesirable.

Kohli contends that, if the mills get the salvage timber quickly, it could generate over $100 million in revenue for the government. Part of that would be returned to Idaho counties. Salvage timber sales earn nothing if environmentalists delay them until the trees are rotten, he said.

That does not wash with Gehrke, who maintains all federal timber - salvage or otherwise - is subsidized by taxpayers.

“I don’t buy this 18-month ticking time clock, that everything goes to hell after then,” Gehrke countered. “The whole timber program in the Rockies is below-cost.”

If a huge supply of salvage timber hits the market, the price of lumber - and the cash generated for the government - drops, Gehrke said.

Federal guidelines require that salvage loggers leave at least six trees standing on every acre, and there is debate over that, too. Kohli questions the need. Stream ecologist Wayne Minshall things six is not enough.

For every three trees left standing on national forest land, Americans resort to importing a tree from Canada, Kohli said. That could be an old-growth tree, he said, because Canada has no restrictions to protect the spotted owl.

Minshall, an Idaho State University professor, believes at least half the trees should be left in a salvage sale, even more if the soil is erodible.

“I would argue that standing and down trees in those environments are far more valuable than in someone’s lumber yard,” Minshall said. “The companies are going to open up sores and cause problems, even if they’re trying to be gentle on that land.”

Dead trees gradually deteriorate into duff and foster the growth of new ones, and species such as woodpeckers or owls need the cavities in dead trees for their nests, he said.

Kohli sees rotting logs providing only about 15 percent of the debris needed on the forest floor. The rest comes from pine needles and twig; leaving behind slash piles will help prevent erosion, he said.

Idaho timber stands used to hold about 40 to 50 trees per acre, Kohli said. Now the forest has 10 times that number, setting the stage for the kind of uncontrollable blazes that charged through Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in recent years.

Between the two points of view is the Forest Service. It decides which trees fall and which ones stand.

On the Payette, Beck said 1 billion board feet burned in 1994, and forest supervisors decided to let loggers take out 200 million board feet as salvage this season.

Of the 600 million board feet of trees killed on the Boise National Forest last year, the agency determined 260 million would go under the chainsaw, forest spokesman Frank Carroll said.

Six trees left per acre is an average. In the burned Breadwinner area on the Boise, a roadless forest proposed by conservationists for wilderness, the Forest Service bans the cutting of trees if they have any green needles, Carroll said.

“We see what the wild community needs to be made whole: big standing snags for the birds, what soil nutrients must be saved, shade for the little trees,” he said. “After you’ve done everything for the wild community, you ask what human premium is left.”