Forest Plans Ice-Damaged Timber Sales

This winter’s ice storms will produce a number of small salvage timber sales in the Colville National Forest, members of the Northwest Timber Workers Resource Council were told Tuesday.

Andy Mason, ecosystem management officer for the forest, said officials aren’t yet sure how much ice-damaged timber there is because there is still eight feet of snow at higher elevations.

“We’re probably going to be offering 1 million to 4 million board feet of this storm-damaged timber,” Mason told some 30 timber industry workers at a conference in Spokane. “It’s going to be a lot of little small areas.”

Sales may range from enough to fill one log truck to 60,000 board feet, Mason estimated.

Most of the damage is north of Newport and, to a lesser extent, south of Republic.

“In the Republic district, we were a little surprised to see what we saw in there,” Mason said.

He said officials also were surprised recently when snow started melting and they started to find ice-damaged sections in central Stevens County, near Chewelah and Addy.

“We’ve got it elsewhere, but it’s just a little difficult to find it yet,” Mason said.

Areas along roads will have the highest priority for salvage logging because that’s where firewood gatherers will look first.

“We want to try to save the sawlogs,” Mason said.

However, he said some of the ice-damaged trees may have no value except as firewood. In some areas, the trees are too scattered, too small or too damaged for commercial logging.

The largest salvage area apparently will be north of Newport in Pend Oreille County, primarily on the east side of the Pend Oreille River.

“Yesterday they told me there’s at least 1 million board feet in the Newport area,” Mason said. “It’s at a lower elevation, and we’ve been able to get out and ‘recon’ it.

He said the northern part of the Colville National Forest in Pend Oreille County, near Sullivan Lake, appears to have gotten snow instead of ice.

, DataTimes