Beetle Battle Escalates Critics Call Massive Harvest A Ploy To Increase Agency’S Logging Levels

This summer, the U.S. Forest Service will start logging enough trees to rebuild every home in Coeur d’Alene.

The web of roads needed to carry out the massive harvest will be long enough to stretch from Spokane to Ellensburg.

And that three-year effort may only be the start of logging in response to the worst Douglas fir beetle outbreak in four decades.

Is this triage for the trees, or a Trojan horse for more national forest logging?

Environmentalists and some scientists see the latter, based on the project’s magnitude and the speed with which the Forest Service wants to move.

The plan calls for dramatic increases over recent annual logging rates in the Colville and Idaho Panhandle national forests.

The logging estimates have increased greatly in recent weeks - from a maximum 140 million board feet to a minimum of 153 million board feet.

The agency wants special permission from its Washington, D.C., office to sell the timber before the final environmental analysis is finished.

The timber industry is worried the infestation will spread to its private lands and lead to greater wildfires on public lands. Mill operators say the logging is necessary to create healthier forests.

The Forest Service agrees, insisting that such large-scale logging is simply the smart move.

“The bugs are in there, killing the trees,” says David Wright, supervisor of the Panhandle National Forests. Why not sell the dead trees and use the proceeds to restore watersheds, replant fire and bug resistant trees and reduce the chance of massive wildfire?

“You can kiss it off,” Wright says of the beetle problem. “But there are consequences of doing nothing.”

Those consequences include catastrophic fires, perpetuating trees most susceptible to insects and disease, and missing the chance to sell timber to pay for watershed fixes, Wright says.

Three-part effort

The proposed logging is in three ranger districts, all infested with beetles because logging has removed the most fire- and bug-resistant trees and fire suppression has allowed Douglas fir to take over with choking density.

About 5,000 acres will be logged over three years on the Newport Ranger District of the Colville National Forest, according to the latest estimates.

Unlike the other two areas, Newport is not building new roads or temporary roads, and is only reconstructing 19 miles of existing roads.

“We’re trying to figure out how to (remove) roads,” says Newport District Ranger Dan Dallas. “It didn’t make sense to build any.”

The other 20,000 acres of logging is proposed for the Priest Lake and Coeur d’Alene River ranger districts in the Idaho Panhandle. This includes rebuilding 132 miles of road, and building 35 miles of new road and 30 miles of temporary road during the next three years, according to estimates released last week.

At the end, if the timber sales generate enough money, 67 miles of roads will be removed on both the Panhandle and Colville forests. In total, 5,000 acres - one-fifth of the total - will be clearcut. Several of those clearcuts will be larger than the 40-acre maximum under federal law, Wright says, requiring a waiver from forest managers in Washington, D.C. All will be replanted with white pine, larch and Ponderosa pine.

The Forest Service also is putting out about 500 beetle traps this spring, with the aim of slowing the spread of the bugs. But under no circumstances does the agency believe it can stop the infestation with logging.

About 250,000 acres have been hit by the beetles or are at high risk, the Forest Service says. So the logging would merely get lumber from dead or dying trees to raise money for watershed restoration, Wright says.

Where civilization is creeping out into the woods, the Forest Service also believes it can lessen the chances homes will be lost to wildfire by thinning forests and creating fuel breaks. It is not a guarantee against fire, Wright adds.

“We’re not trying to say we’re going to restore the forest,” Wright emphasizes. “We are improving the existing condition of the forest.”

A matter of money

Much of the proposed watershed improvements - replacing outdated culverts, relocating roads and removing roads - depends on the logging plan making money.

But critics predict the proposed sales will lose as much as $30 million. Recent General Accounting Office reports lend credence to the prediction of red ink.

If the timber doesn’t sell for enough, things like road removal won’t happen, Wright says.

“I don’t anticipate that,” he says. He believes, based on the calculations for this kind of project, it will make money - perhaps as much as $14 million.

His critics disagree.

If anyone compares the estimated logging receipts from the Panhandle plan with GAO and Forest Service records, “the notion that they are going to make money on this stretches credulity,” says Robert Wolf, a retired Forest Service employee and fiscal watchdog.

Adding 153 million board-feet of lumber to an already flooded timber market only means the Forest Service will inflict a great deal of logging damage and lose a great deal of money, adds Sara Folger of the Public Lands Council.

Building and rebuilding more forest roads in the name of access and improving watershed health also seems questionable, Folger says. “My God, how much more access do you need in the most heavily roaded national forest in the nation?”

Industry support

The timber industry says the Forest Service plan is the responsible way to stop the bug infestation from spreading to private lands, which the industry says it cleaned up before the beetles could take hold.

“If your neighbors have a giant bug incubator, we are helpless,” says Frank Carroll, spokesman for Potlatch Corp. And “if we can’t do something to reduce fuel loading, I promise you a wildfire is a hammer the people in this country have forgotten about over the last 70 years and don’t want to find out about again.”

There will be controversy because huge tracts of trees will be removed within easy sight of many back yards, the Forest Service says. But the pain will be short-lived. Even opponents of the plan generally agree the beetle problem may require logging where the national forest and cities meet.

“Folks, when they are deciding how they feel, need to keep in mind the Forest Service is trying to make things better. It’s going to require some pain up front,” says Stefany Bales of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association.

The industry is serious about taking good care of the environment and producing vibrant, healthy forests that are good for fish, wildlife, people and timber production, Bales contends. If the public chooses to support the proposed logging, “they get both a healthier ecosystem and the wood products they demand.”

Better left alone?

Longtime University of Idaho entomologist Art Partridge believes the logging will make the beetle problems worse.

“They are just using this as an excuse to do something they shouldn’t,” says Partridge, who is a consulting forester after 40 years as a professor.

Logging increases the stress on surrounding Douglas fir, making them more susceptible to beetle attack, Partridge says. It stresses the soil, sometimes to the point that new trees won’t grow.

In addition, Douglas fir are often laced with root rot, a disease that massive logging is likely to spread, he says.

Critics, such as Ron Mitchell of the Idaho Sporting Congress, view the proposal as a ruse to dramatically increase Forest Service logging, which has dropped significantly in the last five years.

The Forest Service may be logging the trees with genetic resistance to the Douglas fir beetle. That’s like “taking the money out of the bank and not replacing it,” Partridge says.

The Forest Service plans to replant many Douglas firs with blister rust resistant white pines. But those trees are susceptible to a number of other diseases, and in some cases less than 10 percent of the white pine survive, he says.

“I wouldn’t mind if they did salvage logging in a sensible way,” Partridge says. “With horse logging they could easily employ a lot of people without damaging the ecosystem.”

Left alone, the beetles will thin the dense Douglas fir stands, and those dying trees will enrich the soil, Partridge says. Along the way, more bugresistant species will slowly take over.

Other scientists, such as University of Idaho fire ecologist Leon Neuenschwander, aren’t sure what to suggest. Under current management, he predicts the Douglas fir/ponderosa pine forests around Spokane and Coeur d’Alene will be eaten by bugs or burn.

If the logging is done right, actually makes money and the money goes to watershed and forest improvement, the project could be beneficial, Neuenschwander says. But doing it right includes returning to the logged areas in 15 to 20 years and thinning the young trees, work he says the Forest Service never performs, because it doesn’t produce timber-sale revenue.

“I don’t know what the right thing to do is,” Neuenschwander says. “Maybe we will have to trust the Forest Service and hope they will do the best thing for the forests and the people.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: OPEN MEETINGS The U.S. Forest Service will hold three open house meetings next week on its proposal to log 25,000 acres of Douglas fir killed by bark beetles. On Tuesday, the meeting is at the River Pigs Inn in Priest River, Wednesday it will be at Woodland Middle School in Coeur d’Alene and Thursday in Harrison at the O’Gara Fire Station. All of the open houses run from 5 to 8:30 p.m.