Nez Perce Forest plans to authorize clearcuts

LEWISTON – Nez Perce Forest officials plan to authorize clearcuts of timber stands around Elk City to reduce fire risk to the town and slow a beetle infestation.

A draft plan would place small clearcuts adjacent to previous timber sales along the American River and Crooked River drainages.

The plan would avoid penetrating roadless areas or harvesting old growth trees, said Phil Jahn, a Nez Perce Forest planner at Grangeville.

The sales would allow only short-term water quality degradation and would eventually improve water quality and fish habitat by obliterating several miles of road.

Many of the sales would be small “scruffy looking” clearcuts sprinkled with leaf trees, Jahn said.

“They wouldn’t look as clearcut and slicked off as what people have seen in the past but they would still qualify as a clearcut,” he said.

The logging would cover about 3,000 acres and produce 20 million to 25 million board feet of timber. A board foot of timber is equal to a board one inch thick, one foot long and one foot wide. It takes about 15,000 board feet to build an average home.

Elk City township is surrounded on three sides by the Red, American and Crooked River drainages. Last year, a fire burned toward American River before stopping.

The Red River drainage is suffering from an infestation of mountain pine beetles that has killed millions of lodgepole pine trees.

Residents have long worried that a fire started in roadless and wilderness forests to the southwest of Elk City will be pushed by prevailing winds toward the town of 400.

At the same time, managers of the Bennett Forestry Industries mill at Elk City have threatened to move the mill if logging is not increased in the forest.

The town’s residents and the mill have put pressure on the Forest Service to develop a plan, due to be released in July, for the Red River area.

“It’s our highest priority,” said Jahn.

The strategy won praise from Dick Wilhite, resource manager of the Bennett Forest Industries. He said the project protects the flanks of Elk City by cutting trees in the American River drainage to the northeast and the Crooked River drainage to the Southwest.

“This is what the Forest Service should be doing,” Wilhite said. “This should be a prototype for them.”

Leaders of a local environmental group, however, said they may appeal the project if it is adopted.

Jonathan Oppenheimer of the Idaho Conservation League in Moscow said the project is large and the timber harvest will occur in areas that have already seen extensive logging.

“If the purpose of the project is to put holes in the canopy, we have already succeeded to a large degree,” he said.

“If clearcuts are going to make us safer, then Elk City would be one of the safest places on Earth.”

A 45-day public comment period began Monday. self end