Timber sale going forward after tornado
BOISE – The U.S. Forest Service has dismissed an objection from an environmental group that sought to delay the logging of thousands of trees uprooted by a rare tornado in a remote stretch of central Idaho.
Bidding on timber sales has already begun. This Friday, the Forest Service will award contracts to commercial logging outfits for an estimated 18.5 million board feet of downed and buckled timber on Payette National Forest land near the Oregon border, said spokesman Boyd Hartwig.
After the Forest Service released an environmental assessment in August, the WildWest Institute, an environmental group based in Missoula, filed an objection.
Regional Forester Jack Troyer, in Ogden, Utah, who oversees the Payette National Forest, denied the objection last week.
The group complained that the salvage logging would disrupt soils in the forest and clog sensitive waterways with sediments from logging.
Representatives from the WildWest Institute did not return phone calls from the Associated Press on Monday.
“When you get into any kind of disturbance on the ground, you have risk of sediments on the ground getting into the streams and creeks,” Hartwig said. “It’s kind of a standard appeal or objection with logging.”
In June, an extremely rare category F-2 twister carrying-150 mph winds spun through the outskirts of Bear, Idaho, carving a 12-mile swath of downed trunks and snapped branches.
Gov. Jim Risch and national forest officials expressed concern that the drying timber would raise fire danger, while loggers fretted that the timber would lose value the longer it stayed on the ground.
Forest Service specialists drafted the cleanup plan in just 82 days.
The quick turnaround was possible under new rules in the federal Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which allow land managers to skip certain parts of the traditional environmental review process to speed logging and prescribed burning.
Risch has said the Forest Service worked at “warp speed.”
Preparations for logging were stalled during the review of the WildWest Institute’s objection, but the Forest Service still will meet its goal of allowing loggers into the area before winter, Hartwig said.
“It was pretty unusual circumstances,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’s record time or not.”
More than 1,500 acres are slated for auction in five separate timber sales, said Bill Gamble, the lead author of the Payette National Forest’s 220-page environmental assessment.
The sales are expected to generate $1.5 million, according to the assessment.
In all, the tornado downed about 26.8 million board feet of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and white pine trees.
A board foot is the equivalent of a piece of lumber measuring 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 inch.
After the logging, the Forest Service will reseed the area, planting about 360 trees per acre.
The Forest Service is targeting another 237 acres in the Rapid River Roadless Area – a protected zone up for wilderness designation – for prescribed burning.
The tornado felled trees in a checkerboard pattern, with damaged areas spread among untouched pockets of forest.
In some areas, downed trees will not be removed to promote natural re-vegetation and to protect sensitive populations of redband and bull trout in nearby streams.
The loggers will use dozers, excavators, rubber-tire skidders, and in some cases, helicopters to haul out logs.
About one mile of new road will be built to support the timber operation.