Logging method could reduce Sierra fire losses

By John Holland, The Modesto Bee, July 31, 2015

Timber industry, environmentalists find common ground

Researchers say forests unnaturally dense

Approach could prevent disasters such as Rim Fire

     Pinecrest – people gathered here, about 7 miles from the Rim Fire’s northern boundary, to talk about an approach to logging that could prevent such devastation.

The goal, as with past efforts at forest thinning, is to reduce the number of trees per acre.  The difference here is that the loggers would not just leave an expanse of large, evenly spaced trees, but diversify the landscape with clumps of trees in some spots and openings for grass and brush in others.

The idea has support from a Tuolumne county coalition that includes the timber industry, environmental groups and other partners.  It has moved beyond past conflicts, such as clear-cutting, in support of common goals.

“That is why this is such a winning concept, because it can protect the wildlife and it can provide products,” said Mike Albrecht, an industry forester based near Jamestown.

He talked by phone Tuesday with The Modesto Bee about last week’s gathering at the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest., a 1,705-acre part of the Stanislaus National Forest.  The U.S. Forest Service has done research there since 1922, including recent work on the thinning idea.

Albrecht co-chairs the coalition, which is named Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions because of its interest in both the national forest and the adjacent national park.  The other co-chairman is John Buckley, executive director of the central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in Twain Harte.

“YSS is showing that no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, there should be strong collaborative agreement to use science to produce more wood products, benefit watersheds and reduce the risk of destructive wildfires,” Buckley said by email.

The field trip included forest researchers, county leaders, aides to state and federal lawmakers, and others.

The Rim Fire, the largest on record in the Sierra Nevada, covered 257,314 acres of the national forest, Yosemite and private timberland in 2013.

Some of the damage was light to moderate, thanks to past thinning, but large areas had over-dense timber that burned fiercely.  The fire created a risk the following winter of soil erosion into Don Pedro Reservoir, a key source of water for Stanislaus County, and it marred places where residents like to camp, hike and fish.

Experts say the dense conditions arose because, about a century ago, land managers started snuffing the frequent, gentle fires that had kept the fuels down for millennia.  Lightning started them as did Native Americans to groom the landscape.  Flames visited some areas as often as every six years, according to researchers.

The beneficial fires can be mimicked by logging, as well as intentional burning when conditions allow.  But a large-sale effort to treat the Sierra has been slow to emerge, in part because of funding and in part because of opposition from some environmentalists.

The recent study at the Experimental Forest sought to refine the thinning methods.  Forest Service researchers Eric Knapp and Malcolm North told the group that the desired condition in a fine-grained mosaic of well-spaced individual trees, clumps of timber, and patches of brush and grass.  Each element could be as little as a quarter-acre.

The study took place on a 27-acre plot mapped in 1929 by Duncan Dunning, an early leader in federal forest research.  The recent researchers found that by 2008, this site had 2.4 times as many trees per acre as 79 years earlier.  It also had less shrub and other habitat for wildlife that does not do so well in dense timber.

Albrecht said the coalition is urging Congress to fund planning for a ramped-up thinning effort, needed on 250,000 to 300,000 of the national forest’s 895,000 acres over many years.  Most of the Stanislaus does not have commercial timber, including the brushy lower reaches and the rocky places above.

The coalition points out that the treatments would pay for themselves through timber sales.  Tuolumne County has two sawmills ready to handle the logs, as well as two power plants that burn wood chips.

Albrecht said the industry generates 600 to 700 jobs in the county now but could top 1,000 if a major effort got underway.

Letting the forest fuel sit would eventually cost much more than the preventive work.  Taxpayers spent $127 million to suppress the Rim Fire, and more costs await with reforestation and other work.

“Forests are going to burn one way or the other, “North said in a summation of the gathering from the coalition.  “We can either manage them to return them as close as possible to the historic, patchy open conditions that made them so resilient to damaging wildfires, or we can expect them to burn more and more often in high-severity fires such as the Rim Fire.”