Vernonia's voice., April 05, 2018, Page 7, Image 7

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Stub Stewart Logging Project
Morris. He said the concentration of
infrastructure is high in that area of the
park - including the disc golf course,
mountain bike trails, and other hiking
trails - and the damage that would be
caused by a traditional logging operation
would be severe.
“There was concern that a log-
ging operation like this would negatively
affect the infrastructure that was already
in place,” says Morris.
There was concern that trails
would need to be repaired, or possibly
even rerouted. Morris said the proj-
ect would also need to upgrade several
miles of road within the park and also
construct approximately 20 landings for
the logs. “It would have been a very ex-
tensive operation,” said Morris.
Instead, Morris said he was
asked to go back to the drawing board
and devise another solution for the thin-
ning project. Morris said he had been
discussing a different project with Sun-
set Helicopters’ owner Geoff Hall and
asked Hall to take a look at the Stub
Stewart site. “Geoff said he thought it
was viable, so we decided to give it a try
here,” said Morris.
Morris said that in order to
make the project work financially more
area and timber needed to be added to
the project. “There were plenty of acres
out here that needed to be treated,” said
Morris, “and this allows us to treat a lot
of acreage in a short amount of time.”
He says the value of the timber and the
cost to log it using helicopters basical-
ly equals out, so the project will create
minimal costs but also no revenue for
the State Park system. Ownership of the
timber is transferred to Sunset Helicop-
ters as part of the contract to remove the
trees.
Morris points out that it is not
OPRD’s policy to manage the timber in
their park system for profit, but to man-
age their properties for natural, scenic,
historic, and recreation purposes. “It’s
not our goal to make money from tim-
ber,” says Morris. “Our primary goal is
forest management.”
“This is such a unique situation
and the tools Sunset Helicopters has are
unique to do the job,” explained Morris.
Morris says normally timber sales con-
tracts would go out to bid.
“This whole process is experi-
mental,” said Morris. “It’s experimental
for Sunset Helicopters and it’s experi-
mental for us. There really hasn’t been
an aerial tree harvester tried out before.
We worked with ODOT this past sum-
mer doing some salvage helicopter log-
ging in the Gorge following the fires out
there. They had a similar set-up, but it
could only grab one end of the tree, so
it would only take about six feet of the
tree at a time. What our aerial tree har-
vest can do hasn’t really been attempted
before anywhere. If this works there
could really be a lot of applications for
this technology. Just in our State Park
system there is a lot of potential to do
work in infrastructure areas where nor-
mally we’d be worried about logging be-
cause of the potential damage. We can
use it where we have beetle kill, root rot
pockets, and right around campsites and
trails.”
Morris said Sunset Helicopters
hired local timber fallers during the ini-
tial phase of the project to cut the trees.
The choker setters, flaggers, trucks, and
the wood processor are all local; they
even hired a local helicopter pilot out of
Banks. The bulk of the harvested trees
that can be used as saw logs are being
sent to the Hampton Mills in Banks and
Willamina. The pulp logs are going to
the Interfor Mill in Longview.
Morris says Sunset Helicopters
is using two different sized helicopters.
The smaller one can lift about 2,000
pounds, or the equivalent of a 16 inch
diameter tree. The larger helicopter can
lift up to 3,500 pounds.
Morris says he is using a process
called “thinning from below” to select
trees for cutting, removing the smaller
diameter and the more suppressed trees
to open up the canopy, and leaving the
more dominant and healthier trees. He
says he is also looking at density and try-
ing to create adequate spacing and basal
area that will create a more natural forest
with higher quality trees. According to
Morris, ideally a stand of Douglas fir can
support 300 to 400 square feet of basal
area per acre; most of the areas being
thinned in Stub Stewart are already be-
yond that capacity. Basal area is defined
as the total cross-sectional area of all
tree stems in a stand measured at breast
height.
“Any more than 300-400 feet of
basal area and smaller trees start dying.
Then you have hazards to users and po-
Bighorn Logging
since 1981
7
continued from front page
tential fire danger,” says Morris. “Thin-
ning a stand helps protect the health of
the remaining trees.”
“The idea is to get in and thin
before the stand starts failing and get the
trees to a more manageable basal area,”
says Morris. “Generally we shoot for
around 200 foot of basal area or
less. It’s really dense in there and
we’re already suffering tree mor-
tality in some of these areas.”
Morris says this thinning
project really should have been
done earlier. “We’re already too
late; we should have been here
thinning 10 years go,” explains
Morris. “These trees have already
been suppressed for too long.
When the Park first opened there
was a lot of pressure to get every-
thing in place, get it open and get
people in and camping. So, not a
lot of thought was put into the for-
est management at that point.”
Morris says he has data
on tree density for several perma-
nent plots of trees around the Park
with the goal of coming back im-
mediately following the thinning,
and then again in five years, to
measure the impact the thin-
ning has had on the health of
the tree stands. He says he
plans to do some replanting
with a variety of tree species
to provide some diversity in
the stands.
If the project goes
smoothly and ends up be-
ing successful, Morris says
he sees opportunities to do
helicopter logging all across
the Oregon State Park sys-
tem. As an example, Mor-
ris mentioned Ecola Park on
the coast, a mostly roadless
property in dire need of forest
management. Just building the roads to
access the timber has made any harvest
mostly prohibitive, but setting up a land-
ing on the edge of the property and using
helicopters to cut and lift logs would be
a great way to manage that park.
Top: An example of a densely planted industrial stand within Stub Stewart. Middle: OPRD
forester Nick Morris explains the tree thinning project to local resident Cory Colburn.
Bottom: Harvested trees are processed in the Park before being transported.
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