LOCAL
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
A3
Experts discuss forest management on moraine
East Moraine
walking tour looks
at present, future
By BILL BRADSHAW
Wallowa County Chieftain
WALLOWA LAKE —
Nearly a dozen people gath-
ered at the south end of Wal-
lowa Lake on Wednesday,
Oct. 14, to learn more about
forest management in the
area, particularly on the East
Moraine.
The East Moraine is
largely a 1,791-acre parcel
acquired by Wallowa County
in January from the Ron-
ald C. Yanke Family Trust.
More recently, another 33
acres were donated to the
county by the Oregon Parks
and Recreation Department,
bringing the total to 1,824
acres. The northern end is
mostly grassland, while the
southern end is forested.
It’s the forested end that
was the focus of those attend-
ing the Oct. 14 walking tour
and the forest experts host-
ing it.
Nils
Christoffersen,
executive director of Wal-
lowa Resources, said there’s
another privately owned
30-acre parcel that’s being
considered for donation,
which would connect the two
at the southeast end of the
lake.
“It really doesn’t make
sense to come out here and
plan a thinning that’s tough
to pull off logistically when
Bill Bradshaw/Wallowa County Chieftain
Larry Nalls, center, a consulting forester and Wallowa Resources Board member, discusses the
viability of logging as part of a forest management plan Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, during a
walking tour of the East Moraine. At left is Nils Christoff ersen, executive director of Wallowa
Resources, and at right is John Punches, a forester with OSU Extension.
we’re going to leave a big
hole in the middle,” he said
of the potential donation.
“It’d be better to wait and
see if that thing actually
happens.”
But that isn’t holding
back plans for forest man-
agement to be given serious
consideration.
John Punches, a forester
with Oregon State Univer-
sity Extension, discussed
the health of the forest in the
moraine, the types of trees
there and the threats to their
continued growth.
“There’s going to have to
be a plan for continued man-
agement so we make sure
(natural) regeneration comes
in,” Punches said. “We look
at a stand now and we need
to act now or it’s going to
really start to fall apart. …
Right now, it’s primarily
grand fi r dying, but before
much longer you’re going
to have (Douglas) fi r dying,
and Doug fi r is the species
that you can harvest out of
here right now and pay the
bill for doing the treatment of
the site. You wait a whole lot
longer and you won’t have
that sort of Doug fi r.”
The cost of forest man-
agement will largely be
left up to Wallowa County.
County Commissioner Todd
Nash was among the group
present for the tour.
He and Larry Nalls, a con-
sulting forester and Wallowa
Resources Board member,
agreed thinning the stand is
not about making a profi t.
“This is obviously not
going to be a moneymaker,”
Nalls said. “This is going to
be for other reasons. There
is the ideology out there that
people want to cut to make a
fortune, but that’s not what’s
going on here.”
Those leading the dis-
cussion agreed any thinning
must be for reasons of for-
est health and the potential
of fi re risk. In addition to the
natural resource the forest
presents, there are numerous
homes and businesses at the
south end of the lake.
Lisa Mahon, Wallowa
County’s Firewise Commu-
nity coordinator working on
establishing a new Firewise
Community at the south end
of the lake, said homeowners
there are concerned that the
forest gets managed like they
want it managed.
“They realize the threat of
sitting in a bowl,” she said.
“That’s a topic every time
we meet is how do we get …
some sort of fuel break. That
is a concern on their minds.”
Punches said that while
the forest’s health is cur-
rently fairly good, he’s con-
cerned that in coming years,
falling dead trees will add to
the ground fuels, making the
area ripe for the kind of fi re
that hasn’t happened there
for about a century.
“Echoing what John just
said, this could be an abso-
lute disaster in 30 years,”
Nalls said, agreeing with
Punches.
All there agreed a man-
agement plan needs to be
developed.
“We’re not doing this
for the money,” Nalls said.
“We’re just trying to make
this a stand that is going to get
us somewhere in the future.
From a political standpoint,
this may be a tough sell.
We’re along a highway to a
crown jewel and we’re by a
bunch of houses.”
He said the area is at a
critical juncture with critical
issues.
“This is the interface
between the private land and
the national forest and so the
risk of fi re, insect, disease
but particularly fi re is highest
right here,” Nalls said. “The
condition of this property is
such that it’s conducive to
wildfi re and it’s also support-
ing, with this grand fi r, the
spread of that fi r engraver
beetle.”
Punches hopes the for-
est management plan can
include creating a buffer
zone between the forest and
private property. But thin-
ning will bring changes.
“It’s going to change the
nature of the site somewhat
because when we take out
some of those trees, more
light’s going to hit the ground
and your ground’s going to go
from being really stark and
you’re going to see more of
the shrub layer develop and
the habitat change in here,
there’s going to be more deer
and elk in the area,” he said.
“It’s going to mean more
feeding ground and calv-
ing ground, so those types of
structural issues are going to
occur. … There’s going to be
a more signifi cant amount of
natural regeneration. There’s
very little right now; it’s just
too dark.”
To the Bright
Edge of the
World
Wolf shot and killed in eastern Baker County
was breeding male from Cornucopia pack
by Eowyn Ivey
Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Ore-
gon State Police are investi-
gating the unlawful killing of
the breeding male wolf from
the Cornucopia pack in east-
ern Baker County.
The wolf died from a gun-
shot wound on or about Sept.
24, according to OSP.
This incident occurred
northwest of New Bridge
in the Skull Creek drainage
of the Wallowa-Whitman
National Forest. Forest Ser-
vice Road 7741 accesses the
Skull Creek drainage and the
wolf was found off the 125
spur road. That’s about 1 mile
east of Eagle Forks camp-
ground. Anyone with infor-
mation can contact OSP Sgt.
Isaac Cyr through the Turn
in Poachers (TIP) hotline at
1-800-452-7888.
Biologists from the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life (ODFW) trapped the wolf
and fi tted it with a GPS track-
ing collar in December 2018.
According to ODFW, the
breeding male and female of
the Cornucopia pack bred for
the fi rst time in 2019. The
breeding female is a radio-col-
lared wolf that dispersed from
the Pine Creek pack, also in
eastern Baker County, and the
breeding male that was killed
in September had dispersed
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A collared gray wolf was found shot and killed in eastern Baker County in late September.
from the Walla Walla pack in
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The pair produced three
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Data from the wolves’ col-
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