A6
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Replanting a burned-over forest Oregon forest deal wins acclaim
By LISA BRITTON
Baker City Herald
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
DOOLEY MOUNTAIN
— Cierra Lafferty pats the
soil around the newly planted
ponderosa pine seedling, then
gives the needles a gentle tug
to make sure it’s secure in the
ground.
“Welcome to your new
home,” she says, her words
nearly whisked away by the
wind whipping across Dooley
Mountain, about 15 miles
south of Baker City.
Then she stands, pulls her
phone from a pocket and holds
it close to the tree.
“Blog moment!” she says,
snapping a picture of the
seedling, then photos of her
buddies.
On Wednesday, May 18,
science students from Baker
High School helped plant
ponderosa seedlings along
the Skyline Road in an area
burned by the Cornet-Windy
Ridge fire in August 2015.
The
lightning-sparked
blazes, which burned together
during hot, windy weather,
spread over 104,000 acres,
the largest wildfire in Baker
County history.
Bill Mitchell and Noah
Erickson, who both work in
the silviculture department for
the U.S. Forest Service, gave
the students a quick lesson
on the proper way to plant a
tree.
But first came the vocabu-
lary lesson as Mitchell quizzed
the kids for the words that
describe a fire that destroys
everything.
After a hint, one stu-
dent called it out: “Stand
replacement.”
“Is there a seed source left
to rebuild this forest?” Mitch-
ell asked, sweeping an arm
across the landscape littered
with fallen logs and skeletons
of standing trees.
“There is not.”
The source on this day is
the students, who planted 750
ponderosa pine seedlings.
“Your goal is 20 trees each
today,” Mitchell said.
He and Erickson demon-
strated how to dig a hole,
either with a shovel or a hoe-
dad — a tool with a long, flat
blade, rather like a large-scale
tongue depressor — that was
PORTLAND — Regulations that reduce
Oregon’s harvestable timber acreage by
roughly 10% aren’t a development that would
normally be embraced by timber industry
representatives.
Yet new rules that increase no-logging buf-
fers around streams and impose other restric-
tions were celebrated Wednesday, May 18,
by executives of forest product companies
alongside Gov. Kate Brown and environmen-
tal advocates at an event in Portland.
The signing ceremony memorialized the
Private Forest Accord, a compromise deal
over forestry regulations struck by timber and
environmental representatives. The agree-
ment was enshrined in legislation passed ear-
lier this year and signed by Brown.
“You all set aside your differences to do
what is best for everyone,” Brown said. “Both
sides recognized the old way of doing things
wasn’t working.”
Any decrease in the state’s log supply is a
hard pill for lumber and plywood manufactur-
ers to swallow but the segment of the indus-
try that supports Senate Bill 1501 believes
it’s a calculated risk: The new restrictions are
meant to forestall ballot initiatives or other
unpredictable disruptions to logging rules.
“There are no certainties in life, but we
have a negotiated agreement that’s supported
by all sides,” said Eric Geyer, strategic busi-
ness development director for Roseburg For-
est Products. “I’m confident we will have reg-
ulatory certainty for the elements that were
negotiated.”
This regulatory certainty is generally cited
as a key benefit to foresters, loggers, land-
owners and manufacturers, but detractors in
the timber industry view the term as unrealis-
tically optimistic.
Critics say the regulations don’t actually
prevent environmental advocates from filing
lawsuits or seeking ballot initiatives, either
immediately or years from now.
“One must suspend disbelief that the
greens will not sue in the future. History
says otherwise,” said Rob Freres, president
of Freres Lumber. “Surrogates and newly
formed organizations will be used to circum-
vent the agreement.”
Meanwhile, the timber investment man-
agement organizations and real estate invest-
ment trusts that agreed to the restrictions will
eventually divest their Oregon forestlands,
“avoiding the harm they have caused,” he
said.
The larger buffer zones around waterways,
which depend on stream type, are a major
component of the deal and have come under
fire for rendering valuable standing timber on
private land effectively worthless.
Aside from no-harvest buffers expanding,
the legislation imposes restrictions on bea-
ver trapping, road building and steep slope
logging.
Industry estimates peg the statewide
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Brianna Stadler, left, and Sydney Lamb work as a team to plant
ponderosa pine seedlings on May 18, 2022, in the Dooley Moun-
tain area burned in 2015 by the Windy Ridge-Cornet Fire.
big enough for the tree’s roots.
Location matters too —
the students were instructed
to plant by the “microsite”
technique, which means find-
ing a place, such as beside a
fallen log, where the seedling
would be protected from the
elements.
“This is the toughest place
we plant,” Mitchell said. “It’s
dry, it’s windy, it’s cold.”
Then it was time to load
up the bags with seedlings,
each first dipped in a bucket of
water to give it a good start on
growing.
In pairs or trios, the stu-
dents hiked uphill, picking
their way through charred logs
and the lush green of grass,
lupine and arnica.
This summer will mark
seven years since the wild-
fire burned this portion of the
Wallowa-Whitman National
Forest.
“We’ve planted about 2.5
million trees since the burn,”
Erickson said.
The survival rate, he
said, can vary from 15% to
50% depending on weather
conditions.
“It depends on the year,” he
said. “Ponderosa has the high-
est success.”
Crews contracted with the
Forest Service have planted
western larch, ponderosa pine,
Douglas-fir and western white
pine.
This is Erickson’s fifth year
with the Wallowa-Whitman.
He never saw this area cov-
ered in tall, green trees — but
he has seen it coming back to
life.
“I’ve only see Dooley like
this,” he said. “I’ve seen the
growth.”
Picking as well as plant-
ing
This tree-planting excur-
sion brought out students from
several different classes: gen-
eral science 2, advanced biol-
ogy, advanced ecology, natu-
ral resources and wilderness
readiness survival.
Nicole Sullivan, who
teaches science at BHS,
planned the field trip to wrap
up a unit on the plant kingdom.
“And we’ve been doing
botany with all the classes,”
she said.
In addition to planting
trees, the students hunted for
morel mushrooms — in fact,
the planting took a bit longer
because the prized fungi kept
distracting their attention.
And even though they
finished the day tired with
scratched skin and dirty
clothes, each dirt-smudged
face had a smile.
“I enjoy this,” said Jaylyn
Baird.
“It feels more rewarding,”
added Joy Murphy.
And the Forest Service,
Mitchell told the group, appre-
ciates the help.
“You guys did a solid job,”
he said. “That’s a tough place
to plant trees — the toughest
we have.”
impact as a 10% cut in harvestable timber
acreage, which will roughly correlate with a
decrease in lumber and plywood production
and all the mill closures or curtailments that
entails, critics say.
The effect will be particularly burdensome
for landowners with many streams on their
properties, including small woodland owners
who don’t own vast acreages spread out over
upland, lowland and riparian areas, according
to detractors.
Supporters of the deal in the timber indus-
try say it ensures future regulations under the
state’s Forest Practices Act will be guided by
an “adaptive management process” that relies
on research rather than political maneuvering.
“Any changes to the Forest Practices Act
will be based on sound science,” said Chris
Edwards, executive director of the Oregon
Forest & Industries Council, a timber group.
“The science will lead us to agreements.”
Environmental groups that signed onto
the deal say their public show of support will
deflate any future efforts to change the law
through ballot initiatives, given the broad-
based consensus behind the new rules.
“It becomes harder for someone to mount
external efforts at the ballot to do something
different,” said Sean Stevens, executive direc-
tor of the Oregon Wild nonprofit. “There will
be a little bit of stasis that comes from this.”
If the federal government approves the
deal’s regulations under a “habitat conser-
vation plan” for threatened and endangered
aquatic species, it would protect against law-
suits alleging landowners unlawfully harmed
them and their habitat.
“That gives them a shield from liability,”
said Ralph Bloemers, co-founder of the Crag
Law Center.
Even so, the habitat conservation plan
must first be approved by federal authorities
through a public process, and its protections
don’t extend to terrestrial species such as the
spotted owl. The plan also doesn’t apply to
liability under the Clean Water Act.
Though a representative of the Oregon
Small Woodlands Association helped craft the
deal, critics have accused the agreement’s sig-
natories of deliberating behind closed doors
without input from the public.
Small woodland owners won’t be held to
the same standards under the legislation as
industrial forest owners but the regulations
will still be more stringent than they are now.
The state’s Board of Forestry must implement
the new rules before December.
Under companion legislation, Sen-
ate Bill 1502, small woodland owners
with fewer than 5,000 acres who abide by
the stricter industrial standards can obtain
tax credits to compensate for the loss in
revenues.
Small woodland owners are more likely
to live in the “wildland-urban interface” and
thus the significant reduction in their proper-
ty’s timber value will create pressure to con-
vert these forests to residential or other uses,
according to detractors.
MT. VERNON
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