Posted on 08/19/2003 3:12:38 PM PDT by bicycle thug
CAMP SHERMAN -- The trees with the blue ribbons will be cut. Everything decked in pink stays.
Of the 50 or so ponderosa pines in a quarter-acre patch of the Deschutes National Forest, as few as 13 could be spared the chain saw.
"There's going to be a huge difference. And I'm going to get hammered by some people," says Tim Lillebo, Eastern Oregon field representative for the Portland-based Oregon Natural Resources Council.
When President Bush travels to Oregon this week, he is expected to call national attention to this sort of effort to thin the overgrown forests of the West. The dangers of fire, the president has argued, justify limiting environmental reviews and speeding the momentum to cut.
But the story around Camp Sherman, where the cold clear Metolius River runs through the Deschutes, is more complicated. The decision to selectively prune and log more than 12,000 acres was forged under long-standing procedures and took several years, during which environment advocates like Lillebo and a diverse range of community members and foresters had a voice in the planning.
For decades, Lillebo and other conservationists fought against logging the Metolius River Basin, a spectacular but increasingly tinder-dry landscape about 15 miles northwest of Sisters.
But they now tentatively support a U.S. Forest Service plan to use logging, pruning and prescribed burns to reduce the severe fire risk within a 17,000-acre area that includes old-growth ponderosa, one of the nation's largest spring-fed rivers and a popular vacation playground for generations of Oregonians.
The president's trip follows his weekend radio address in which he stressed the importance of logging for the protection of forests and nearby communities and precedes a U.S. Senate vote this fall to speed environmental reviews and limit appeals on logging. Bush started this conversation a year ago in Oregon following the mammoth Biscuit fire.
A textbook example The White House estimates more than 190 million acres of forest and rangeland nationwide -- an area twice the size of California -- face elevated fire risk. The Metolius Basin offers a textbook example of densely packed stands, insect infestation and progressive disease.
Even so, the Metolius Basin cut embraces forest management the old-fashioned way: slowly, deliberately and bureaucratically. Conservationists, community members and even Forest Service officials say the years it took to develop the Metolius Basin Forest Management Plan helped build trust between the public and the government, and a consensus about how to manage a much-loved forest.
"Frankly, one of our concerns about the president's visit is that we're going to be co-opted into supporting his healthy forest initiative, and that's not what we have here," says Kent Gill, a resident and secretary of the Friends of the Metolius, a conservation group formed in the 1980s to battle logging.
The president is scheduled to land in Portland on Thursday morning and possibly make a trip to Camp Sherman, as news crews have been directed to nearby Redmond.
Like matches waiting to be lit Low-intensity fires historically have swept through the Metolius Basin every 8 to 12 years. But 80 years of aggressive fire suppression have left the normally open ponderosa pine stands clogged with tall, spindly trees competing with 200-year-old giants for sunlight, water and nutrients. The forest floor is thick with brown pine needles, mounds of bark shed from the ponderosa pine and highly flammable bitterbrush.
Heavy snow followed by rain and ice storms in the winter of 2000 left thousands of trees bent, broken or dead -- and standing like rows of giant matches waiting to be lit.
For many homeowners, those storms heightened the sense of urgency. In his annual Memorial Day meeting with the community three years ago, Sisters district ranger Bill Anthony says the crowd repeated two questions: "What are you going to do?" And, "Why aren't you doing something now?"
If he'd had some of the tools now available to him under Bush's healthy forest initiative, Anthony said he could have begun thinning and removing brush around homes and vacation cabins near Camp Sherman, named for the Sherman County wheat ranchers who first built summer homes there in 1916.
Understanding people's interest The Bush administration has granted federal land managers the authority to use controlled burns to reduce fuel on public lands up to 4,500 acres. Other methods -- such as thinning, pruning, mowing and mulching -- are now allowed on up to 1,000 acres without extensive environmental review or public appeal.
"That would have helped the community to be a little more comfortable," Anthony said. "But it would not have removed all of the risk."
Instead, the Forest Service invested more than three years and $500,000 in wildlife and field surveys in the Metolius Basin. A citizen's advisory group was convened and an environmental impact study drafted and redrafted to address the public's concerns about cutting too much old-growth.
"The payoff has been in understanding people's interests, where there's common ground and where there isn't," Anthony says. "The downside is that you can go through all of this and still end up with appeals and lawsuits."
Last month, the Forest Service released its detailed final plan to treat 12,600 acres in the Metolius Basin to reduce fire hazards and improve forest health in the old-growth stands. The cost: $11 million over 5 years for what will be one of the largest forest treatment programs in the state.
No public appeals yet Anthony estimates sales of the 21.7 million board feet of commercial lumber to be harvested from the project will generate $6 million -- money that will stay in the Deschutes National Forest under the Bush forest initiatives.
Anthony notes the Forest Service spent more than $25 million in the past two summers fighting fires on the Deschutes National Forest, including the 4,200-acre Cache Mountain fire, which last year destroyed two homes in nearby Black Butte Ranch.
So far, the agency has received no public appeals of its plans for the Metolius. The deadline for any challenges is Sept. 2. In the absence of filings, the cutting could begin as early as October.
Under the healthy forests legislation passed by the House this spring, the right of appeal would be limited only to those individuals and groups that made substantive written comments during the planning of a forest project. Under current law, anybody who has indicated an interest in a project can appeal.
The Friends of the Metolius would have standing under either scenario. Gill says the group plans to monitor the work closely but has no plans to appeal.
"We're comfortable enough that we're ready to go ahead," he says.
But that level of comfort wouldn't be there, Gill notes, without the extensive environmental reviews and small-scale demonstrations of the various treatment alternatives.
"I'm not sure I'd trust everybody in the Forest Service on every issue," he said. "But I think we've made some progress."
Lillebo and the Oregon Natural Resources Council are also leaning against an appeal.
Conservationists still have concerns, however. Among them: soil compaction from logging activities and proposed clear-cuts of larch trees in a patchwork of areas one-quarter to 3 acres in size.
But Lillebo said the relationships he's formed with managers on this forest lead him to think they care about public involvement, clean water and protecting wildlife.
"I think this is going to be a success story -- this Metolius project," he said. "I think it deserves to move ahead."
Michelle Cole: 503-294-5143; michellecole@news.oregonian.com
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