THE PERPETUAL QUESTION WE WERE ASKED AS KIDS

What do you want to be when you grow up?   I remember being asked this question in my early years in grade school.   It seemed to be the first question an adult would ask when you first met them.   If you answered, " I don't know" they kind of frowned at you like something was wrong with you?   In my later years in grade school and high school my answer was, 'I want to be a farmer or do forestry work and that seem to satisfy them.   In my working years farming and forestry was actually what I did.  

If I had it to do over again I would say, "I don't want to grow up, just let me be a kid for now.  

MY FIRST TIMBER SALE ADMINISTRATION ASSIGNMENT

With all the rainy days ahead I'm planning on working on a few writings that have been in drafts for some time waiting to be revised or condensed.   Many are about my career with the Forest Service, including the years I worked on the Gold Beach Ranger District from 1979-88 and Cottage Grove from 1988-95.    Just revised this one, finally!  With Celia gone, I have to do self editing--Have Mercy!

                        MY FIRST TIMBER SALE ADMINISTRATION ASSIGNMENT

The Maple Timber Sale was a joint sale between the Klamath and Six Rivers National Forests.  It originally included an estimated 50 million board feet of timber on both the Orleans and Ukonom Ranger Districts, and helped finance the construction of the Gasquet-Orleans Road, better known as the G-O Road.   This road was planned to connect the Klamath River to the Smith River drainage on Highway 199, and allow access for a timber supply to mills in Crescent City.   It was designed to be a two lane paved road.   It was never completed due to a law suit by the Indians, who were against the proposed road going through their sacred lands near the summit between both drainages.  

This sale was sold to Fortuna Plywood some time in the 1960's, which had a veneer mill in Orleans, where most the logs were hauled to and scaled by the Forest Service.   Administration of the sale  alternated every year or two between the two Ranger Districts.   In 1974 the Orleans District took over the administration of the Maple Sale.    I was asked if I would want to work in sale administration as a timber sale officer (TSO) at the GS-7 grade, under the supervision of the timber sale administrator, who answered to the District Ranger.   After agreeing to this job transfer from sale preparation, where I was a GS-7 lead forestry technician to sale administration, I was given a Forest Service handbook on the duties of working in sale administration, and asked to take it home and study it.   I don't recall much studying as it was very technical and not the most interesting reading after work hours.   I was assigned a desk next to another TSO in an office, along with the sale administrator and a log accountability clerk.  I was given the field folder for the Maple Sale, which must have been 6 inches thick, containing the contract, contract modifications, inspection reports, minor change agreements and other documentation, much of it was beyond my comprehension at the time.   The sale area map was the most important document, showing the road system, protected stream courses, some 50+ harvest units, and specific requirements for each unit.    Many of the units had been logged, there may have been 10 remaining units to be completed.  In addition, the sale administrator gave me a letter designating me as TSO with one sentence, " you will assist me in obtaining contract compliance."  A copy of this letter was sent to the Purchaser of the sale and the Forest Supervisor.  

The sale administrator drove me up to the Maple Sale where the contract logger, by the name of Johnson was logging with two highlead yarders on clear cut units and some tractors working in a overstory removal unit.  I was introduced to the brother of the contract logger, who was operating one of the yarders and was suppose to be the logging supervisor.   The sale administrator pointed out some uncompleted work that needed to be done and told me to meet a tractor operator with a bull dozer the next day on a completed tractor clearcut unit, where water bars needed to be constructed, and some landings were in need of clean up.    Basically I ended up showing the operator where to construct water bars on skid trails, spur roads and to slope the landings for drainage.  

Once a week the contract logger would meet with me and we would drive around the sale area as he would ask me what was required in the various units where logging had been completed.     He had been working on this sale longer than I had been working for the Forest Service, so I suspected he was testing my knowledge of the contract.   With logging in the overstory unit almost completed he asked what he had to do with the slash.    On the sale area map for this unit, it indicated all slash had to be cut or reduced to 30 inches of the ground, which I pointed out to him.    He had a copy of the map, but would never acknowledge what he knew, which was probably more than what I had knowledge of.  

At times I had approached his brother about some contractual items needing attention, but his usual comment was, "I can't leave the yarder, so can you to take care of it?", which meant me doing his job of supervising their operation.   It was only a 10 mile log haul downhill from the sale area to the mill in Orleans and most the truckers were wrapping their log loads with just one binder.    After bringing this to the attention of the sale administrator, he contacted the mill representative and informed him this was a safety concern to the public and at least two binders needed to be applied to all loads or hauling would be suspended.   This definitely corrected the situation.    As summer progressed, so did the fire danger and a one o'clock shutdown was implemented for all operations where the relative humidity was below 30%.    On one afternoon all logging operations were shutdown by the logger, meeting this contractual requirement, but I could hear chain saws operating off in the distance.   After driving down a road, I met with two timber fallers, who had no idea of the 1 pm closure.    In fact I had no idea anybody was cutting this unit, including the sale administrator, who never pointed it out to me.   There may have been 6 to 8 sales operating on the District at the time.   It was more than this one sale administrator could oversee, plus supervising three log scalers.   A year later the other TSO and I were promoted to sale administrators at the GS-9 grade with full authority as field representatives for the Forest Service.  

 This sale was a learning process for me, and mostly by the trial and error method.   For the next 20 years I worked in sale administration on four National Forests, until I retired from the Forest Service as lead sale administrator at the GS-10 grade on the Cottage Grove Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest in 1995.  

Killing Hardwoods

Back in my early days with the Forest Service on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest we had to go through a chainsaw certification class in order to fall any standing hardwood trees remaining on the clear-cut units before burning the slash.   Most these trees were tan oak, madrone, alders or maples ranging in size from 6 to 24+ inches in diameter and 10 to 40 feet in height that survived the logging operation without getting knocked down.   The first day of training was spent on safety, saw maintenance and operations.   Then we had to go out in the woods and fall hardwood trees on a logged clear-cut unit before getting our certification card.    The Forest Service had Homelite and McCulloch saws with 24 inch bars.   They were nothing like the modern lightweight saws of today and after a few hours they seem to get heavier as the day went on.  

Back in those days hardwoods were looked upon as an undesirable species.   After the clear-cut units were planted, mostly with Douglas-fir seedlings, the competing hardwood vegetation had to be eradicated within the first 5 years.  This was primarily done by aerial spraying a defoliant chemical (2-4-5-T) over a 5 year period.   In the Vietnam War this was called Agent Orange which was an orange dye put in a mixture of 2-4-5-T and 2-4-D to show the pilots where they had sprayed the jungle vegetation below.   If I remember correctly this management practice came to an end on the National Forests in 1979 due to contamination of streams and the general outrage of the public living downstream.    Shortly thereafter the forest products industry found a use for these trees as pulp for paper products, hog fuel for their cogeneration plants and other specialty wood products.    In the 1980’s when the lumber market crashed the chip market for pulp went up because the mills were not producing enough wood chips as a by-product from milling lumber.   It was these hardwoods trees that saved some mills from going under.  I can remember South Coast Lumber in Brookings throwing finished lumber into their chipper along with hardwoods to make ends meet by selling wood chips to the Menasha Pulp mill in North Bend.     

Why all these fires???

 As the Fall rains bring an end to most of the fires that have burned a record amount of land, destroyed small towns and many homes the same old question comes to surface:   Why do we have these catastrophic fires year after year?    Frustration and anger is what follows after the smoke begins to settle, especially from those that have lost everything.   There is the sad story of a ranching family that had a grazing allotment on the Plumas National Forest in California and are out looking for their cattle.  They have found many dead, some needing to be euthanized and a few roaming along forest roads in search of water and feed.  They, along with many others are angry with mismanagement of the National Forests over the last decades.    They don't blame the local Forest Service employees, but those in Washington DC that have no understanding of how the forest should be managed at the local level.   Fires have always been part of the ecosystem.  Over the last 100+ years we have suppressed fires letting the forest floor build up with an understory of brush and small trees.   Years of uneven-aged management on both federal forests and private timber lands creating second growth plantations susceptible to fire under extreme fire conditions.   Then there is climate change as the summers become longer and warmer with less rainfall and snowpack in the winters.   Over the last 10 years more and more conifers at the lower elevation are dying from drought and insect infestations increasing the fire risk. 

What is the answer--more controlled fires, more thinning of forests, more defensible space around communities and homes in the forests?  Some of this is happening, but not to the scale and intensive it should be.   No doubt funding is insufficient, but think of all the money going to suppression.   How is the OSU School of Forestry addressing this in their curriculum?   

When will there be more action?

Alaska Road Rule-Comments

 Please consider my comments in the attached letter.   I worked for the Forest Service at Rowan Bay on Kuiu Island in 1992 and saw first hand what it takes to construct logging roads on boggy ground to support the many off-highway loads and the numerous rock pits and clear cuts that occurred on this island.  

USDA Forest Service                                                            December 8, 2019

Attn:  Alaska Road Rule

P.O. Box 21628

Juneau, Alaska 99802

 

The preferred alternative to change the 2001 Roadless Rule is way too extreme for the Tongass National Forest, where 70% of the old growth forests were removed in the last half of the last century.  It takes 300 to 600 years for many of these clear cut areas to become the forests they once were, with an overstory of spruce, hemlock and cedar.   How much more rock will it take to pound into the boggy ground to firm up the new roads in order to transport these logs to the ocean where they will be made into rafts for delivery to mills or to the export market.    

This is the last temperate rain forest in the world that is sequestering carbon dioxide, a world being altered by a warming climate, as evident in Alaska, where native villages along the Arctic coast are eroding away and the permafrost is melting.   Alaska today is more dependent on tourism and commercial fishing, which makes up 25% of the economy.  Logging only makes up 1% of the economy.  Is it worth risking the last great salmon fishery habitat by putting more sediment into the streams?  This preferred alternative will only produce a short-term economical gain and a long-term ecological disaster.   Let’s not give in to the politicians with their tunnel vision, focused on the bottom line and under the influence of big money with no wider view of the environment that will be destroyed.  Let’s consider more thinning alternatives to restore the cut over areas of the past and utilize existing roads.  What kind of world do we want to leave for the next generations?

Mike Burke

855 Wildflower Lane

Oakland, Oregon 97462

farmhand.mike@gmail.com 

NEPA

 Dear Chief Tony Tooke,

As a Timber Sale Contract Administrator from 1975 to 1995 on four National Forests, including the Six Rivers, Plumas, Siskiyou and Umpqua Forests, I saw first hand the need for NEPA and public input in the planning process of timber sales.   Even back then many environmental and ecological concerns slipped through the cracks causing damage to the ecosystem, especially to the watersheds and fishery resource.  

Attached is a letter to Congress on my thoughts in regards to short-cutting the NEPA process through HR 2936.

December 10, 2017

To:  Oregon Congressional Delegation

Re:  Resilient Federal Forest Act (HR 2936)

 We are experiencing catastrophic wildfires for the following reasons:  (1) suppression of fires for the last century (2) decades of even-aged management producing overgrown plantations prone to fires, and (3) drier and warmer summers due to a changing climate.  We don’t want to repeat past management practices that got us into this situation, in addition to the declining fisheries, landslides, loss of wildlife habitat and degradation of our watersheds.   In many ways we are still paying for decades of mismanagement of our public forests.

Categorical Exclusions (CE) have their place where there are no environmental concerns.  But placing an upper acreage limit for using a CE (for example, allowing up to 10,000 acres for salvage logging without an environmental analysis with the excuse that there are no environmental concerns in that size project area) is ludicrous.  What about the effects of any new road construction, reconstruction, watershed analysis and other resource protection needs?  Using a CE in this way is a prescription for disaster and destroys the public’s trust.   A CE should not be used to appease the timber industry with mass production of timber sales which could lead to speculation, as in the 1980’s, or to supplement the overcutting of their own timber lands and/or the export of those private logs to China.

There is a need for separate funding for wildfire suppression through FEMA and more appropriated funds to land management agencies for:  fire prevention by thinning, prescribed burning, development of fuel breaks, and harvest prescriptions for controlling insect and disease infestations. 

Please keep me informed on the status of this act as it progresses in the Senate.

 

Mike Burke

855 Wildflower Lane

Oakland, OR 97462                          

 farmhand.mike@gmail.com