For the week of September 17 - 23, 2003

Logging begins in pine beetle-infested forests

Beetles are ‘a natural process at work’

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"The fact of life is, they’re time is up. We don’t have a nursing home for them. It’s time for another generation of lodgepole to come up, and we’re witnessing the transition."

— ALAN YOUNG, Sawtooth National Forest forester

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

For more than 50 years, much of Central Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area boasted postcard stands of lodgepole pine trees enshrouding granite peaks in cloaks of coniferous green.

The logging program on the SNRA is picking up this fall in the wake of a mountain pine beetle infestation that has claimed millions of lodgepole pine trees. On a moraine near Redfish Lake, pictured, federal and state timber sales are adjacent to one another. Express photos by Greg Stahl

But for an evergreen species, lodgepole pine trees have a relatively short life span. A very old lodgepole is rooted for about 150 to 200 years, and, on average, lives between 80 and 100 years.

A large portion of the Sawtooth Valley is composed of dense stands of old, vulnerable lodgepole pine trees, predominately due to a century of fire suppression. With a massive infestation of mountain pine beetles underway—and growing—the number of dead, red lodgepole pine trees on the SNRA is an obvious visual blight.

The trees’ time, however, has come.

"If we don’t do anything, nature has a way of handling that," said Alan Young, a Sawtooth National Forest forester. "We don’t have a nursing home for them. It’s time for another generation of lodgepole to come up, and we’re witnessing the transition.

"You could say the beetles are the foresters here."

 

Giving ’em the ax

Unlike the nearby Boise and Payette national forests, the logging program on the 756,000-acre Sawtooth National Recreation area has historically been a small, steady enterprise. But with widespread insect infestation of lodgepole pine trees over the last half decade, logging has become a means to alleviate wildfire danger in and near populated areas.

Jim Rineholt, SNRA timber program manager

Jim Rineholt, SNRA timber program manager, has worked in the Sawtooth National Forest for 23 years. During that time, the average large timber sale constituted about 10 acres and 100,000 board feet, he said. This fall, SNRA timber program employees are working on several, significantly larger sales in pine beetle-infested areas near privately-owned properties.

One, to be auctioned before the snow flies, will include about 100 acres and 300,000 board feet of predominately lodgepole pine forest.

In all, four large timber sales are scheduled to be auctioned this fall, Rineholt said. More will follow next spring and summer.

"Because of the beetle epidemic, we’re removing stuff right in the public eye," he said.

One small federal sale has already been logged along power lines on glaciated ridges near Redfish Lake. Another state sale in the vicinity is well underway, and private homeowners adjacent to the state sale obtained a federal grant and are using the money to hire a crew to cut dead, beetle-infested trees that towered over their homes.

"The hardest thing is that it’s very disappointing to see all our trees coming down," said Jed Gray, vice president the area’s homeowners’ association. "That’s hard for every homeowner. We’ve lived in the forest as long as we’ve had our properties, and that’s been since the mid-’60s. It’s shocking to us to drive up there and see the extent of the devastation."

But once mountain pine beetles moved in, killing their host trees when they laid eggs beneath the bark, extremely high fire danger erupted. Cutting the dead, dried timber became the only means of lessening the susceptibility of the area to wildfires.

In stride with the homeowners’ strategy, the SNRA on Monday made off another large timber sale near Crooked Creek, west of Stanley, and crews were preparing for a large sale in the vicinity of Iron Creek, a popular access route to Sawtooth Lake, a scenic Sawtooth Mountains tarn.

Frank Barnes, who owns Garden Valley-based Triumph Logging, said the lodgepole pine trees he is cutting on a moraine near Redfish Lake are good for house logs, log fences and firewood.

Depending on the size of the trees, the wood can be used for log homes, log fences or firewood, said Frank Barnes, who owns Garden Valley-based Triumph Logging. Barnes worked last week on the state timber sale, as well as the Forest Service’s power line sale. As logs for homes, the trees are actually worth more dead because homebuilders don’t have to wait for the logs to dry, added Rineholt.

In the SNRA, where the Forest Service showcases its management for a myriad of uses, the decision to log was not haphazard.

In August, following a year-long environmental review, SNRA Area Ranger Deb Cooper signed an environmental assessment called the Red Tree Fuels Reduction Project, which calls for the harvest of an estimated 3.3 million board feet of insect-infested lodgepole pine forests in the Sawtooth Valley and Stanley Basin over the next five years.

The harvest is designed to combat the fire danger created when the indigenous mountain pine beetles killed thousands of acres of lodgepole pine trees.

"We’re targeting the areas where we think we can be most effective, so we’re looking around these developed areas first," Rineholt said.

The strategy targets approximately 24,655 acres for fuel reduction measures, primarily around private homes and public recreation sites.

Around Smiley Creek, work began this summer with collection of slash to be burned when wet weather returns. Also, Forest Service crews mowed fire breaks in the sagebrush. Logging in the area will begin next summer.

But Rineholt cautioned that projects slated for nine sites scattered around the Stanley Basin and Sawtooth Valley won’t completely preclude the possibility of a fire, nor treat all of the areas afflicted by mountain pine beetles.

"People expect all the red trees to be gone, but that’s not going to happen," Rineholt said. "And what we’re doing is not a guarantee that we’ll stop all fires."

 

The tree, the fire, the bug

The mountain pine beetle, an insect about the size of a grain of rice, has coexisted with fire almost as long as there have been lodgepole pine trees, and wildfires play a key role in lodgepole pine forests.

In ecosystems without public use, mountain pine beetle-killed trees burn and prompt the regeneration of new lodgepole pine stands.

It is a naturally occurring cycle for regeneration, according the red tree project environmental assessment.

"This is a natural process. Beetles are doing the selective thinning," Young said. "The fact of life is, they’re time is up."

During mountain pine beetle outbreaks, mature, even aged lodgepole pine stands can experience widespread tree mortality, killing up to 1 million trees each year.

And that is the case in the SNRA, where the native insects are at an "epidemic level," according to the environmental assessment.

However, mountain pine beetle outbreaks are not new to this region of Idaho. Historical records indicate that the lodgepole pine in the Stanley Basin suffered an infestation on more than 90,000 acres in the early 1900s. Another widespread infestation occurred in 1926

"A bark beetle infestation started in lodgepole pine over the entire forest," according to Forest Service records. "Within three or four years, practically all the mature and over-mature lodgepole pine in the forest were killed. The infestation after a few years—six or seven—subsided."

The current infestation began around 1996, starting in the Salmon River corridor east of Stanley. Entomologists recorded that the number of lodgepole pine trees killed by the mountain pine beetle rose from 8,143 in 1999 to 845,000 in 2002.

But the scale of the current infestation has to do, in part, with fire suppression throughout the last century.

Accurate records regarding wildfire suppression in the Sawtooth Valley and Stanley Basin date to 1948. Wildfire suppression has occurred since approximately 1905, and since 1948, 326 wildfires were suppressed in the lodgepole pine stands of the Sawtooth Valley.

The suppression has allowed for a high density, even aged lodgepole pine community and a large amount of fuel on the ground.

"Getting fire back on the landscape is really necessary," Rineholt said. "We’ve put out a lot of high elevation fires over the years, and that’s where fires really need to do their thing."

Of the 756,000 acres within the SNRA, there are approximately 288,000 acres of forested land. Areas occupied by almost pure ldogepole pine forests are roughly 137,973 acres. The SNRA’s other tree species include a mix of subalpine fir, Douglas fir, aspen, Englemann spruce and whitebark pine.

The Red Tree Fuels Reduction Project will affect roughly two percent of the SNRA’s lodgepole pine forests.

 

An ongoing process

Forest thinning, firebreak construction and logging projects near populated areas constitute only the first step in a process that is sure to continue for several years.

This winter, as the beginning of the second phase of the Red Tree Fuels Reduction Project, Forest Service personnel will begin examining additional areas that might be in need of treatment. And in areas that will be left to Mother Nature’s devices, reasons for doing so will be explained, Rineholt said.

Meanwhile, the wave of red trees in the Sawtooth Valley and Stanley Basin is continuing to spread. A significant number of new hits were recorded this summer west of Stanley toward Banner Summit, and beetles have killed several high-elevation white bark pine trees near Galena Summit.

But Rineholt reiterated that the SNRA’s lodgepole forests are near the end of their life cycles.

"They just start to break down after 100 years," he said. "They don’t have the vigor they did when they were younger."

 

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