GroundTRUTHing: a day in the woods with forest activists gathering info to stop an old-growth logging project on the Bitterroot National Forest

By Matthew Koehler, Native Forest Network

Here in the Northern Rockies forest activists are dealing with at least one hundred of the smaller logging projects that are being implemented under the new Categorical Exclusions rules that the Bush Administration put into effect as part of the HFI in 2003.

Over the past year, we have monitored a number of these projects and have found some of them to include logging of old-growth, in unroaded areas and within important habitat for species such as lynx and goshawk.

Fortunately, the Forest Service has canceled a few of the more egregious timber sales because of our forest monitoring efforts – demonstrating again the importance of getting out in the woods! While the Forest Service has been busy in the Northern Rockies pushing these HFI logging projects under Categorical Exclusion, the agency is just getting started with HFI projects authorized under the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.

The Native Forest Network, U.S. Forest Service and interested citizens visit the proposed Mineral Primm Fire Salvage Categorical Exclusion logging project on the Lolo National Forest, Montana. Public pressure resulted in this proposed logging project being stopped. Photo by NFN.

The HFRA was signed into law during a White House ceremony on December 3, 2003 and without a doubt it was the part of the Bush Administration’s Healthy Forest Initiative that was put into place with the biggest fanfare.

While Northern Rockies forest activists support protecting communities from wildfire and putting people to work restoring our national forests, the HFRA has the potential to use community protection and forest restoration as a smokescreen for more logging in our public forests. This is especially true in national forests where the supervisor and district rangers still look at the forests in terms of board feet and two-by-fours.

In Montana, the first HFRA project in the state is called the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project on the Bitterroot National Forest. The proposed project, located along the East Fork of the Bitterroot River just downstream from the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness, would mix a small amount of bona-fide community protection work with logging over nine square miles of forest (6,000 acres in total), including clearcut logging in previously unlogged, old-growth forests.

Despite extensive logging and roadbuilding in East Fork drainage from the 1960s to late 1980s, the forest are home to bull trout, cutthroat trout, wolves, elk, moose, black bear, coyote, mule deer, goshawk, martin, black-backed woodpecker, pileated woodpecker and flammulated owls.

Back in late November, a few days following an unproductive public meeting with Bitterroot National Forest officials about the Middle East Fork logging project – during which they seemed to have a difficult time speaking in anything but soundbites – forest activists decided it was time for a forest monitoring trip up the East Fork. After all, spending a day poking around in the woods is never a bad thing!

Since over 6,000 acres are slated for logging as part of this "Healthy Forest" project, we decided to focus our monitoring efforts on the logging units the Forest Service has proposed for "regeneration harvest."

With the vehicle parked, lunch and water packed and maps, notebooks and cameras in hand we bushwhacked cross-country through unlogged, native forests that the Forest Service believes would be healthier if they were clearcut.

As we dropped from the ridge into a small drainage within a "regeneration harvest" unit, we encountered massive Douglas-firs – first one-by-one…then whole groves. Although the Forest Service had described this area in largely negative terms during the public meeting – as a forest "destroyed" by insects and disease – the forest became more enchanting and magical with each step. Within this remarkable forest, our emotions ranged from honor and awe to anger and betrayal at the Forest Service for the callous and calculated approached some of them take "managing" our public forests.

A massive Douglas-fir tree that the Forest Service wants to cut down to make this forest "healthy." Photo by NFN.

The Forest Service’s rationale for clearcutting this area, including cutting down the legacy Douglas-Fir trees, is that the trees are either infested with beetles or "at imminent risk of spread of the beetle epidemic."

Of course, predictably, they are also playing the "fire hysteria" card by telling community members these forests need to be "thinned" to protect the community from wildfire. This, despite the fact that the Forest Service’s own research shows that effective home protection involves taking simple steps within 200 feet of homes.

This is just the latest in a long line of Forest Service propaganda designed to stir up public fear about natural processes within our forests such as fire, insects, disease and windthrow.

While we found evidence of trees that had been killed by beetles, including old-growth Douglas-fir, the Forest Service is ignoring the fact that insect and disease mortality, even in "epidemic" proportions, is a natural and beneficial process that both forests and wildlife have evolved with for thousands of years.

Upon closer inspection, we noticed that seemingly mundane things such as a large Douglas-fir tree weakened by beetles, snapped in half by strong winds and lying on the forest floor is actually the perfect spot for squirrels to stash mushrooms and cones for the long winter months. Rabbits and other small mammals are drawn to these large, downed trees for the relative safety they provide from predators such as owls, hawks, lynx and coyote. And let’s not forget that these downed trees retain a tremendous amount of moisture and over the years, return important nutrients to the soil once they decay.

A squirrel uses the branches of a fallen Doug-fir to store a mushroom above the snow for a wintertime snack!

On a slope with a number of beetle-killed Douglas-fir we sat and listened to a half dozen woodpeckers hammering into the trees to feast on the nutritious beetles, the chorus reverberating around us in nature’s version of surround sound.

Call it the Circle of Life, Web of Life or whatever you want. The point is that life, death and rebirth – whether by fire, disease, insects, wind, predator/prey relationships or other natural processes – are, and always will be, an important part of naturally functioning ecosystems. While some in the Forest Service might think they can make these forests "better than natural," we’ll put our faith in nature’s ability every time. Matthew Koehler is with the Native Forest Network. NFN is a Missoula-based nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to defending and restoring forests and wild places. Monitoring trips to the Bitterroot, and other threatened forests, are planned throughout the winter.

Woodpeckers have been feasting on the insects living in this dead snag within the project area for years.

Click here for more information about the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project or contact the Native Forest Network at nfn@wildrockies.org or 406.542.7343.

As an alternative to the Forest Service’s logging plan for the East Fork of the Bitterroot, conservation groups have developed a "Community Protection and Local Economy Alternative."

This plan protects old-growth forests while protecting communities from wildfire. The plan also restores parts of the East Fork watershed that have been damaged by past logging and roadbuilding.

You can also contact the Bitterroot National Forest directly to let them know how you feel about the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project. Contact, Tracy Hollingshead, Sula Ranger District at thollingshead@fs.fed.us or 7338 Hwy 93 S., Sula, MT 59871 or email
comments-northern-bitterroot-sula@fs.fed.us.