Green Options

In July, when President Bush made his “historic” visit to Northern California to view wildfires, Representative Wally Herger was on board the helicopter. Other than putting on some Nomex and shaking smoke jumpers’ hands, what has Wally Herger done for Californians during the 2008 Firestorm?

Now that the June 20, 2008 California lightning fires are nearly contained, talk has turned to salvage logging the burned areas.  Two years ago, an Oregon State University study has called into question the practice of salvage logging after a fire as a means of promoting forest rehabilitation and future fire safety, as well as the US government loses money on these salvage sales.  With Representative Wally Herger already calling for expedited NEPA procedures to allow unrestricted salvage logging in burn areas, we need to take a hard look at this practice.

Four years ago, a devastating fire spread across my property.  We were told by locals, foresters, loggers, and USDA conservationists that we needed to log the burned land.  We were told that the bugs would come and ruin the timber anyways and then kill the trees that had survived.  We were told that our property would be in greater fire risk danger if we did not remove dead timber, and we were encouraged to take out living trees that were predicted not to survive.  The loggers told us we would make about $60,000 logging 80 acres, but they didn’t tell us that sawmills automatically lower prices when a fire occurs and it would cost $40,000 to replant this same land.  We proceeded with the expedited timber harvest plan, only to pull the plug on the salvage operation after 12 acres.

Our property is now the perfect case study of what happens when a burned area is left alone or salvage logged. In the areas that were logged, invasive species of brush have grown enthusiastically, and we had to replant with nursery stock.  Natural regeneration was wiped out by the heavy logging equipment, and this part of our land is a mess.  In the areas that were left alone after the fire, the rate of natural regeneration of mixed conifer species was incredible and required no replanting and little removal of invasive weed species.  The living trees in the burn that were predicted to die by the foresters are still living today, and the bugs came and went.