SOS Forests

Slow Children At Play In Colorado

It’s tough enough to do forest restoration given the hurdles of a corrupt and clueless Congress, a nearly dismantled US Forest Service, and an army of hysterical dis-enviros.

But somehow, once in awhile, the USFS does something right. Today we salute the Boulder Ranger District of the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests for stellar achievement in forest restoration.

The Boulder Ranger District covers 250,000 acres of the Front Range mountains in Boulder County and Gilpin Counties of Colorado. The Boulder RD forests are particularly at risk from catastrophic wildfire due to a-historical fuel accumulations and continuity of those fuels. Planning for the St Vrain Fuel Reduction Project [here] began in 2004, with goals of reducing fuels, opening up ponderosa pine stands to reduce crown-to-crown continuity, retaining and enhancing the old-growth pines, and restoring the meadows and open, park-like stands that are fire-resilient and historically appropriate.

Extensive public outreach was conducted, beginning in 2005. An Environmental Assessment was written and approved calling for treatment of 2,657 acres of mechanical and manual thinning. Treatment areas selected are close to the community of Allenspark [here].

After years of hand-holding with the local residents, the Boulder RD finally initiated the treatments last month.

It is unsurprising (tragically) that the usual cadre of wackos blew a fuse. After five years of planning that they refused to participate in, a wacko group calling themselves “Colorado Wild” uncorked an idiotic letter to the Boulder RD and the ARNF [here] demanding the thinning be halted immediately. They based their demand on the assertion that old-growth trees and “developing old growth” trees were being cut.

Nowhere does Colorado Wild define “developing old-growth” but we must assume they mean young-growth. What else could develop into old-growth?

Self-described “plant ecologists” Dianne Andrews and Tom Andrews took photographs of some of the cut trees [here]. The egregious example they show is a tree 18 inches in diameter that is less than 60 years old (count the rings!). It lies next to a log riddled with insect bore holes. Some other blue-stained pine logs are pictured (the blue stain fungus is spread by mountain pine beetles — the felled trees were D.O.A.)

Heaven forfend!

The Boulder Daily Camera reports:

Allenspark residents frustrated over loss of old-growth trees

Forest Service restoration project cut both old and young trees

By Laura Snider, Camera Staff Writer, 12/25/2010 [here]

Stan Huntting and many of his Allenspark neighbors aren’t opposed to cutting a few trees — hundreds of trees, even — in the forests that surround their homes.

That’s because they understand that the forests in western Boulder County today don’t look the way they once did before white settlers came to the area in the mid 1800s. More than a century of fire suppression has allowed ponderosa pine forests to become unnaturally dense.

So when the U.S. Forest Service proposed a restoration project that would include thinning the forested slopes on parts of Taylor Mountain near Allenspark in 2005, many locals were not opposed to the idea. But when the project finally got underway in the last couple of months, Huntting and his neighbors were upset by what they saw.

“We were all in favor of cutting lots and lots of trees, but they took the old trees,” Huntting said. “Restoration in ponderosa pine forests means rolling back the clock to before we started suppressing fire and doing what fire would have done: take out all the trees that are less than 100 years old. But they took the wrong trees. Nature would have never touched those big old buggers.” …

Sorry Stan, but nature has already “touched those old buggers”, in a mortal way via bugs ironically, and the trees are not that old, n’est–ce pas? More from the Daily Camera:

Both the Forest Service and neighbors agree that large portions of biomass needed to be removed form the area. Today, ponderosa pine forests on the Front Range can have as many as 100 to 400 trees per acre, Pecotte said. But researchers believe that those forests historically had as few as 25 to 100 trees per acre.

The aim of the Taylor Mountain project was to remove 40 percent to 60 percent of the “basal area” of the forest, Pecotte said. The basal area is computed by adding up the cross-sections of all the trees at a height of 41/2 feet from the ground. The Forest Service used a monitoring plot in the area to estimate that 43 percent of the basal area has so far been removed.

But the concern among neighbors is how they got the reduction. Tom Andrews — who says he’s counted 30 logging trucks passing by his home on Taylor Mountain…

OMG!!! 30 truck loads!!! Figuring 3,000 board feet per truckload, that’s 90,000 board feet, or about the standing volume on one acre in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. Of course the trees are smaller in Colorado, so it took 2,657 acres to produce the same volume. More from the article:

The Forest Service does not deny cutting down some large trees. Of the 85 trees removed form the monitoring plot on Taylor Mountain, 12 were larger than 10 inches in diameter, Pecotte said. …

OMG!!! Twelve trees larger than 10 inches in diameter!!! In Oregon the brush is bigger than that. Trees achieve 10 inches DBH in less than 20 years. By age 25 many Oregon trees are larger than 25 inches in diameter. My neighbor Chauncy cut some 4-foot trees last year that were 54-years old (I counted the rings myself). But that’s Oregon. In Colorado the trees are of midget pygmy variety, evidently. A 10-inch tree is a monster to a Coloradoan. They swoon at the sight of an 18-inch tree, and break into tears when one is cut, even it’s blue-stained and full of beetle galleries. To a Coloradoan, a 60-year-old tree is old-growth. Coloradoans are funny (and not in the ha-ha sense of that word).

It is worth noting that the hysterical locals are the ones whose homes and community are most at risk from catastrophic fire. Their homes are built of boards which were trees once upon a time. And when the holocaust fire front blows into town, their homes will go up like so much tissue paper (also made of trees).

Unless, of course, the USFS undertakes restoration forestry and saves the resident’s bacon (and the other possessions in their wood-framed homes).

Which is exactly what the Boulder RD has done, and kudos to them for it!!!