Logging, replanting benefits burned lands.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Paul Chapman For The Register-Guard

As a forester and as someone who has loved the forests since I was a boy, I feel a professional obligation to respond to The Register-Guard's Jan. 7 editorial, `Felling salvage myths.'

I have been a forester for more than 20 years. I've spent time as a researcher and scientist, and I have a graduate degree in forest ecophysiology. Currently, I am a forest manager for a company that does not and never has owned any manufacturing facilities; hence, it is in my company's best interest not to have government logs on the market because they compete with those we sell from the private lands that we manage.

Contrary to the editorial, some conclusions in the Oregon State University study of salvage logging are no surprise. One: Salvage logging generally will increase the woody fuel load on the ground in the short term (however, the total dead fuel load - down and standing dead, which is not mentioned in the study, is decreased).

Often, the extra downed material from salvage logging is piled and burned before replanting with no detrimental effects on the future forests, or the quantity of woody material remaining is small enough that it is left to decompose.

Two: During the course of logging, some of the natural regeneration that has occurred will be killed immediately. Natural regeneration is often spotty - with areas of no regeneration and areas of concentrated seedlings. On paper, this makes for great averages. But in practice, it results in a forest with vast areas of brush fields and areas of thick, spindly, dog-haired stands of trees.

The study was very limited in its scope, geographic area and time frame. It looked at the total number of seedlings, not their distribution or potential of survival against competing brush species. It is very plausible that five years from now, the results would be different.

Also, the salvage logged areas had not yet been planted - so contrary to the editorial, the study does not conclude that `burned-over forests can recover ... as well or better than those that are logged and replanted."

The study also evaluated the amount of down material - material that could have been reduced if salvage logging had been allowed to proceed within months after the fire instead of years. The longer the dead trees are left in the forest, the less material can be economically used due to checking, cracking, insect damage and decomposition. This material that could have been used then gets left in the forests.

Ironically, the same legislation that the editors are skeptical about would help minimize the amount of dead material that becomes worthless. The proposed bill would reduce the time between the wildfire and the beginning of salvage logging.

There is a long history of burned-over forests being salvaged and planted, or being left to natural regeneration. Information from early research encouraged forest landowners to salvage and replant burned forests to re-establish growing forests as quickly as possible. This history has shown that stands left without being salvaged logged are often subject to future uncontrollable wildfires. The Tillamook Burn was burned and reburned several times until the people of Oregon committed to its reforestation.

More recently, the Austa Fire, now five or six years old, has had both types of management because the land has two different owners. From the highway you can see the new forest coming up in the logged and replanted portion - but where is the forest in the other? The wildfire north of Waldo Lake has vast areas that were not salvaged logged and reforested, and they now have few live trees even after several years.

Many forest firefighters know that fighting fires with dead, standing material is a living nightmare; they would much rather have that material on the ground. Standing material also dries out faster and stays drier, just as clothes dry faster hanging from a clothesline than laid on the ground.

Can adequate natural regeneration occur after a wildfire? Sometimes yes, but often no. And even when it does occur, the total fuel load, both on the ground and standing, can set the young stand up for a disastrous conflagration in the future.

One last question: The editorial ends by talking about salvage logging in some of the Biscuit Fire's `environmentally fragile old growth reserves." The research paper mentioned that all sites used in the study consisted of burned forests where more than 95 percent of the overstory was killed in the fire. Is such a forest still an old growth forest, even if it has been salvage logged?

Paul Chapman of Eugene is area manager and forester for a timber investment and management organization. He is a member of the American Society of Foresters.