Flexibility needed for forests

We've long backed active forest management, particularly on Montana's school trust lands, and still do. But a planned sale for the Swan Lake State Forest raises questions about how timber sales are planned and what they should accomplish.

The Three Creeks project will involve removing 23.7 million board feet of timber over a three-year period, getting much of that timber from old-growth forests, and building 19 miles of new roads.

These days, most timber projects in Northwest Montana, particularly on federal lands, go out of their way to avoid old growth timber, and new roads have become rare, often replaced with the use of temporary roads.

There's a reason why the Three Creeks project is different: The Department of Natural Resources and Conservation bluntly concedes in its Environmental Impact Statement that the project was designed to meet a state-mandated timber target rather than because of forest management goals.

A statewide target was developed through a required, computer generated recalculation of the "sustained yield" that can be harvested off state lands. But rather than looking at the sustained yield volume as a guideline, it has been applied as a firm quota. To provide its share, the Swan Lake State Forest must produce 6.7 million board feet of timber annually.

That doesn't necessarily set the stage for sound forest management. Maybe hitting that target makes sense in a particular year on a particular piece of ground. But it might not in other years, in other areas.

In recent years, the Montana logging profession has moved into a more outcome-based form of forest management. Projects on public and private lands are often geared toward reducing wildfire hazards, improving wildlife habitat, and preparing a forest for another round of harvest in the near future. Optimizing timber volumes, with consideration to the other goals, is common, and foresters and loggers typically take pride in how their project areas meet goals beyond simple timber volume removal.

It seems that meeting pre-set targets on state lands could get in the way of other objectives, including economically sensible goals. What if the lumber market is in the tank over a one- or two-year period? Should the state be required to go full steam ahead in hitting its timber target?

Typically, timber sale purchasers have some discretion as to when they carry out logging operations; they can sometimes defer work in an area to wait for market conditions to improve.

On state lands in the Swan Valley, however, things get a bit more complicated. Not only are there annual targets, but the state must pursue its logging projects in a time period that is limited by a multi-agency grizzly bear conservation agreement. Under that arrangement, logging and other forest management activities are rotated to different areas of the Swan Valley on regular intervals. There is a three-year period to finish work on the Three Creeks project, which will be carried out about seven miles south of the town of Swan Lake.

The DNRC contends that it is pursuing other objectives as part of the project, such as reducing sedimentation with improvements to old logging roads, as well as reducing hazardous fire fuels.

But it seems obvious that volume-based targets are the main goal. And that may not always be the best type of forest management for the state to pursue, year-in and year-out.