Timber salvage OK'd in Brush Creek Fire area

By JIM MANN/Daily Inter Lake

A timber salvage project in the area burned by the 2007 Brush Creek Fire has been approved by the Flathead National Forest, with an estimated bounty of 26 million board feet.

The Sheppard Creek Post-Fire Project was approved by Flathead Supervisor Cathy Barbouletos, with two of three timber sales being advertised for bidding starting today.

The third sale will be advertised in the next couple of weeks.

Forest officials hope logging will get under way this winter to head off further decay and deteriorating value of the burned timber.

Project planner Bryan Donner said the forest recently took about a dozen prospective bidders on a tour of the project area.

"There's interest in it," Donner said. "We think we put together a good mix of sales that should appeal to a variety of purchasers."

The Brush Creek Fire swept over 30,000 acres, including 24,700 acres administered by the Tally Lake Ranger District. The Sheppard Creek Project area encompasses about 3,973 acres of national forest lands identified for salvage operations, based on considerations such as access, terrain and adequate volumes of timber.

Planning for the project started about 10 months ago, with a rough projection that salvage could occur on more than 4,500 acres. Donner explained that was based on aerial photography, satellite imagery and estimates of timber densities and varying burn intensities.

But field surveys conducted over the summer provided some "ground truthing" that refined the timber sales now being proposed.

"We found out that a lot of units had lower value than we thought they did," Donner said. "The further from roads you get, you have to have bigger trees to make it pay."

The project area is relatively accessible because it has no designated roadless areas and it has a network of open and closed roads that were developed with past logging in the area. About 58 percent of the project area has had timber harvest activity since the 1940s.

As approved, the project will involve construction of 17.8 miles of temporary roads, with nearly 12 miles being built on old road templates. Timber harvesting will involve a mix of skyline, cable and tractor-skidding methods. About 162 acres will involve helicopters removing salvaged timber.

Timber harvest must occur during the winter, with adequate snow cover, on about 1,693 acres, while harvest can occur on 623 acres the rest of the year. The project also will involve tree planting on about 800 acres.

The forest considered a much broader salvage operation on a project area exceeding 5,000 acres, but that involved the addition of salvage operations in riparian areas where logging normally would not occur.

Donner explained that those areas were considered to manage insect infestations, but that risk did not justify the limited value of timber that could potentially be removed with damage to those areas.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com