Stanislaus National Forest Begins Logging Rim Fire Area

Release Date: Sep 26, 2013
Contact(s): Public Affairs Office, 209-532-3671 ext. 244

Sonora, Calif...The Stanislaus NF announces the sale of 2.15 million board feet of salvage timber from the Rim Fire burn area authorized under the Raker Act which will help expedite emergency hazard tree salvage sales. The sale area contains hazard trees cut in road and utility rights of way to provide for safety of the personnel working on rehabilitation efforts, including the Burned Area Emergency Response team and the employees of the County and City of San Francisco working with the Hetch Hetchy water and power system.

Next steps will be to work with other cooperators such as PG&E and CalTrans to remove hazard trees from their facilities. The Forest will then start to remove hazard trees along main forest roads within the fire area. The Forest also plans to modify existing timber and stewardship contracts to add hazard trees to those contracts.

The Rim Fire burned about 154,000 acres on the Stanislaus NF. Moving beyond hazard tree removal, site specific analysis, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, is now beginning to identify burned areas that are accessible by logging equipment and have enough merchantable volume to make salvage operations feasible. Dead standing trees must be harvested within 18 to 24 months of the fire to be useful for lumber. Trees less than 16 inches in diameter and those left standing longer than 18 to 24 months usually deteriorate quickly in value.

As of September 25, the Rim Fire has burned a total of 257,134 acres and is 84 percent contained. The rain that occurred over the fire Saturday did not cause any erosion problems in the burned area.

Oh, that's just great; burn up the forest and then take out all the dead trees. That just removes the source of nutrients for future tree generations that was stored in those "dead" trees. Not a very bright idea... but then it's to be exptected. The fire did not ruin the forest; it ruined their plans to cut them down.

While a reasonable THEORETICAL question, the depletion of nutrients, I'm unaware of any studies in the literature that would support this depletion effect that you postulate.

It seems like whatever might be removed is tiny in the extreme, compared to what was just burned up. Lands that have been logged have not, to my knowledge, had any trouble supporting robust regrowth.

In the meantime, this is a significant source of financing for the counties involved, jobs for people, and native materials for building.

None of this is happening in wilderness.

Not every inch of forest needs to be treated as wilderness. It isn't, and the law doesn't support that.

This article previously posted on the Rim Fire Update Thread discusses the soil condition as according to experts from different agencies. Whilst I cannot answer to whether or not the logging is a good or bad thing, I can safely say that nothing that is being decided is not being carefully considered before action is taken.

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The body betrays and the weather conspires, hopefully, not on the same day.

Of course all is being carefully considered, but the main consideration is profit, not the forest. Of course, taking sources of nutrients out of the forest will have an effect on the forest, and it's not just the removal of the nutrients but the removal of nesting sites and such. It's all tied together.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
John Muir

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Bee
I can safely say that nothing that is being decided is not being carefully considered before action is taken.

Perhaps not: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130929/A_NEWS/309290310