Weaverville Weirdness
By Jim McCarthy, Siskiyou Sentinel
March 2002

KFAs record clearly shows we are not zero cut gang members. In 2001, the Klamath National Forest offered 34 million board feet of timber enough to fill over 5,000 logging trucks without a single appeal from KFA. It is interesting to note that many of 2001s timber sales went without purchasers. The poor lumber market kept trees standing, not any environmental group. In fact, the market is apparently so bad the Forest Service felt the need to lower the price on the Glassups Timber Sale in the Salmon River not once, but twice. The sale sold after a third attempt for a very low price. Unfortunately, this discounting means the American public (the forests owners) will get back only a fraction of what it cost our government to offer the sale again and again.

The forest thinning operation in the Weaverville area is actually a salvage logging operation on the Six Rivers National Forest, and represents the Forest Service response to the Big Bar Fire. USFS managers have named the sale, Fuel Reduction for Community Protection. This name allows the managers to divert taxpayer funds to pay loggers to clean up their own logging slash if the sale goes forward. Unfortunately, this timber sale will not protect our communities. Because fire risk will in all likelihood increase if this operation goes forward, and because the project includes a roadless area, KFA and our allies oppose the sale.

KFA would like the community to fully understand our reasons for what we do, so a little more background on this sale is required.

Big Bar burned mostly within the western portion of the spectacular Trinity Alps Wilderness late in 1999. The USFS fought the flames at a cost of $1,000,000 a day for over 100 days. Wet weather eventually put out the fire.

KFA and our allies (including the Sierra Club, KSWild, NEC, and EPIC) got involved after the timber industry alleged that our group appeal of an earlier timber sale had caused Big Bar to blow up and threaten Willow Creek and Hoopa. We started to check into things, and our investigations turned up some pretty upsetting facts.

We found the USFS had deliberately torched at least one third of the entire Big Bar burn area. While deliberate burn-outs are an accepted technique in fighting fires, the scale of these burn-outs raises serious questions. Responsible fire management calls for limiting burn-outs to areas near fire lines but at Big Bar, when the natural, lightning-sparked fires did not reach their far-flung fire lines, the Forest Service sent in helicopters to torch ancient, fire-adapted wilderness between the fire lines and the natural, slow-moving fire. (To give some cost perspective, each helicopter cost taxpayers over $225,000 a day.) In one operation, helicopters torched 23,000 acres of wilderness. This irresponsible and expensive torching not only enlarged and prolonged the fire, it moved the fire perimeter from the deep wilderness to the wilderness boundary. Then the real danger began. Winds picked up one afternoon, stoked a helicopter-lit fire into a firestorm, and thick smoke blanketed Willow Creek and Hoopa.

But thats not all. Before the fire died out, the USFS tractor-logged trees along miles of Big Bar fireline, and paid for it with funds reserved for fire line rehabilitation. This rehab money, intended to prevent or limit erosion, went instead to pay for even more soil disturbance and erosion.

In the months that followed, KFA and our allies participated in meetings with the USFS and local residents to talk about what should be done in the wake of the fire. Eventually, we advocated working to reduce fire risk in areas close to the town of Willow Creek and smaller communities along the Trinity River. The Forest Service decided instead to log over five air miles from Willow Creek, along the wilderness boundary, and too far away to help the town. Worse yet, they decided to use the torching helicopters to log the forest they had already degraded. For economic reasons, helicopters only remove large trees the forests natural fire resistors. Larger, older trees rarely suffer more than blackened bark in most fires, since their canopies start far above the flames. These big, shade-giving canopies also keep the forest floor moist, and limit the growth of the best fuel for firestorms: brush and dense stands of young trees. Thus, by removing big trees, the USFS plan would actually increase fire risk.

The Klamath Forest Alliance believes there is plenty of good work to do in the woods. Under current and likely future market conditions, however, timber sales designed to do the needed work thinning small trees from dense stands will not sell. This economic reality has prompted USFS managers to sweeten the sales: they add big trees and divert taxpayer funds intended for community fire protection to subsidize logging. For these reasons, KFA encourages the Forest Service to accomplish work in the woods with other means. The USFS should hire local loggers to do the thinning, then sell the logs produced in separate transactions from roadsides, landings, and log yards.

The folks at KFA hope this explanation will help people understand the issues involved. We encourage more people to become informed participants in the management of the public lands we all benefit from, and which we all own together.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.