National delegation weighs in on timber sustainability

Wyoming’s national delegation has responded to pleas for help in clarifying the future of commercial timber sales in the Black Hills National Forest (BHNF). Along with their South Dakota counterparts, Senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and Representative Liz Cheney have penned a letter urging the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to increase local involvement in the issue.

The Wyoming Legislature’s Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee recently requested assistance from the national delegation to find out why there is such a huge disparity in the recommendations for future timber sale limits from the USFS itself and the locally formed National Forest Advisory Board*.

Based on its findings, the advisory board’s recommendation was to maintain the current annual harvest limit of 181,000 CCF (1 CCF = 100 cubic feet) on the basis that timber sales partially fund the thinning program that keeps the forests healthy.

“The BHNF timber program provides funding and services for many essential needs on the forest, including noxious weed control, pre-commercial thinning of young forest stands, road and trail maintenance, and fuels reduction,” says Paul Pierson, Black Hills Operations Manager for Neiman Timber Company and member of the Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board.

“The health of the BHNF and our local communities, both ecologically and socially, are very much dependent on a strong timber industry.”  

A draft report from the USFS, however, recommends a drastic reduction of the harvest to between 70,000 and 115,000 CCF per year to allow the forest time to recover from the hardships of wildfire and mountain pine beetle epidemics.

“The draft general technical report is not a Forest Service recommendation,” explains Pierson. “It is a report put together by the Rocky Mountain Research Station with the help of the BHNF to provide “what if” scenarios based on a limited set of assumptions. It was a very simplistic analysis of some of the available forest inventory data.”  

The draft report suggests that its recommended reduction would allow the live sawtimber inventory to return to the level needed to support the current forest plan of 181,000 CCF within a century.

“The bottom line is that net growth (gross growth minus mortality) needs exceed harvest to accumulate wood volume in the Black Hills,” the draft states.

The final draft of the report will not be binding, but it will be one of the many pieces of information used to help inform management decisions on the Forest, alongside the recommendation from the advisory board. However, the advisory board is concerned about the impacts of any reduction in timber sales – and that’s already happening.

“Right now, the BHNF has committed to 157,500 ccf of sawtimber for the 2021 timber sale program,” Pierson says.

“This is 23,500 ccf less than the Black Hills National Forest Advisory Board, after months of analyzing Forest Service data, recommended to the BHNF in November.”

The letter from Barrasso, Lummis and Cheney and their South Dakota peers to Vicki Christiansen, U.S. Forest Service chief, expresses concern over the recommendation to reduce the timber sale program and seeks answers about the process being used to reach this recommendation.

“We are concerned that a reduction in the sale program would have a detrimental impact on the ability of the USFS to manage and care for the forests in the Black Hills and on the health of our local communities,” the letter states.

It points out that, in 2018, the Congressional group wrote a letter expressing concern over the “premature efforts” to examine “flawed data pertaining to timber resources” while new information was being gathered.

“At the time, stakeholders in the Black Hills were assured there would be a collaborative process to examine the data and develop a path forward for the best use of the data collected,” the letter states.

“…Unfortunately, we are concerned about the lack of collaboration in analyzing and determining how to use the FIA data. At the same time the congressional offices sent a letter in 2018, the BHNF was commissioning a timber resources report without informing any stakeholders in the Black Hills.”

The letter points out that the BHNF has been nationally recognized as an example of how proactive forest management can successfully reduce the impacts from mountain pine beetles and wildfires and is one of the last National Forests where management can still be implemented on a meaningful scale.

“We urge the USFS to substantially increase involvement from the states of South Dakota and Wyoming, local county commissions and other stakeholders who stand to be most affected, including the forest products industry, in discussions of the BHNF timber sale program and forest planning,” the letter states.

“We also request that the USFS immediately implement the recommendations from the BHNF Advisory Board, including maintaining the timber sale program at 181,000 ccf sawtimber and 21,000 ccf of 5-9” trees, and prioritize providing resources needed for the BHNF to accomplish the recommendations.”

Meanwhile, the Crook County Commissioners will be aiming to take a proactive approach to the problem by making use of a new state program to append a socio-economic study to its natural resource plan.

“We found out there was still some money in that account…specifically for socio-economic planning,” said Commissioner Jeanne Whalen last week. Whalen recently testified to the Select Federal Natural Resource Management Committee about the enormous ripple effect it would have on the economy of Crook County if the timber industry was hit by drastic reductions in sale limits.

The details of the program are not yet completely clear, she said, but the socio-economic plan would need to pertain to natural resources. “I would like us to go forward with this,” she told her fellow commissioners, explaining that it would speak to the economic impact of the timber industry on this county and “that’s why we really need to keep going with this.”

Further information will be gathered before the commissioners make a decision on how to move forward with an application for the study.

According to Pierson, the advisory group remains committed to its view that the timber industry plays a vital role in the health of our local forests.

“There are many national forests throughout the western US dealing with major losses of habitat, recreational opportunities [and] water quality, due to insect outbreaks and wildfires,” he says.

“One constant theme that continues to be made clear is the need of a healthy timber industry to help create a more resilient landscape while being able to help mitigate the damages caused by these natural disasters.”

*CORRECTION: In our article about timber sustainability in issue 9, we mistakenly referred to this board as having been formed in 2016 after the mountain pine beetle epidemic. It was in fact chartered in 2001 and its charter is renewed every year by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.