Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the Black Hills National Forest who attended a 2024 roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's Earth hating US Representative Dusty Johnson when Johnson sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Mertz' comment below appears at a Colorado Springs forest policy blog.
Regarding [mountain pine beetle] treatments, if you get ahead of the beetles and thin to 40 BA (basal area), I believe it was affective here in the Black Hills. In some areas, very effective. Once the beetles are already in an area, it is a lot tougher to deal with them. It doesn’t work to go chasing after beetles. We also did a lot of “cut and chunk” where infested trees are cut into 2-foot lengths soon after infestation and left to dry. This is obviously very labor intensive and costly. There was some minor success with this, but I don’t think it was worth the effort or money.
Regarding the benefits of thinning, there are pluses and minuses, but I think the pluses win the day. It is true that thinning, particularly heavy thinning, can increase the 20-foot windspeeds (this is why it works on MPB and disrupts their pheromones) and the reduction of shade increases the ground level temperatures. Trees also suck up a lot of water so if there are fewer of them, soil moistures should be higher. Regarding thinning and wildfires, it should reduce the likelihood of crown fire, but a big factor is what is left on the forest floor? Is it covered with activity fuels? Did the opening of the canopy facilitate a flush of growth (seedlings/saplings, grass, shrubs)? Was the stand rx burned after thinning? So, in my opinion, the answer is complex. Generally, I believe that thinning down to 60 BA or so, combined with rx burning is a good thing.
I agree that with high winds, low RH, high temps, and low fuel moistures, no fuel treatments will be effective.
I did want to respond to your post on “Different Forests”. I agree that the Black Hills NF is probably different from a lot of the other Forests, but the truth is, I don’t really know if there are other Forests in the situation of having to cut more than what their best available science tells them is sustainable. The Chief and others have said that many (if not most) Forests are not cutting to their [allowable sale quantity], in some cases nowhere near their ASQ level. I don’t really know if that is a good metric to use. For instance, here on the Black Hills, our ASQ was developed in 1997 and the Forest was overstocked at that point. The Forest that exists today is not even remotely similar to the Forest that existed back then. I am going to guess that there are a lot of Forests out there with ASQ’s that are not viable with the conditions today. If your Forest has had large fires and/or bug kill, was the ASQ ever updated?
I can look up what Forests are selling in the cut and sold report and see who the big producers are, but how do I know if the levels they are selling are sustainable? ASQ is not always a good metric. The Chief wants an increase of 25% to the volume sold by FY 28. How did they come up with that number? Was there any analysis or was it as we used to say, a rectal extraction? [Dave Mertz]
No comments:
Post a Comment