Boulder Stewardship Demonstration Project

 

1. Name - Boulder Stewardship Demonstration Project

Context | Objectives | Treatment Specifics | Utilization | Targets | Pre Treatment data | Post Treatment data | Links

Stewardship contracting was just a concept until the Lomakatsi Restoration Project secured a participating agreement (PA) with the Tiller Ranger District of the Umpqua National Forest (UNF) in May of 2006. Through the Boulder Stewardship Demonstration Project, everyone involved gained experience using the stewardship contract authority, including UNF staff, logging operators and Lomakatsi crew leaders, as well as the 15 local restoration forest worker interns involved in Lomakatsi’s Ecological Restoration Workforce Training program.

The 33-acre Douglas-fir plantation, previously logged 45 years ago and partly scorched in the 2002 Tiller Complex fire, was part of a 4,600 acre Boulder Dumont Vegetation Management Project. This was one of the first commercial projects in late successional reserve (LSR) in the region. Under the Northwest Forest Plan, LSR management primarily allowed activities that served to restore late-seral-stage forest stand characteristics and reduce uncharacteristically high fuel loads—with commercial extraction only a byproduct of the restoration. This fit well with Lomakatsi habitat enhancement and ecological restoration goals, and they welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate LSR treatments that could garner conservationist approval as well.

Stewardship contracts were also well suited to Lomakatsi due to their flexibility and focus on "best value to the government" (overall value) and end results. Best value considers technical approach, past performance, and local benefit, so was not reliant solely on best overall price. In this case, the PA specified "designation by description" silvicultural criteria, whereby the contractor worked toward an "end result" and is responsible for laying out the project on the ground. Lomakatsi applied a variable density management prescription that created openings, or "gaps," and left uncut patches, or "skips." The also created down wood and retained snags, preserved patches of native understory plants, promoted structural diversity in this even-aged stand, protected the soil, and ripped and rehabilitated the main skid trails following the extraction of logs. All treatment costs had to be covered by product revenue, because the US Forest Service did not have appropriated funds for the project.

Lomakatsi convened an interdisciplinary team of restoration technicians, training interns, and advisors. The advisors included foresters, a soils scientist, restoration ecologists, timber operators, and the district botanist, who collaborated on putting together a multifaceted ecological treatment prescription. This team took the basic US Forest Service silvicultural prescription and expanded it to meet the LSR habitat restoration objectives on a detailed micro-site-specific scale. They designed the baseline biophysical monitoring to be able to verify results over time. Lomakatsi also commissioned a soils report and a set of prescription recommendations accounting for historic reference conditions found in neighboring old-growth stands. The soil scientist (George Badura) and ecologist (Dennis Martinez) who issued the reports and recommendations were part of the on-project training program, and their recommendations were incorporated into the summary prescription guidelines . Thinning objectives maintained Douglas-fir as the dominant overstory, with openings promote reseeding of sugar and ponderosa pine. Sunny gaps also promoted understory and Douglas-fir regeneration. A midsuccessional stage and early stem-exclusion / stand-reinitiation transition stage were promoted in the unburned areas. In the burn, an early- to mid-succesional stage was the goal. Overall, the Fuel Model was reduced from an 8 to a 6. This was accomplished by reducing the number of stems per acre from 250 to 90 on average, a 20% to 40% reduction in canopy density, and basal area was reduced to 90 square feet per acre.

 

On-project training was a primary objective of the Boulder Demonstration project, which was an outgrowth of the Lomakatsi workforce training series that started in Tiller in the spring of 2005 with funding from the National Forest Foundation (NFF) to the Alliance of Forest Workers & Harvesters. Lomakatsi was invited in by local residents of this remote community in Douglas County shortly after the 2002 fire. The residents hoped to access National Fire Plan (NFP) community assistance grants for private land fuels reduction. Lomakatsi subsidized the Demonstration training component with an additional grant from NFF. The grant enabled the trainees to participate in Boulder project layout and monitoring as well as oak-woodland restoration on private land. It was important that the technical range of training span the diversity of forest stewardship opportunities available in the future on the district.

By the last phase of the Boulder Demonstration project in 2007, local loggers and workers, all training interns, were largely in charge of the entire field operation. The local loggers used skyline and tractor methods for extraction on steeper and gentle slopes, respectively.

Logging on the first phase of the project employed a modern, Norwegian built cut-to-length (CTL) machine that cut, de-limbed, bucked and stacked logs, which were then hauled out of the unit by a forwarder equipped for minimum ground disturbance. The branches also served as ground cover on skid trails, and hand-pile burning requirements are minimized when slash was incorporated into the soil. The CTL logging was apparently more cost-effective, but the ground was easiest to operate on and had the best commercial volume. Some of the taller 16-inch trees had to be hand felled and bucked because they approached the capacity limitations of the CTL machine. The second system used was a skyline operation, which had a low yield of only 2 MBF. Most of the trees were charred, and an expensive forwarder loaded the logs on the landing. A comparison of the CTL and skyline system highlighted the point that the most economical operations have just the right equipment for the job. The operators, logging supervisor, contract officers, and purchaser (Lomakatsi) were required to adapt and innovate. In spite of the small scale, the project did succeed in breaking even.

The Boulder Demonstration project produced 276 MBF of Douglas-fir sawlogs, between 5 and 16 inches diameter, which were sold to an industrial sawmill 65 miles away in southern Douglas County. Every commercial stem had to be branded on both ends, which was a lot of work for the value of the small diameter logs. Biomass consisted of 288 tons of 3 to 5 inch diameter logs, which sold for $40 to $45 per ton to a biomass facility 45 miles away in Jackson County. Two mule train loads of “salvage” logs from the burned area went to a local value added product enterprise, for market trials. Timber industry businesses directly involved in the project included three milling operations, five trucking firms, the Southern Oregon Log Scaling Bureau, and six logging contractors.

The price for sawlogs fell by 24% during the life of the agreement, which effectively eliminated the viability of treating 100 acres of pre-commercial thinning originally planned, or other units with marginal commercial value. Consequently, there was much less employment on the project than expected by the interns participating in the Lomakatsi training program. The flexibility of the US Forest Service contract officer was key, given three adjustments to the contract due to the depressed timber market. Overall, the cost of operations was about $380 to $480 per MBF. Stewardship contracting has become a new way of doing business that combines the once-separate functions of timber sales and service contracts.

Agency personnel have found that stewardship contracts tend to be more expensive to administer. Because Boulder was a capacity-building demonstration project, expenses were higher than might be expected on a regular stewardship contract, timber sale, or service contract. The project included on-project training and on-site supervision, regular team evaluations, special ecological considerations, multiple operators, and two operating seasons. Site tours were common and included the multi-stakeholder southwest Oregon Provincial Advisory Council (PAC) and Provincial Interagency Executive Committee (PIEC).

What started as capacity building for ecological forest-restoration workforce development evolved into on-project stewardship contract training. Further expansion into a community-wide business- development technical assistance program now involves more than 25 people, with support from USDA Rural Development grants to Lomakatsi, and a partnership with the newly incorporated non-profit organization. The South Umpqua Rural Community Partnership (SURCP) has a representative in several county-wide venues and provides liaison as well as local leadership. They are "committed to facilitating the stewardship forest management model to generate a robust local economy through the restoration of Public and Private streams, meadows and forests." Economic diversification, not new to the people who have stayed in the community post timber-boom, is especially important while the community seeks to collaboratively develop stewardship projects that dovetail with the capacity and aspirations of locals. Inspired in part by the Boulder Demonstration-associated training, two local interns are pursuing value added product testing and marketing, and two are pursuing contracting business development.

There are significant challenges, including the fact that any sale of commercial timber requires upfront payment to the USFS, even in stewardship contracts (and this PA). This can be a big burden for the purchaser, and a line of credit is an added expense. A significant missing component in the local model is a continuous and accessible supply of material from public land. Josephine County started a “Forest Council,” and has directed Title II grant funds to the 100-acre Boulder Biomass Stewardship Contract to be released by the USFS soon. Again, subsidy is essential due to the very low commercial value. In general, county officials prefer timber sales because the county receives a percentage of the stumpage, so stewardship contracts are relegated to areas with marginal commercial returns.

This story is still unfolding, and Lomakatsi acted as the "economic and moral backbone" of efforts by presenting "a model of sustainable ecological forest management that creates jobs and a stable community as well as forest conditions that even the most ‘hands off’ environmental groups would not be able to genuinely gainsay," according to the president of SURCP. The Boulder Demonstration project has helped restoration thinning gain acceptance among environmental activists, community members, and veteran loggers in the South Umpqua community.

Links

• Lomakatsi Forest Restoration
• Prescription for Boulder  Project