Forest Service/Citizen Fire Safety Collaboration Goes Sour.

Kimberly Baker looks at an especially large Douglas fir, cut during the logging operation that was part of the Orleans Fuels Reduction Project. Fire resilient trees such as this are supposed to be retained whenever possible. The tree is located along the historic Prospect Mine trail in Orleans and knocked down another large tree when it was cut. The trees are jack-knived right across the trail making it nearly impassable. Photo courtesy of Klamath Forest Alliance.

When news broke last December about a group of mostly Karuk activists blockading a road near Orleans to protest a logging project, it brought back visions of the timber wars of past decades. However, this direct action – carried out by a group known as the Klamath Justice Coalition - was motivated by frustration at the Forest Service’s failure to honor agreements developed in a three-year collaborative process.

The logging operation was part of a long-planned fuels reduction project for the area, meaning that brush and some smaller trees were to be removed or thinned in an effort to reduce the risks of fire to the community of Orleans and its surrounding homesteads. Such fire hazards have risen sharply, due both to extensive clear-cutting between the 1950’s and the 1980’s, and the Forest Service’s policy of fire suppression.

“The landscape is out of whack because fire has been excluded for so long,” said Will Harling of the Orleans/Somes Bar Fire Safe Council. “We are losing a lot of our fire-adapted ecosystems including oak woodlands and meadow habitats that, in the absence of fire, have been encroached upon by even-aged Douglas fir stands,” 

These crowded young fir stands can burn dangerously hot during wildfire events, Harling added.

Several community groups and environmental organizations, along with the Karuk Tribe and the Orleans-Somes Bar Fire Safe Council, have worked with the Six Rivers national forest over the last three years to hammer out a plan to reduce fire hazards and protect Karuk cultural sites in the Pananmik World Renewal Ceremonial District.

The result was the Orleans Community Fuel Reduction and Forest Health Project . The work would involve a combination of hand-thinning units and careful commercial thinning in stands further from homes.

During this process an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was finalized with the filing of a Record of Decision (ROD). But the guidelines enumerated in these documents – and especially the accords reached to resolve the collaborative group’s objections to the project – were not reflected in the contract the Forest Service actually awarded, or in the logging that has been done to date, say Karuk and environmental sources.

Good Decisions Gone Bad

“We got a lot of good decisions made during the process,” said Bill Tripp, Eco-Cultural Specialist for the Karuk Tribe. “But they just didn’t get implemented once the project got into contracting,”
Tripp said that many of the problems are caused by the changes the contractor has said he needs in order to do the job efficiently. “The collaborative group specifically requested this contractor not get the bid because of the outcome of previous projects – like roads punched through cultural sites,” he said.

Using “best value” rules that were supposed to ensure the job was given to a contractor with a record of good performance, the Forest Service awarded the original contract to Yreka-based Timber Products, Inc., But that company then subcontracted the job to Mark Crawford Logging, the focus of community concern. Now Tripp wonders if the original agreement can actually be enforced at the subcontracting level.

Both Harling and Tripp noted that their group did not get to see the contract before it was awarded. “We were supposed to have input into the contract process and review the contract before it was awarded to make sure that mitigations were there,” said Tripp.

Harling agreed that the main issue is that agreements from the EIS and ROD are not being met. These include the size of trees being taken out, the use of inappropriate equipment, logging along ceremonial trails and damage inflicted on hardwoods – despite the fact that the EIS specifies that damage will not exceed 25 percent of hardwoods in a given unit.

“Large hardwoods, including tan oak, black oak, and madrone, are culturally and ecologically significant species, and we worked hard to ensure they would not be damaged during project implementation,” Harling said. “The Forest Service is not enforcing language in the contract and EIS that’s supposed to require the contractor to directionally fell trees to save large  hardwoods.”

He added that hardwoods have been given to this contractor for sale in past projects, creating an economic incentive for them to take as many as they could.

Harling said that throughout a long series of meetings, the Forest Service insisted yarder corridors could be kept to 10 foot widths, and thus claimed that very few large overstory trees would be removed. This stipulation was included in the EIS. However, in the first units harvested, 20-40 foot wide corridors were created, apparently targeted the large overstory trees that fire scientists say should be retained.

“Old growth and late seral closed canopy forests keep undergrowth down and have higher humidities that lessen fire intensity and spread. When too many canopy trees are  taken out it changes the structure of a stand and no longer meets the purpose of the project,” said Harling.
 Additionally the EIR called for the establishment of multiparty monitoring of the project that would have involved local residents, the Tribes, and the collaborative organizations, but this was never followed through.

“If it had been done it would have helped set priorities,” said Tripp. “At least impacts to other areas would have been reduced, such as to the World Renewal District.”

Tribal Concerns Ignored Again

According to the Klamath Justice Coalition, this is not the first time that Forest Supervisor Tyrone Kelly has shown insensitivity to Tribal cultural issues. Last year he oversaw the bulldozing of an area disputed to be Indian Trust Land. A home, a contemporary dance ground and a nearby archeological site were all destroyed.

The activists who blockaded the logging road in December believe that this logging project looks like just another timber harvest that disregards the concerns of the community.
“We are shocked that the Forest Service thinks it can get away with lying to our community,” said Annelia Hillman, Karuk Tribal member.

“We want fuels reduction, but we will not accept the destruction of Karuk sacred sites or a timber sale disguised as a fuels reduction plan.”

In January, the Karuk Tribe filed a formal complaint with the State Office of Historic Preservation because the Panamnik World Renewal Ceremonial District is eligible for listing under the National Historic Preservation Act. The letter cited a long list of violations of the programmatic agreement that will negatively affect the Ceremonial District, topped with the fact that an archaelogist has not been on site as promised.

“Now we’re applying some pressure through whatever means we have to because these are significant issues,” said Tripp.