A balanced approach on aspens

Aspen trees have little if any commercial value, but we sure enjoy watching their leaves dance.

And so we support the U.S. Forest Service’s continuing campaign to protect aspen groves on southern slopes of the Wallowas.

As is typical with deciduous trees, aspens rarely live for more than a century and a half. Groves can’t survive, then, unless there’s a steady supply of baby trees.

The threat the Forest Service is worried about now is the encroachment of mature conifer trees such as firs and pines. These tall trees cast shade over the aspens, which need sunlight to thrive.

The agency wants to cut some of the conifers. It has used that tactic, with success, around many aspen groves. The latest project, though, calls for cutting about 700 conifers larger than 21 inches in diameter, a practice the Forest Service ceased in 1994 in Eastern Oregon forests.

Environmental groups, whose opposition to logging older trees prompted the 21-inch cutting limit, suggest the Forest Service girdle the conifers — kill the trees with chain saws but leave them standing. The Forest Service is studying both a commercial logging and a girdling option.

The girdling idea has merit. Killing the trees mostly eliminates the shade problem. And standing dead trees are habitat for birds and other animals.

But girdling all the encroaching conifers would be wasteful; we’re not convinced that all 700 trees are needed for habitat.

Those trees are worth tens of thousands of dollars. The region’s ailing timber industry will need those trees when the housing market recovers.

We urge Forest Service officials to use both girdling and logging. That balanced approach creates wildlife habitat and wealth. This seems to us the proper way to manage the public forests that belong to every one of us.