Better Snow Basin

We’re still concerned that the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest’s biggest logging proposal in more than a decade will be stalled by legal challenges before a tree is felled.

But we’re not as worried as we were six months ago when the Wallowa-Whitman unveiled the Snow Basin project.

Ken Anderson, ranger for the forest’s Whitman District, recently announced changes that should make the Snow Basin project, if not more palatable to environmental groups, then at least less objectionable.

The changes include eliminating or reducing logging on 2,000 acres of the 14,000-acre project, which is north of Richland.

The 2,000 acres are along streams and in other areas that serve as travel routes for wildlife.

In addition, the Wallowa-Whitman will require loggers in those areas, as well as on slopes steeper than 35 degrees, to use suspended cables rather than ground-based machines to move logs to loading sites.

Environmental groups contend that ground-based logging, especially when done on steep terrain, tears up the soil and increases erosion.

Anderson has met informally with representatives from the Hells Canyon Preservation Council and from Baker County’s Natural Resources Advisory Council to explain the changes.

Even so, Snow Basin is likely to remain controversial in some quarters — in particular the proposal to cut live trees larger than 21 inches in diameter, a practice the Forest Service stopped in Eastern Oregon national forests in 1994.

But we hope Anderson’s obvious intention to deal in substantive ways with environmentalists’ concerns will forestall appeals and lawsuits that could force the Wallowa-Whitman to delay, or even cancel, Snow Basin.

It’s an important project that should come to fruition.

Past timber sales in which loggers removed fire-resistant ponderosa pines and tamaracks but left fire-prone grand firs, combined with the Forest Service’s aggressive and usually successful firefighting tactics, have drastically changed the Snow Basin forests during the past century.

The grand firs have encroached in areas where ponderosas and tamaracks once predominated. When a fire starts in these forests the flames are more likely to spread farther, and faster, than they did when the forests were in their natural state.

Although we believe the Wallowa-Whitman could accomplish most of its goals in Snow Basin by complying with the 21-inch limit on cutting live trees, it’s true that removing some of those larger trees will speed the restoration of the forests.

In addition, the Snow Basin project could supply the logs that help to revive the region’s flagging timber industry when the housing market rebounds along with the rest of the economy.

Anderson said the project could produce 50 million board-feet of timber spread among five separate timber sales that probably would be sold one per year for five years.

The entire Wallowa-Whitman hasn’t sold more than 31 million board-feet in any fiscal year since 2001.

The Wallowa-Whitman’s revamped Snow Basin project is better than original.

We just hope it’s good enough to make the transition from idea to reality.