By JAYSON JACOBY

A newfangled type of national forest logging project that debuted six years ago in Baker City’s watershed has continued, and the two most recent of these projects helped to boost the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest’s volume of sold timber to its highest one-year total since 2000.

Even so, the Wallowa-Whitman’s timber sale program remains a mere splinter compared to what it was in the 1970s and ’80s.

During the past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the forest, which has its headquarters in Baker City, sold 25 million board-feet of timber the most since fiscal 2000’s total of 33 million board-feet, said Carla Monismith, the Wallowa-Whitman’s timber sales officer.

Between 1976 and 1990, by contrast, the Wallowa-Whitman sold an average of about 203 million board-feet per year.

The forest hasn’t sold more than 54 million board-feet since fiscal 1992.

Since then, several factors have contributed to the dramatic decline in the Wallowa-Whitman’s timber offerings.

For instance, in 1993 the Forest Service, as part of a compromise with environmental groups that had vowed to sue the agency, agreed to stop cutting live trees bigger than 21 inches in diameter in Eastern Oregon national forests, including the Wallowa-Whitman.

Forest officials also have had to trim timber cutting plans to protect habitat for Snake River salmon and steelhead, which have been listed as threatened species since the early 1990s.

Nonetheless, after three particularly lean fiscal years 2002, 2003 and 2004, when the Wallowa-Whitman’s annual timber sale average was 16 million board-feet the forest’s program has grown, albeit modestly.

Among the factors that contributed to that trend are a pair of andquot;stewardship projects,andquot; the first of which was the Baker City watershed project in 2000.

Since then the Wallowa-Whitman has done 15 more stewardship projects, scattered across the forest, Monismith said.

Forest officials approved two of those, totaling about 2.8 million board-feet of timber, in September, she said.

One of those two stewardship projects, like the inaugural one six years ago, involves the city’s 10,000-acre watershed.

Although this latest project, known as Foothills, is next to rather than inside the watershed, the Wallowa-Whitman’s goal is the same now as in 2000: to reduce the threat of wildfire in the watershed by thinning dense stands of trees.

Baker City officials have worried for decades about the potential for such a blaze in the watershed.

A large fire there could sully streams with ash and dirt, and possibly force the city to build a multimillion-dollar water-filtration plant.

The water the city siphons today from streams and springs in the watershed, along the east slopes of the Elkhorn Mountains about 10 miles west of town, is unusually pure.

In fact Baker City is one of just four cities in Oregon that doesn’t need to filter its surface water to meet federal drinking-water standards (the three others are Bend, Portland and Reedsport).

Back in 1996 the Wallowa-Whitman tried to curb the fire danger by designing a conventional timber sale in the watershed one in which a mill buys the logs from the Forest Service.

The Wallowa-Whitman offered the timber twice, but no one bid either time, even though the volume of timber 4.3 million board-feet in the first offer, 4.7 million the second was larger than average for timber sales at that time.

Two factors discouraged potential bidders in 1996, said Monismith, who was the Wallowa-Whitman’s timber sales officer then.

First, the trees, mostly small firs, some of them dead or dying, weren’t worth much.

Second, the buyer would have had to use helicopters, which are expensive but unlike log-skidding tractors don’t chew up the ground, to haul logs out of the woods.

After failing to attract a buyer, Wallowa-Whitman officials tried a different, and at the time revolutionary, tactic: Rather than sell the logs, they paid someone to cut the trees.

That initial stewardship project, in 2000, cost the Forest Service about $1.45 million. Loggers cut about 2.2 million board-feet of timber at the south end of the watershed, near Elk Creek. The Forest Service also paid to pile and burn the logging slash. The project created a andquot;shaded fuelbreakandquot; an area where there’s quite a lot of space between trees but not much underbrush. Firefighters usually have a better chance to stop a blaze when it reaches a shaded fuelbreak.

Six years later the stewardship concept has expanded, Monismith said.

Today there are two types of projects.

The first is essentially identical to the original 2000 project. Forest officials call these andquot;service contracts,andquot; Monismith said. This is how they work:

Forest officials design a timber sale, and contractors bid on the job. As part of the bid, contractors estimate how much it will cost to cut the trees and haul away the logs and do any other tasks forest officials require. Those other tasks typically include such things as felling trees that are too small to be milled, piling logging slash, and rebuilding roads, Monismith said.

If that work costs more than the logs fetch at a mill, then the Wallowa-Whitman makes up the difference and pays the contractor, Monismith said.

The current Foothills project is a service contract.

The millable logs are worth just $14,700, but the total cost for all the work including cutting small trees and piling the slash on 822 acres comes to about $875,000, said Ken Rockwell, the Wallowa-Whitman’s fuels program manager.

That bill also includes the cost of employing helicopters to hoist the logs that are big enough to be milled. As in 1996, Wallowa-Whitman officials insist that loggers use helicopters. Dragging logs across the ground can cause erosion that dirties streams much in the way a wildfire could.

The contractor on the Foothills project, which got under way earlier this month, is Clear Pacific LLC, a Baker City company owned by Forrest Schroeder, Rockwell said.

The Wallowa-Whitman’s other recent stewardship project is a different breed from the Foothills project.

It’s called Emily Top (for Mount Emily north of La Grande, where it’s located), and Boise Building Solutions bought the timber sale in September, Monismith said.

The timber, totaling 1.5 million board-feet, is worth an estimated $157,000, she said $54,000 more than the cost for the associated work.

Boise Buildings Solutions will pay that amount to the Wallowa-Whitman, which will use the money to thin crowded forests or do other fuels reduction work on Mount Emily, Monismith said.

One of the more significant differences between the Mount Emily and Foothills projects is that loggers on the Mount Emily job can use ground-based equipment, rather than the much more expensive helicopters, to move logs, Monismith said.

Forest sells burned trees

For the first time in about five years, the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest has sold trees burned in a wildfire.

Two wildfires, actually.

During the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Wallowa-Whitman sold a pair of fire-salvage timber sales, said Carla Monismith, the forest’s timber sales officer.

The larger of the two consisted of 1.2 million board-feet of timber scorched during the August 2005 Spring Creek fire near Meacham.

The Wallowa-Whitman also sold 400,000 board-feet of timber burned during another August 2005 blaze at Fly Creek near Starkey.

The Wallowa-Whitman tried twice, once in June 2004, the second time less than a month later, to sell trees burned in the Monument fire near Unity.

No one bid on either sale mainly because the fire happened in July 2002, and two years later the scorched trees had rotted and thus lost most of their commercial value.

The Wallowa-Whitman’s biggest timber sale during the 2006 fiscal year though the trees slated for cutting are live, not dead is the Pine Valley sale near Halfway.

Boise Building Solutions bought the 5.4 million board-feet of timber for $414,563, Monismith said.