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Second Issue |
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What
the Biscuit Fire means for the rivers…..
By: Hardly J Tweakle
In my last article, I mentioned a few things 1) User fees 2) gravel 3) John Deer bulldozers and 4) Burnt Timber. Hopefully y’all went and had a big old Northwest Forest Pass bonfire. Now dust off the ashes and move on with me. We’ll jump around a bit here and get to number 4 on my list: burnt timber. Specifically, there’s good reason to get hot and bothered by what’s happening in the wake of the Biscuit Fire of 2002. There’s the general eco-warfare erupting over “thinning”, cutting roads in roadless areas, and prepping for a haul-out of some damn big cedars and sitka spruce. And then there’s the uncertain consequences for some of Oregon’s finest rivers. The Chetco and Illinois Rivers slice right through the Kalmiopsis wilderness area. The Rogue runs just north of it. All were ground zero, as rivers go, during the Biscuit blow-up. And to quote an old hippy songwriter “there’s something happening here….what it is ain’t exactly clear”. I can’t believe I allowed myself to do that, but anyway….. A bit of personal background: Just weeks before the Kalmiopsis lit up, I went for a 5-day skip down the upper Chetco river in an IK. As opposed to the Lower Chetco with it’s top-notch combat salmon fishing and more ‘developed’ eccentricities, the Upper Chetco is pure wilderness, probably as much a wilderness river as any Oregon has to offer. The IK-ing wasn’t much to speak of. We were doing a June run at 250 CFS on a river that can hit the 40,000 mark at flood. But we found what we came for; jaw dropping, stunning, out-of this world scenery and no chance of seeing anyone else. (It’s a one day horseback just to get to get to the put-in.) As kayakers, I know we’ve all been to great, beautiful places, and some leave us speechless. Well, the Chetco did it for me. But then, the fire came. I take fire in stride. It’s natural, and even if the forests aren’t what they should be these days, fire has made up its mind to correct for our past (and ongoing) mistakes. But this fire hurt. It was in a wilderness area that was on paper at least “untrammeled by man”. Some mining, yes, but the forest, even though it had been fire-suppressed for decades, was still a hyper-diverse, native Oregon forest. From every mile of the upper Checto you bear witness to a stunning mix of old growth of every species, along with clearings and new growth, and plant-life that’s earned the Kalmiopsis a place among the world’s “biological hotspots”. So the fire burned, and before the ashes had cooled, the politicos rushed in. A full-page ad in the Oregonian ran that said “Fires are natural, Catastrophic fires are not.” Sounds so innocent, and, in some cases-true. But the industrial types with money enough to buy full-page ads were laying the groundwork to get the public on the right side of “the plan”. While building up the image of the Biscuit Fire as of the “bad”, or “unnatural” fire variety, the Forest Service and industry developed a gameplan for salvage logging and thinning. “Thinning”, of course, is a sometimes good and wise forest ‘management’ technique that’s been usurped and twisted into the latest Orwellian buzzword for aggressive, old-school logging (and yes, there is a difference). Read through the timber company/forest service public relations matrix and you realize this: the salvage of Biscuit fire timber exceeds the total volume of lumber taken from all of Washington and Oregon federal forests in 2001. Roadless areas will be cut. Rare and endangered species will NOT be inventoried. Waterways? Well, you do the math- does it sound to you like we’re on the right track here? The salvage plan for the Kaliopsis is a doozy. It is an aggressively defiant gesture toward conservationists and is a calculated jump-start for an ailing timber economy. A timber economy doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but does the scale of this particular ‘salvage’ make any environmental sense? What’s this mean for rivers? As is, little ecological good can come from 500 million boardfeet of timber being dragged down already destabalized, and extremely steep, slopes. (see http://www.nativeforest.org/pdf/SALVAGE_REPORT_FOR_WEB.pdf for an enviro’s take on this). Fortunately, as of the first week of February, some change is in the air. The comment period for public input ended in January, but already the Feds are retracting a bit under pressure. That’s the good thing. But while everyone is focused on trees, we, as kayakers, need to be on the lookout for is what’s going to happen to the rivers. The Chetco, Illinois, and even the Rogue stand at the end of the logging line. What happens on the hills ends up as siltation, sedimentation, and turbidity in rivers that are renowned for their natural clarity and their excellent salmon runs. As past logging projects in Oregon prove, protection of rivers from logging siltation depends not on the law (which is damn weak), but on the noise made by people who claim a river as their own special place. Scream, and the government industrial types just may spend a little dough and come up with a way to offset the worst of the stream damage that stands to occur from the inevitable rush of logging. But no screaming means no mitigation. The protection of streams is done case-by-case based on two things. One, what the law will allow as a bare minimum, and two, what the public demands as a bare minimum of protection. And there is a HUGE gulf between the two. This is a complicated issue to take on. But from my read of things, there’s an awful lot of interest on the part of environmentalists dealing with land and forest issues. That’s good. But less represented, short of some downstream salmon fisherman concerns, is a real voice for kayakers and boaters who seek out the lesser run reaches of these spectacular Oregon rivers. If the past is a teacher, the Feds will ignore the issue of river quality and logging runoff if they get half the chance. If you’ve run the Chetco, Illinois, or the Rogue, take a minute to see hear about what’s going on and what’s in store for the future. Let the Feds know you’re watching. Here are a few good resources: www.biscuitfire.com
for the forest service’s take on the salvage plan |
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