Forests will burn but then logging them right after delays recovery

The fires that burned down the Santiam Canyon over Labor Day weekend in 2020 were a disaster for the communities from Idanha all the way to Stayton. Recovery started right away, but rebuilding homes and public infrastructure has been tragically slow, delaying the healing of the community.

Likewise in the burned forests; healing started right away, but logging those burned forests delayed healing.

Oregon forests — from the coast to high desert — need fire to be healthy. When those Labor Day fires swept through on the force of a hot, dry and very fast wind, the forests didn’t stand a chance. That’s because forests in Oregon burn. When we tend a forest, log it or choose not to tend it, we accept (maybe unconsciously or without really thinking about it) that there’s a chance it will burn. Sure, when the fire does come, it might burn bright and consume everything or it might burn with a light touch, knowing it will come back again.

We even try to stop the fires. But the forest will burn.

It is what happens in the forest afterwards that’s up to us. A post-fire forest is still a forest; it still does stuff. And it can and will regrow as the forest that it needs to be, if we let the forest be. That means not logging it.

But in many Oregon forests, the fire-killed and fire-damaged trees get logged just when the forest needs them in order to heal. It is like peeling off a scab too early; we punch in roads, cut vast swathes of trees and take the root stock of a future forest just when the forest needs snags, conifers seeds, downed wood on the forest floor and trees crashing into streams. Dead trees are food for bugs, while bugs are food for woodpeckers that rely upon the fire-killed forest. Dead trees are food for the forest, too, standing as shade for emerging tree seedlings, falling as slow-rotting, moisture-holding wood for the forest floor, and tumbling into streams as homes for fish and water-living insects. There is tremendous life in a fire-killed forest.

We log when we need to let the woodpeckers, ants, butterflies, flowers and seedlings do their work. We have to let the forest heal after fire, and that means keeping the trees. In fact, it is harder for trees themselves to grow on these denuded lands with hotter, drier soils and fewer seed trees present.

It is going to take a lot longer for Santiam Canyon forests to heal after the 2020 wildfires because fire-damaged trees were logged on private, state and federal forests. Much of Monument Peak and surrounding private forestland was mowed clean off by logging after fire. Wide swathes of forest on either side of gated roads in the Mount Hood National Forest on the north side of Oregon 22 continue to be logged after a fire in the name of safety.

The Santiam State Forest was logged by the state Department of Forestry, where snags have been replaced by blackberries and Scotch broom.

Rather than healing, those forests that have been logged too soon now adorn the underside of Portland Airport’s glorious new terminal, holding up the roof as Mass Plywood Panels made by Freres Lumber, plywood that was named coolest new product in Oregon in 2023. Oregonians traveling inadvertently pay for that degraded forest as we walk under that beautiful roof to and from our plane travels.

While the federal government primarily logs wildfire-killed trees along forest roads, the Forest Service may expand this logging to more of our forests. The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted 30 years ago to protect old-growth forests for threatened animals, is in the process of being amended and the plan will likely allow post-fire logging on 5.5 million acres (the draft is set for release November 15th). That means an area of public land 50% larger than the Willamette Valley is at risk of being denuded after fires, like a scab peeled too early, delaying healing.

Wildfire on private forestland destroys investments when it kills trees. And yet, the appraised value of the land is based upon its ability to grow trees for the long term. Logging trees post-fire degrades the ability to grow trees and thus the value of the land, but it also degrades the natural resources that we all depend upon and which landowners have an obligation to not pollute, like air and water. The Oregon Board of Forestry has twice delayed adopting stronger rules for post-fire logging that would protect streams, drinking water and fish habitat.

In a hotter and drier world, every tree we log after a fire is one fewer tree to store carbon, create habitat, accelerate regrowth and clean our water.

From the Forest Service to the Port of Portland and the Department of Forestry to the Board of Forestry, decision-makers need to stop peeling the scab and end rampant post-fire logging. Our future and the future of the forests demand better.

Casey Kulla coordinates forest policy at Oregon Wild. Kulla is a first generation vegetable farmer, a former Yamhill County Commissioner and a forest ecologist by training.

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