Panel of scientists lends expertise on Middle East Fork project

"Roads are the biggest problem for water quality and fisheries," aquatic ecologist Chris Frissell told a crowded room Thursday night at City Hall in Hamilton.

Frissell was one of four panel members asked to give opinions regarding the Middle East Fork Hazardous Fuel Reduction project. Friends of the Bitterroot and the Native Forest Network hosted the public science panel about forest health issues as they relate to the fuels reduction effort.

The public science panel was put together after members of the community expressed a desire to hear opinions from the scientific community. Panel members included four scientists from various fields related to water quality, insects, soil and wildfire and forest ecology.

Sandy Mack of the West Fork Ranger District presented alternative two at the meeting. Alternative two is one of three proposed plans to deal with the Middle East Fork landscape. The East Fork community is an at-risk interface community because homes and structures are directly adjacent to wild land fuels at risk of an uncharacteristically severe wild land fire.

Mack said alternative two was developed to reduce wild land fire threats to the Middle East Fork community, to restore fire-adapted ecosystems in the Middle East Fork landscape, and to restore stands affected by the Douglas fir bark beetle epidemic by treating infested areas and lands at risk of spread to promote healthy ecosystem function. Treatments in alternative two include slashing, seeding, prescribed burns, salvage of dead trees and some thinning.

Larry Campbell of Friends of the Bitterroot presented alternative 3, an option proposed by environmentalists to protect homes, the community, the public and firefighters from wildfire. According to Campbell, the third alternative would maintain or improve ecosystem integrity by removing human caused impediments to restoration and by allowing natural processes such as insects and disease, natural succession and wild land fire to occur without human intervention.

Treatments in alternative 3 entail both prescribed fire and non-fire fuel reduction treatments. Treatments would be done within 400 meters of a structure or by removing under story vegetation around large trees.

After the presentations of the alternatives each panel member spoke briefly about their field of expertise.

Joe Fox, a member of the panel and an insect scientist, criticized alternative two, saying that the Forest Service cannot get rid of the bark beetles. He said direct control does not work.

"They are not going to control the whole forest, so there is a reservoir of beetles elsewhere," Fox said.

Ken Gibson, a Forest Service insect scientist, sharply disagreed. "We can reduce the numbers of beetles by thinning," he said. "No question," he emphasized, saying he could take anyone to stands in the forest where it has been done successfully.

Fox was skeptical of Gibson's claim and asked to see data.

The crowd was split on the idea of fuel reduction. Some felt that clearing the underbrush and dead trees is the answer to preventing a catastrophic fire while others thought nature should be allowed to take its course.

The only item most people agreed on is that roads in the forests, especially those used for logging, are hard on the forest. They cause soil compaction and increased sediments in rivers and streams. When soil is compacted, water runs off instead of being absorbed.

"Roads have a persistent effect," Frissell said, "and there is no opportunity for recovery."

When asked if there was any good way to thin the forest, Frissell said focusing on dead trees and logging by helicopter was an option.

One question that ultimately no one could answer: Is there a way through all of this controversy?