A sale proposed of diseased trees

PROVO — The U.S. Forest Service is proposing a 300-acre timber sale for thousands of trees killed by thumbnail-size beetles in the White River area of Spanish Fork Canyon.

The damage was made worse by drought and the age and density of the trees, said Doug Page, who is handling the proposal for the Uinta National Forest.

Page said Douglas-fir bark beetles began attacking the trees and laying eggs in the 1990s. Beetles eat the living tissue of the tree, cutting off water and nutrition in a process called girdling.

Thinning the forest will reduce competition for water and sunlight, making remaining trees more healthy, he said. Healthy trees produce more sap, which they use as a defense against the beetles.

"If a tree has plenty of moisture and is healthy, it can often produce enough sap to push the beetles out," he said. "It basically drowns the beetle. But if it has been mass-attacked or if it is not healthy, it runs out of defenses and they overcome it, and that is what we are seeing now."

No clear-cut logging would be allowed. If a timber sale is approved in a final decision expected next year, Forest Service employees will mark each diseased tree in the 300-acre area with paint for commercial harvesters.

"It will give residual trees a little more space, hopefully to recover and overcome any other beetles," Page said.

Wayne Hoskisson, public lands spokesman for the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, said there is little scientific evidence that logging beetle-damaged trees protects remaining trees.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed in response to a similar proposed timber sale in the Manti-La Sal National Forest.

Beetle infestations are nature's way of thinning forests, and logging skips a natural process, Cynthia Cody of the EPA's Office of Ecosystem Protection and Remediation, told Forest Service officials.

"A beetle infestation serves as a disturbance and regeneration agent similar to the role of fire in an ecosystem or, to some degree, of thinning itself," Cody wrote in a response to the Manti-La Sal timber sale. She asked Forest Service to hold off until it can justify the logging.

Hoskisson said logging beetle-infested trees does nothing for the forest because beetles quickly move to more healthy trees to lay eggs after girdling other trees.

The Spanish Fork ranger district is taking public comment until Nov. 12. If approved, logging would start in 2005 and last three years.