Prep work for the Mission Restoration Project starts in May in the Buttermilk area, with small-tree thinning in Libby Creek in June. Logging will continue through October.
Lots of truck traffic expected this summer
Contractors will start prep work for thinning and logging for the Mission Restoration Project in early May in the Buttermilk area.
Thinning of small-diameter trees (up to 8 inches) will start in June in the Libby Creek area. Logging will continue through October.
Representatives from the Methow Valley Ranger District and Hampton Lumber provided details about what to expect in the three-year logging and forest-health project at a virtual open house on Tuesday, April 5. Hampton Lumber placed a successful bid on the project in August 2021.
Contractors will start pre-haul maintenance and construction of temporary roads in the Buttermilk area in the Twisp River drainage in early May, and then move south toward Blackpine Lake and Libby Creek, Hampton forester Kris McCall said. Logging –— by tractor and cable — will start in June, providing that conditions are appropriate and soil is dry, he said.
The Mission Project encompasses 50,200 acres, with a variety of treatments depending on ecological needs and wildfire risk. The timber sale will span three years and run through fall 2024, District Silviculturist Eireann Pederson said.
Contractors anticipate full operations for three summers, with the potential for winter logging in areas where they can’t protect soil from compaction, said Meg Trebon, the ranger district’s environmental coordinator for the project.
The anticipated $624,000 revenue generated by harvesting commercial timber on 1,853 acres will help fund other parts of the project as well as other forest needs, according to Hampton Lumber. The project calls for noncommercial thinning on 8,300 acres and thinning of small trees on 1,550 acres to eliminate ladder fuels that could carry a wildfire to the forest canopy, Pederson said.
The U.S. Forest Service will be issuing a contract for thinning small-diameter trees in June, with the expectation that up to 20 contractors could be at work at a time, Pederson said.
Altogether, thinning — commercial and noncommercial — will take place on 4% of the total project area, according to Hampton Lumber.
The contract calls for a 10-acre test plot for each type of treatment to ensure that contractors are leaving the healthiest trees and the required number of trees per acre, Pederson said.
An aquatic-restoration component is intended to enhance habitat for steelhead, cutthroat trout and bull trout, District Biologist Gene Shull said. They’ll be replacing 23 culverts, eight for fish passage, starting with one in Ben Canyon in June or July. The road to Mission Pond will be closed for about two weeks for that work, Shull said.
They’ll also add wood to streams to increase complexity and improve fish habitat in Buttermilk and Libby creeks, primarily by hand-felling dead and green trees along the creeks, Shull said.
Noncommercial timber will be left in slash piles to dry for two years, with the first burning anticipated in fall 2023, District Fire Management Officer Brian Campbell said. In addition, prescribed burns will be carried out on more than 10,000 acres to reduce fuel loads.
Safety, traffic concerns
Members of the public who attended the meeting had questions about traffic and safety issues, given the number of logging trucks that will be traveling on narrow, winding roads during the busy tourist season.
The work could generate “a fair amount of traffic,” although it will occur in clusters, rather than be spread out throughout the day, McCall said.
Hampton will be trucking logs to two mills. The majority, Douglas fir, will go to their mill in Darrington. Ponderosa pine will be processed at a mill in Randle, in southwestern Washington.
The schedule calls for two round trips a day, a dozen trucks at a time, to Darrington via the North Cascades Highway. There will be one trip per day to Randle. Trucks to Randle will head south, not through Winthrop.
The first trucks will leave for Darrington at “O dark 30” and pick up their second load around noon or 1 p.m., McCall said. If work in the forest is restricted because of wildfire danger, they’ll start even earlier to stay on schedule.
Winthrop Mayor Sally Ranzau is concerned about the impact of logging trucks heading through Winthrop at the height of tourist season. In addition, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has scheduled two bridge repairs in Winthrop and another in Mazama this summer, she said. She urged Hampton Lumber to coordinate with WSDOT to avoid a major traffic jam.
People will be able to follow the project on an online storyboard created by Hampton Lumber — search for “Hampton Lumber collaborative.” People can also contact Methow Valley District Ranger Chris Furr at (509) 996-4000 or McCall at Hampton Lumber at (360) 630-9326 with specific questions.
The open house can be watched on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest Facebook page. Go to the “More” tab, then “Videos.” The link is https://fb.watch/cdOpoMjWAd.
Project history
The Mission project is the first to implement a new restoration strategy developed in 2012 for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
The approach treats large landscapes with the goal of returning dry forests to conditions that make them better able to survive wildfire, insects, disease and climate change.
The project attracted considerable public interest since it was proposed in 2016. Implementation was delayed by litigation over its potential impact on endangered species. A judge dismissed that lawsuit last year.
