Logging operation addresses serious issue
Harvester machines work diligently along the southwest hillside in Osburn as crews from Stimson Lumber work to clear a section of White Pine that has been infected with blister rust.
Photo by JOSH McDONALD
OSBURN — Osburn residents may have noticed some increased logging operations on the southwestern hillside recently and that operation may be ending in just a few months.
That particular section of forest land is owned by Stimson Lumber, who are working quickly in that area to address a growing and potentially devastating issue.
“One of our main concerns with our ownership in this area is that the White Pine is infested with blister rust and is dying,” said Stimson St. Maries Unit Manager Don Pence.
Blister rust comes from an invasive fungus that can move from tree to tree through aerial spores and then can travel through the tree’s needles, down the branches, to the main trunk of the tree. At that point, everything above that section of the tree is dead.
Trees can be salvaged if the rust is caught before it spreads and proper pruning is done, but in a heavily forested area, that can be challenging.
The rust was first introduced in North America, albeit accidentally, onto Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1910, it spread across much of the Pacific Northwest and by the 1940s the White Pine Blister Rust was at epidemic levels in Idaho.
Between blister rust and the mountain pine beetles, White Pine species in the area are struggling mightily, which makes the decision to cut the current foliage down an easy one.
“The goal of this harvest is to get the area planted back to Western Larch and Douglas fir which are species that need full sunlight to grow,” Pence said. “The area is scheduled to be planted in the spring 2023 with 350 to 400 trees per acre.”
As the work progresses toward its June conclusion, crews will begin piling the slash to ready them for burning in the fall.
According to Pence, in the fall of 2018, Stimson completed a similar project near Osburn that saw them harvest a section of forest that had become a hazard to the various adjacent properties. They piled and burned the slash from that harvest in the fall of 2019 and planting crews will be in those particular sites later this spring.
Stimson Lumber Company stretches across Oregon, Idaho and Montana, operating seven mills in Oregon and Idaho; all while owning and managing more than 500,000 acres of forest land in the Western United States.