ST. GEORGE — Fire season is coming to a close, reducing the risk of catastrophic burns in the state’s wilderness. Many in Southern Utah believe logging is the best strategy to mitigate next year’s risk – but is it?

Reflecting on the catastrophic 2017 Brian Head wildfire, which torched over 71,000 acres, Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock told Cedar City News that the blaze’s spread was caused by a “tremendous fuel load” consisting of groves of dead trees killed by spruce bark beetles and drought.

He said it should not have been allowed to reach that point.

“We should have never closed that sawmill,” Pollock said. “We should have never stopped actively managing our forests. The proof is what we used to have versus what we have now.”

But is logging the best strategy?

Jesse Morris said it depends. Morris is a research professor at the University of Utah and has worked in and around the higher elevations of Southern Utah for nearly 20 years.

Logging is an important tool in forest management, said Morris, adding that society relies heavily on wood products that have to come from “some forest somewhere.” However, whether or not a beetle-killed forest should be logged depends on what the goals are for the landscape.

There are plenty of valid goals, Morris said, including favoring a particular tree type in a recovery forest, water conservation, improving viewsheds, reducing fire risk and critical habitat conservation for rare or prized species.

“All of these, or a combination of them, can justify whether to log or not,” he said.

Beetle kill-related fire risk also depends on the state of the trees, Morris said. There is a higher fire risk of a high-intensity canopy fire if the dead, yellow or red needles are still attached but a lower risk after they’ve dropped if climate conditions are right. The risk increases once more when the trees fall.

“Once those big, woody fuels dry out and they’re all laying on the forest floor – if there’s a couple of really dry years like we have right now – that risk of a really, really intense, high-temperature fire goes up again,” he said.

There is also a level of uncertainty as risk varies by climate and forest type, among other factors, Morris said.

“And not all fires are the same in terms of behavior, severity and combusted biomass,” he said.

Loggers need to find the “sweet spot” when deciding when to harvest dead trees, Morris said. While they’re still standing, they could still be used for construction but become spongy after lying on the forest floor. Near Brian Head and Cedar Breaks National Monument, many of the dead trees are Engelmann spruce, which can be useful for 10-20 years while they remain upright.

As to the risks and benefits of logging, Morris said there are trade-offs involved in making the decision. When removing trees, the nutrients they contain, like nitrogen, are removed from the forest as well.

However, by taking dead trees, Morris said there is less risk of the carbon they’ve stored being released into the atmosphere should they burn.

Logging is a “delicate” scientific method that involves removing enough trees to create the ideal fuels balance while “leaving enough cover for a healthy ecosystem,” according to the U.S. Forest Service. Sierra Hellstrom, a Forest Service public information officer, compiled answers from multiple agency experts and representatives to address questions sent by St. George News via email.

“Logging focuses on removing the overstory,” the agency wrote. “If too much of the canopy is removed, it can increase sunlight to (the) forest floor, creating a potential for drying surface fuels and increasing fire spread.”

Conversely, it is “necessary to have trees of all ages for a healthy ecosystem,” according to the Forest Service. And younger trees receive less sunlight when mature trees make up a large percentage of the forest’s canopy.

Dying trees can consume high amounts of water and nutrients from the soil, but thinning allows silviculturists to selectively identify which trees to remove so younger trees can absorb more nutrients with less competition, promoting an age-diverse habitat.

Additionally, removing hazardous trees, like old or diseased specimens at risk of being felled by winds or storms, can minimize the risk of fallen trees blocking roads, damaging vehicles, buildings and infrastructure and injuring visitors.

With any type of logging activity, Morris said it’s important to carefully consider how it’s done. When it’s intrusive, it can disrupt the soil and seedbed, suppressing forest regeneration.

“I don’t think anybody wants that,” he said. “We all want to, at some point in the future, hopefully, see a forest that resembles the one that we grew up around or we recreated in.”

Tree regrowth can be impacted by large machinery, but high-heat fires can also destroy seeds, Morris said. For instance, after the Brian Head fire, many of the trees growing now are aspens rather than spruce.

When topsoil is disturbed after a loss of trees, the vegetative community is changed, making it less likely that “what comes back is going to be what was there before,” Mike Popejoy, the Utah public lands director for the Grand Canyon Trust said.

The amount of disturbance caused by logging depends on the method, Popejoy said. For instance, a person on the ground with a chainsaw is going to have a lower impact than someone operating heavy machinery.

According to the Forest Service, one of the biggest challenges when removing dead tree stands is balancing the forest ecosystem’s needs with the safety of people working or recreating nearby.

The “jury’s still out” on whether logging is beneficial to forest regeneration, Morris said. The bark beetle outbreaks over the last 10-15 years are “unprecedented,” and there are conflicting reports about the impact of logging in these areas which vary based on factors, including when the logging occurred and the forest and soil types.

“It has to be planned very carefully in order to meet a goal and that goal, of course, is what the Forest Service or the state or the local landowners want to see come back,” he said.

Value of post-fire forests

Popejoy said that logging as the solution to “not having any more fires” isn’t “very realistic” and that wildfires have been shaping forests for millennia. There is value in post-fire forests.

In some cases, maintaining dead trees is “essential to forest health,” according to the Forest Service.

Logs provide habitat and nourishment for many organisms. Birds live in or build their nest on snags, or dead standing trees, the agency states. And fallen trees decompose, returning nutrients to the soil, which encourages new plant growth.

While supporting the natural fire cycle is likely the best strategy, Popejoy said that there are exceptions. For instance, if fuel, like a grove of dead spruces, is near a community, land managers should look at fire management options.

“Let’s really focus our efforts in places, like the Wildland Urban Interface, where you have risks to property and to communities instead of trying to manipulate the entire landscape,” he said.

A previous article in the series discusses several other fire mitigation strategies used by the Forest Service. To view it, click here.

For more information about how the Forest Service seeks to create more fire-resilient landscapes, read this recent article on St. George News. To learn more about how the Forest Service is “confronting the wildfire crisis,” click here.

Photo Gallery

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.