Could Cutting More Trees Cut Wildfire Risk?

Wade Fagen is a logger turned arborist with a radical idea.

“On Arbor Day, instead of come and plant a tree with Fagen’s Tree Service, come and kill a tree to save other trees,” said Fagen.

The idea may seem controversial, but years of keeping fires down and loggers out have left some areas of our local forests overgrown. And now the ex-logger, Fagen, is finding some unusual partners in environmentalists.

“It makes sense to remove those trees. And if we remove those trees, some of those are going to be big enough to be saw logs,? said Tim Lillebo from Oregon Wild.

But Lillebo urges cautious steps forward, protecting old growth while thinning out overgrown sections of the forest.

He points to the upper stretches, areas like the Santiam Pass, where the B&B Complex Fire devastated thousands of acres, as a natural environment, where fires that size need to pass through every so often.

“Not everything though needs to be cut. Everybody kind of goes, ‘Oh, the forests are unhealthy, blah, blah, blah’ — well that’s not really the case,” said Lillebo.

Historically, a meeting of minds between the logging community and environmentalists may seem rare. But now, with both finding some common ground, there’s an economic reality that is stopping the progress both sides can agree needs to be made.

The mills that once dominated Bend’s economy are a shopping center.

“The sad thing is, we don’t have the mills to take the wood that we need to take out now, that we can take out the right trees,” said Fagen.

The value in small logs isn’t as high as the old growth that once existed.

“We logged the heck out of these forests for so many years. We took so much old growth. We lost a lot of value,” said Lillebo.

Without the economic driver of hungry-for-logs mills in the area, a new economic driver is prompting the Forest Service and many private land owners to action: the threat of catastrophic wildfires.

“To restore the landscape, we do need a healthy wood products industry. They have the equipment. They have the ability to process those materials,” said Jean Dean-Nelson, public information officer for the Deschutes National Forest.

Currently, the Forest service is working on a 10-year, $10-million dollar restoration on nearly 200,000 acres of land between Bend and Black Butte.

Much of the money to complete the work of removing small trees and brush is paid for through federal grants. But a portion comes from logging and other wood products operations, perhaps bringing a smile to advocates from both the environmental and logging worlds.

“If you go in there and thin those areas, underneath those bigger trees, you’re going to end up with wood byproducts that could feed mills,” said Lillebo.

“Don’t be afraid of logging. Trees are the answer, and logging can get us back to that,” said Fagen.