Summary

The Regional Ecosystem Office (REO) has concluded its efforts with respect to review of the Late-Successional Reserve Assessment (LSRA or Assessment) for 100-acre Late-Successional Reserves (LSRs) within Glade and Yale Creek drainages in southern Oregon.  In light of these efforts, and based in substantial measure on the analysis and evaluation conducted by the affiliated interagency LSR Work Group, the REO concurs with the work group’s recommended finding that the Assessment provides a sufficient framework and context for future projects and activities within the LSRs.  In addition, future silvicultural and salvage activities described in the Assessment that meet both the criteria and objectives of the LSRA as well as the Standards and Guidelines (S&Gs) in the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) are exempted from further project-level REO review.

Basis for the Review

The NWFP S&Gs state that a management assessment should be prepared for each large LSR (or group of smaller LSRs) before habitat manipulation activities are designed and implemented.  These LSR assessments are subject to review by the REO, which works closely with an affiliated LSR interagency Work Group in meeting its responsibilities in this regard.  The present review focused on the following:

  1.   The review considers whether the Assessment contains sufficient information and analysis to provide a framework and context for making future decisions on projects and activities.  The eight specific subject areas an assessment generally include are found in the NWFP (S&Gs, page C-11).  The REO may find that an assessment contains sufficient information, or may identify topics or areas, which need additional information, detail, or clarity.  The findings of the review are provided to the agency or agencies submitting the assessment.

  2.   The review considers treatment criteria and potential treatment areas for silviculture (including risk-reduction and prescribed fire) and salvage activities if addressed in the LSRA.  When treatment criteria are clearly described and their relationship to achieving desired late-successional conditions are clear, subsequent projects and activities within the LSR(s) may be exempted from further REO review, provided they are consistent with the LSRA criteria and NWFP S&Gs.  The REO authority for developing criteria to exempt these actions is found in the S&Gs (pages C-12, C-13, and C-18).

Scope of the Assessment and Description of the Assessment Area

The Assessment under review covers eleven 100-acre LSRs within the Glade and Yale Creek watersheds; nine on the Applegate Ranger District, Rogue River National Forest; and two on the Ashland Resource Area, Medford BLM District.  These watersheds encompass 24,000 acres and are centered approximately 17 miles due south of Medford and 11 miles west-southwest of Ashland, in Oregon.  The watersheds are within the Applegate Adaptive Management Area, and the National Forest portion is Tier 1 Key Watershed.  There are Riparian Reserves within these LSRs.

The LSRs are located within the Oregon Klamath physiographic province.  This is an area recognized within the NWFP S&Gs as being at risk to fire, and fuels reduction treatments within or around LSRs are usually appropriate.  The watersheds range from 2000 to 7000 feet in elevation, and Douglas-fir dominated mixed conifer stands are the predominant climax type, particularly within the burned area.  Other species in these stands include ponderosa pine, incense-cedar, white fir, widely scattered sugar pine below 4,500 feet, pacific madrone and black oak.  Recent fire suppression policies have left much of the area densely stocked with ladder fuels.

Seven of the LSRs covered by this Assessment were significantly affected by the 6,200-acre Quartz Fire in 2001.  Emergency rehabilitation followed the fire to correct suppression-related problems, and subsequently, to stabilize soil and biotic communities, prevent impairment of ecosystem function, mitigate significant threats to downstream values, minimize unacceptable deterioration of water quality, and minimize establishment of non-native invasive plants.  There remains a need to conduct reforestation activities in six LSRs and recover volume of fire-killed trees that are surplus to LSR needs in one LSR.

Review of the Assessment

The Assessment was submitted to REO through the Regional Forester in June 2002.  After minor clarifications with the authors leading to submittal of an additional tree/snag numbers table for LSR #957, LSR Work Group review leads (Ken Denton and Sue Livingston) presented the Assessment to the Work Group on August 2, 2002, and then to the REO staff and Director on August 12, 2002. 

The Assessment does an excellent job of discussing the role of 100-acre LSRs, which includes preserving the intensely used portion of the owl home range; providing important refugia habitat and centers for dispersal for species other than northern spotted owl; and, along with the Riparian Reserves, green tree retention areas, and coarse woody debris requirements, providing for dispersal of organisms across the landscape between mapped LSRs and other areas.  The Assessment addresses a much larger area than the two watersheds to more effectively evaluate their role in overall dispersal.  The Assessment also does a good job describing and quantifying forest seral stages for the fire area as well as for the two watersheds.  The Assessment displays the pre-fire late-successional habitat for each of the eleven LSRs.

The Assessment quantifies and displays effects to seral stages both at the LSR and watershed scales, and discusses the fire’s effects to connectivity at the LSR, watershed, and connectivity corridor scales.  The Assessment identifies a deficit in down woody material, since most down logs of all decay classes were consumed by the fire.  Where high intensity fire burned, snag densities now range from 30 to 230 per acre, ranging in size from 8 to over 30 inches diameter at breast height (dbh).  The Assessment describes how these snags will help to offset the coarse wood deficit, but also will contribute to overall fuel loading when they begin to fall.  Potentially present NWFP-emphasis species are discussed, including Survey and Manage species.

Review of Treatment Plans and Criteria

The LSRA identifies a need to continue rehabilitation by planting conifers on 350 acres in the six burned LSRs on National Forest lands (the BLM LSR was replanted during burned area emergency rehabilitation).  This planting will be conform to the REO’s May 1995 criteria exempting certain planting activities from further REO review.

The Assessment also identifies plans to salvage 78 acres within BLM LSR #957 according to the S&Gs for salvage found in the NWFP (pages C-13 through 16).  The Work Group particularly focused on this aspect, requesting additional information about existing and planned remaining snags and down wood levels.  The prescriptions call for a minimum of seven hard conifer snags and five decay Class 1 or 2 conifer logs per acre, or about 50 percent more than is prescribed for green-stand treatments in the nearby Ashland LSR.  Further, all live trees, plus all cull snags, larger hardwood snags, and 2 additional old-growth snags per acre where available, will be left standing.  The Class 1 and 2 snags and felled logs alone are expected to exceed 30-tons per acre, and result in the removal of less than half of the larger dead trees.  The Work Group found these levels, as well as other aspects of the proposal, to be consistent with the salvage S&Gs.  The two-page “Supplemental Information” (submitted by Kristi Mastrofini to Work Group member Ken Denton on August 7, 2002) is considered part of the Assessment with the following edits that they discussed.  The third column on Tables 2 and 3 should be headed “# of decay Class 1 and 2 conifer snags per acre to be left standing ,” and these numbers are in addition to the two additional old-growth snags where available cited in the Assessment, as well as additional to cull and hardwood snags, and live trees.  Further the last diameter group on these two tables is changed from “32 to 36” inches to “32 inches and larger.”

The Assessment identifies a likely future need for young-stand thinning (the plantation) to be carried out under the existing May 1995 young-stand thinning review exemption letter.  It also identifies a likely future need for fuels hazard reduction, but defers specifics to a future LSRA addendum to be submitted to the REO for review.

Conclusion

Based upon a review of relevant documentation and extensive discussions with Forest Service and BLM staff, the LSR Work Group recommends that the REO find that the LSRA provides a sufficient framework and context for designing future actions.  The REO has considered each of the principal issues discussed above and evaluated the adequacy of the LSRA and, in large measure based on the analysis and reasoning of the LSR Work Group, concurs in the recommended findings.  The Assessment contains descriptions of past and current conditions (forest structure, composition, and vegetation patterns), and the discussion of where succession is headed and the issues that will emerge as a result of such developments provide a framework for identification, design, and prioritization of future treatments.  The Assessment provides specific objectives and criteria, and identifies needed and proposed treatments to re-achieve and maintain desired conditions.

The REO also concurs in the work group’s recommended finding that proposed salvage in LSR #957, if conducted according to the description and criteria described in the Assessment (pages 15 through 19,  as amended as described above), and if consistent with other parts of the NWFP and other applicable laws and direction, is consistent with the NWFP S&Gs for salvage.  Reforestation activities are also described in the Assessment, but will be conducted consistent with the REO’s May 1995 criteria, thereby exempting them from review.

cc:         REO Reps
      Thomas K. Reilly, Acting FS, ROR/SIS NF
      Kristi Mastrofini, BLM Medford
      Lee Webb, ROR/SIS NF
      Ken Grigsby ROR/SIS NF
      Lisa Freedman, FS R-6, SP                                                                 

1757/ly