On May 2nd I went with a bunch of Forest Service silviculturist to Heber-Overgaard to visit the Black Mesa Ranger District on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. We went to look at what forest management the district is doing in the aftermath of the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire which roared through the town and burned up over 300 homes.
The first stop we looked at was just outside of the town. We looked at some tree planting that was being done adjacent to the private land. First a salvage sale and logging was done to clear the site of hazard trees and fuel build up in the urban interface.

Unfortunately tree planting doesn't work very well in the Southwest compared to other areas. Seedling survival is low, and extraordinary measures must be taken to protect the seedlings from the sun and wind. One option is to "build up" a pile of sticks around the seedling, this can be time consuming, or impractical if the fire burned everything up. The other option is to use plastic tubing or cones which are staked into the ground. These cones need to stay there for about two or three years.

In this area, one major issue is an over abundance of Alligator juniper regeneration. What once was a pine stand with a few Alligator junipers is now coming in with a thick carpet of Alligator juniper seedlings. In order to prevent a stand type conversion a broadcast burn will need to be done before the seedlings are to big to be kill with fire. Of course this presumes that there is some pine seed source available to keep the area in pine.


The local silviculturist explained that the dead trees located in soils with high clay content were rotting and breaking down much faster than snags in different types of soil.

There are two local mills which the sawlogs are being milled at. Right now only the largest logs have enough solid wood that is worth milling. At one mill they have been impressed with the quality of the wood 4 years after the fire. They have been fairly progressive in retooling their mill to create different products and marking the wood which has blue stain in it. Blue stain is a fungus which grows in the wood after the tree has died, but does not compromise the structural integrity of the wood. Many people think the blue stain is attractive and use the board for paneling or siding. The other mill is complaining about the quality of the wood and that it is not worth anything, and very likely will file a claim to get their money back. But it is the same stuff the other mill is perfectly willing to work with.

The Rodeo-Chediski fire burned up 10's of thousands of acres on the district. Some of it was scorched black and everything died, but most of the burned area has patches of green, and unburned islands. However there was still a lot of dead wood out there. The district has been trying to salvage as much of it as possible.

One comment that was made on the field trip has to do with leaving snags in the burn area, generally where all the trees were killed. It was pointed out that cavity nesters almost never if ever use fire killed trees in the middle of a burned area. Sure there is great abundance of housing opportunities but with out a food source, they ain't gonna move in. The point being is that the biggest and best snags are left for cavity nesters that will never move in. By the time the forest grows back to provide the habitat for the birds those snags will have long been on the ground.

The businessman that started SkyMall magazine has a huge mansion or 'lodge' in the middle of the burn area. I find it ironic that the logs to build his lodge are from British Columbia. Somehow his house managed not to burn down. Well, anyway this guy wants to do something about all the burned trees around his house so he starts trying to get into the logging business and buys up a bunch of the salvage sales. Most of the wood is slated to be used for a biomass generator plant, but unfortunately he has not managed to line up financing to bring in the plant. So he has a big pile of wood sitting somewhere. I hope he manages to make it all work out.

We ended the day a Black Canyon Lake. Nice little lake, it seemed like lots of people fishing there for the remoteness of the area.