By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Conflicting mandates affect Forest Service

The giant claw is pretty talented.

It can pick the end of a 40-foot log out of a big pile - like two fingers holding the end of a straw.

In a split second, rollers inside the claw can zip-slide the log through most of its grasp.

A cab on top of caterpillar tracks is at the other end of the hydraulic arm holding the claw.

The claw's sensors and the cab's computer tell operator Lloyd Hagadone how thick the log is where it is grasped. They also tell him how long the log is at that point.

Hagadone's joystick twirls in the "processor's" cab. The claw moves over to two new piles of logs in a mountainside clearing in the Kootenai National Forest about 20 miles north of Libby.

One pile: Logs at least 5 1/2 inches in diameter at the top and 7 1/2 inches at the bottom.

The other pile: Logs at least 4 1/2 inches on top and any diameter at the bottom.

Different logs for different uses.

Rrrrrrroooom!

A chain saw pops out of the claw's palm and slices through the log - the computer providing a length required by the sawmill that will use it.

The log drops in the right pile on a mountainside in the remote, forested Shafer Creek area in Lincoln County.

The claw's rollers spit the log's unwanted end - thin, brush-filled junk - in the opposite direction into a pile of wood debris for eventual burning.

Hagadone swirls the claw back to the original pile.

Elapsed time per log: 15 to 20 seconds.

Hagadone, who has worked for the now-closed Owens & Hurst mill since 1980, grumbled: That's too slow.

This log pile's size and geometry were slowing him big-time.

Even though it's closed, Owens & Hurst has a four-man crew tackling its remaining federal logging contracts for the next three years.

Two years ago, these logs would have gone to Owens & Hurst's Eureka mill.

Instead, they will go to F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. just outside Columbia Falls.

Stoltze's stash

Stoltze has one advantage that Owens & Hurst didn't have - its own private 56 square miles of forests.

Owens & Hurst lived and died with mostly federal timber. It doesn't own any forests.

In recent years, Stoltze barely touched federal timber. Since 2000, Stoltze did not handle any federal timber for four years, and only salvage wood from fires on federal land in 2003 and 2005.

In the past six years, 65 percent to 99 percent of Stoltze's annual timber supply came from private lands owned by itself and others.

Stoltze bids on federal timber lands, but usually loses to the broad and intense competition for each plot of forest.

The company's private forests can supply about 25 percent of its needs for the next several years, said Stoltze's general manager Ron Buentemeier.

"We need to get back to the national forests," Buentemeier said.

However, now is a time when national forests have been providing less and less of Montana's timber - supplying 20 percent in 2003.

Buentemeier declined to say how much timber is earmarked for Stoltze's mill, but the mill is operating at 60 percent of its maximum capacity. Buentemeier said it needs at least 35 million board feet annually to stay afloat. Owens & Hurst cut 45 million board feet in its final year 2004.

Buentemeier is cautiously optimistic about the mill's future. It should survive, but scrambling will be necessary, he said. The company employs about 125 people at the mill, including four former Owens & Hurst workers. It employs another 55 in logging crews.

Stoltze has had a presence in the Flathead Valley since the 1890s. It has had a mill at today's Half Moon Road location since 1923, except for 1956 when it burned down and had to be rebuilt. Three granddaughters and 12 great-grandchildren of founder F.H. Stoltze own the company today.

The sawmill has state-of-the-art computerized equipment, including Montana's only machine that can measure the strength of wood boards.

"If we have the logs, we could do very well," Buentemeier said.

Keeping Ksanka

With Owens & Hurst gone, Plum Creek Timber Co.'s Ksanka sawmill is the only one left in Lincoln County's Tobacco Valley.

Built in the 1950s next to Fortine, the mill was sold to the Seattle-based timber giant in 1971. Plum Creek thought about closing it in the mid-1980s after a huge fire, but decided otherwise.

Today, Ksanka employs almost 100 people. Plum Creek declined to discuss lumber-production figures, saying such information about individual mills is proprietary.

However, over the past five years Ksanka's work force has shrunk from three shifts a day to two.

"We're working hard to keep it at two shifts," said Hank Ricklefs, Plum Creek's vice president for manufacturing.

Ksanka is one of eight Plum Creek manufacturing-oriented mills in Montana, which is the regional destination for the corporation's harvested timber. The corporation has invested heavily in its mills and intends to keep them open, Plum Creek officials said.

The company buys its timber from any available source. It declined to say how much comes from its own forests other than it's a significant amount.

Meanwhile, Plum Creek and other private timber owners have been selling some of their forest lands to real-estate developers.

InvestmentU.com, a Maryland-based stock analysis firm, wrote in 2005 that Plum Creek owned roughly 8 million acres - about 12,500 square miles of land - in 19 states.

The firm said 1.3 million acres - slightly more than 2,000 square miles - of Plum Creek's lands "have been designated by the company as 'higher and better use' lands. That basically means lands that will be sold to a developer someday - at much higher values than the value of the timber alone."

Private timber lands in Montana and elsewhere are shrinking at a time when the U.S. government had planned to give federal forests some rest from logging and to try to shift more harvesting to private sites, said Jack Ward Thomas, a retired University of Montana wildlife conservation professor who was also chief of the U.S. Forest Service from 1993 to 1996.

Right now, Plum Creek owns almost 2,000 square miles of timber land in Montana.

The company declined to discuss specific plans for future land sales to developers.

"That's something we evaluate regularly. We're not certain ourselves," said Plum Creek spokeswoman Kathy Budinick.

Federal factors

Will more or less federal timber go on sale annually in Montana?

"It's impossible to estimate that," said Gary Dickerson, a Missoula-based forester with the U.S. Forest Service.

That's because many factors beyond basic timber supply go into determining the sizes and locations of wooded areas to be harvested. These include habitat concerns - which areas are becoming too crowded with trees, where beetles are killing trees in sufficient numbers to require removal and where the timber creates a fire hazard.

Litigation and decreasing U.S. Forest Service budgets have trimmed timber sales in recent years, Dickerson said.

Right now, litigation is tying up a half-billion board feet already designated for harvest in federal timber sales in Montana, he said.

Friend or foe?

Environmentalists don't want to put timber employees out of work, said Matthew Koehler, executive director of the Wild West Institute, which many timber people criticize for its lawsuits against logging operations.

The Wild West Institute and other environmental organizations argue that current logging plans in national forests take illegal short cuts while downplaying the Forest Service's mission to preserve biodiversity.

Koehler contended new types of forest-related jobs should be explored.

"Let's protect the best of what remains. We're advocating jobs in the woods. However, the jobs are not your grandfathers' jobs," Koehler said.

Contracts can be set up to cut trees that are fire hazards around towns, he said. Former loggers can be hired to prevent deterioration of watersheds and back roads that are still used, he said.

This would be full-time, year-round work, Koehler said.

The Wild West Institute and many Lincoln County interests have met a few times this year to see if they can work jointly on plans for fire-hazard logging projects, forest preservation efforts, some non-logging forest work and how to obtain grants. Koehler said the two sides are still feeling each other out, and will need time to learn to trust each other.

Lincoln County Commissioner Marianne Roose, who participates in those talks, said all the parties are hopeful they can come up with plans that the traditional enemies can agree to live with.

"Hopefully, it's the beginning of a way to end the polarization," she said.

Conflicting laws

Thomas tossed out a question: Is the U.S. Forest Service doing a good job or a bad job in protecting sensitive animals and their habitat under the Endangered Species Act?

Then he tossed out an observation: National forests - not private timber lands - are where sensitive species have been protected the best.

And that means national forests are the prime spots to continue to protect sensitive animals, birds and habitats.

That leads to the conflict of environmentalists wanting to preserve biodiversity and the lumber world wanting a dependable supply of timber, he said.

Both desires are specific missions of the U.S. Forest Service.

"If you work for the Forest Service, it's a very confusing world," Thomas said.

No side is pure in Thomas' view of today's dilemmas.

Too much logging in the latter half of the 20th century created a deluge of often-conflicting environmental preservation laws, he said.

And that created an atmosphere of where it is easy to file lawsuits the Forest Service without a plaintiff suffering consequences if it loses, Thomas contended.

Even then, courts are poor places to make scientific and technical decisions on logging and wildlife preservation, he argued.

Other factors can't be ignored, Thomas contended:

. Trade imbalances.

. An increased public demand for wood.

. Wildlife actually facing threats.

. Environmentalists and a deep-pocketed timber industry both heavily lobbying Congress, especially with huge campaign donations.

. Politics swinging back and forth from one side to another.

Thomas said a universal solution meeting all the important needs "can't be done under current laws. … It's a situation that's impossible."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com