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xan
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Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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xan
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 Tue Feb 05, 2008 1:10 pm |
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| RodF wrote: | | First, where do you get that number? The Environmental Assessment, Chapter 2, Table 2 puts an estimated value of wood products for the selected Alternative B at $1,866,149. The current value is $500/mbf for #2 Doug fir sawmill logs, so that represents 3.7 mmbf Scribner volume. |
The number came from the obvious place, RodF, the decision notice. And I said "more than 20 mmbf", it's actually 22.5 mmbf. Your above calcs are what I would call classic rodF, obsessive juggling of out-of-context numbers, without any real background to enable reality checks. Second growth thinning sales on the MBS and Oly typically come in around 7-10 mmbf per square mile. 12 to 15 thousand board feet per acre. Based on that knowledge alone, your 3.7 mmbf off of 1,590 acres is obviously a
bad estimate.
| RodF wrote: | | Second, this sale will probably be spread over a few years, at say 1 mmbf/yr. That would represent a significant portion (perhaps 1/12) of the annual timber sales of Olympic National Forest, but is half a percent of what ONF logged annually prior to 1990, and 1/3000 of Washington state's annual production. The sale area represents only ~1% of the area eligible for thinning within Olympic National Forest. |
RodF, what's your point here? That it's insignificant? That we ought to bring back the good old days when they were raping the Shelton block and taking more than 300 mmbf per year off the Olympic? I think it *is* significant. It's two and a half square miles of forest. Superimpose that on an area that you know well--your neigborhood, say, and tell me that it doesn't matter. Or actually go out and spend a few days and walk all those units, and tell me that it's small, insignificant.
As I said above, your volume numbers for this sale are off by a multiple of six. It is certainly reasonable to suppose that they will not sell it off in one actual sale. I would guess two to three, based on prior behavior (e.g. Donahue sale, or White Salmon). It's common shorthand to call the NEPA process which results in the go-ahead to do one or more such sales as a "sale", though. It aids comprehension on the part of the general public. It's also important to realize that the Forest is going to keep putting out
such "sales" (NEPA processes which result in multiple actual sales) over the next couple of years. There's one brewing in the W Fk Humptulips which is even bigger than the Jackson project started out as, and the equally large Bear Saddle project over in the Soleduck, presently being litigated by OFCO. Put that together, and yeah, it is a perfectly reasonable estimate that they want to take 20-30 mmbf or more off the forest each year. Which is, as I stated in a previous message, two to three times the "Probable Sale Quantity" that the Olympic was expected to produce under the Northwest Forest Plan.
| RodF wrote: | | One estimate puts the amount of timber downed in the December 3 windstorms in Washington at ~1 billion bf, or 270 times more than this sale. That will dump a surplus of salvage timber onto the market, further depressing prices, which are already at record lows.
So all this might be moot. Collapse of the housing bubble and imminent recession have produced record low timber prices, causing one-third of Washington State DNR timber sales to yield "No Bids". DNR purchasers now plan to harvest only 57% of the volume they have under contract, and put future bidding and harvesting on hold until the market recovers. This Jackson Thinning involves so many expensive mandates (helicopter logging, road decommissioning, size limits, buffers, etc etc) that it would not be surprising if it produced no bids. |
Some DNR (state land) sales on the W end have, it is true, not been getting bids, but these are auctions with reserve prices. The typical outcome is that they have a new auction with a lower reserve price. Regarding whether auctions spun off of this Jackson project have no bids, well, it is possible they will not, although I wouldn't bet on it. But it is a very good rule of thumb that once a patch of ground goes through a timber sale NEPA, it will eventually get sold and eventually get cut. It might take five years, if markets are bad. In extreme cases it might even take ten, if the purchaser sits on it, goes bankrupt, and the sale then gets re-sold. All this is possible. But you can pretty much bank on its getting cut at some point. The FS likes to call it "shelf stock".
Regarding your apocalyptic "salvage" numbers, well, no doubt there is a lot of windthrow out there on the Peninsula and in SW Washington, but given how bad the markets are I would imagine a lot of it is not going to get cut. Unlike live trees, fallen trees have a pretty narrow window of merchantability. Once they have been on the ground a couple of years, they have little value. I'd be surprised if the Oly NF manages to move more than an insignificant amount of "salvage" timber before the window is closed. Maybe none at all. Which is good. There is no ecological justifcation for "salvage" logging.
| RodF wrote: | | Olympic National Forest's went into this preferring Alternative B (which excludes Mt. Walker), and decided on Alternative B, modified to drop 16 acres or 1% of the area, in response to concerns expressed by numerous Quilcene area residents. If you have an hour, it is informative to scroll through the Forest Service's 38 pages of responses to public comments posted here and see, one by one, the numerous comments from Olympic Forest Coalition dispensed with as contrafactual.
They didn't affect the decision, but if they want to claim this as a "victory", well... it's just more hot air. |
Actually, I don't think you will find the word "victory" in any statement issued by OFCO regarding the Jackson decision. More like we're-glad-you-did-the-right-thing. Did OFCO affect the outcome? I think the odds favor it. Have you stopped to ask yourself why all those Brinnon and Quilcene-area residents weighed in on the proposal? Who stirred 'em up? Who pointed out that the unit 6 above Rocky branch was of mixed age, or that the units low on Turner-Green were, many of them, really gorgeous stuff? The recent article on the sale in the Peninsula Daily News might shed a some light.
There's also the little matter of appeals and lawsuits. If I were a National Forest decision maker, trying to run a timber program, I would want to avoid appeals and lawsuits. They slow things down. They gum up the works. The large sale immediately preceding Jackson--Bear Saddle, in the Soleduck--ended up in court. It's going to be there probably for at least another year, maybe two. If the decision-maker thinks he or she can avoid all that by jettisoning a unit or two, he or she might chose to do so.
It's a striking coincidence that in terms of timber units dropped and retained, OFCO's line-in-the-sand, the point beyond which OFCO would have felt obliged to appeal the sale, is pretty much exactly where the sale ended up.
I should say that there were almost certainly people within the agency arguing for dropping those units. But there were also people who wanted to keep all of them. Quite a few of us went on a heavily scripted Forest Service tour to Mt Walker where the message was exactly that, that Mt Walker needed logging, for its own good. One might speculate that what OFCO and other advocates did was to tip the balance of that internal debate. But you never really know. It's a messy process, for sure. But a lot of us a glad about the outcome.
One other thing RodF, I know that you are hostile to OFCO because they disagree with you about the Dose road. But you shouldn't embark on some irate quest to demonstrate that they (we) are bad, and ineffectual, and stupid because of that. From the perspective of persuading other people, it's counterproductive, and it makes you look like an angry compulsive crank. You might find that OFCO does some stuff you agree with, if you approach these issues in a calmer spirit. Here's a challenge for you: I know you just *have* to have the last word in any such exchange, but why don't you not. Just this once. Let it go. Prove me wrong. Show that you can just walk away.
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RodF
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Joined: 01 Sep 2007
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Location: Sequim WA |
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RodF
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Tue Feb 05, 2008 7:53 pm |
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| xan wrote: | | The number came from the obvious place, RodF, the decision notice. And I said "more than 20 mmbf", it's actually 22.5 mmbf. |
First of all, thank you. (To find one nugget of actual information amongst all the typical sturm und drang is refreshing.)
This puts the net estimated value at only $83/mbf in a market which has almost certainly fallen by more than that since the Forest Service made the estimate. (New quarterly DNR economic forecast will be posted here on Feb. 7, so we'll soon see.)
| xan wrote: | | RodF, what's your point here? That it's insignificant? That we ought to bring back the good old days when they were raping the Shelton block and taking more than 300 mmbf per year off the Olympic? |
That it's not "gigantic". That if ONF actually were to thin the areas that will need it over the next three decades (the massively overlogged Shelton unit included), it would need to do several projects of this size each year. That this project (and its EA) is probably a successful template for many more to come. That ONF's success in this project very much includes a well done EA and a successful public education campaign about thinning, including educating OFCO. That there are many benefits (all the road decommissioning proposed in the ATM might actually get done!  ) and some concerns to be anticipated if this occurs.
It's curious that no one (even your supporters like author Craig Ramano) can ask OFCO a question without being the target of some crazy straw man argument. And besides, we actually agree on the merits of this project! That kind of poor behavior just drives your supporters away.
| xan wrote: | | Put that together, and yeah, it is a perfectly reasonable estimate that they want to take 20-30 mmbf or more off the forest each year. Which is, as I stated in a previous message, two to three times the "Probable Sale Quantity" that the Olympic was expected to produce under the Northwest Forest Plan. |
Again, I agree with your estimate, but comparing it to a meaningless "probable sale quantity" picked out of thin air years ago and which didn't even anticipate thinning, is completely pointless, as you must surely realize.
| xan wrote: | | Regarding your apocalyptic "salvage" numbers... |
Its not "my" salvage number, but is from a commercial source which monitors the market. Most of this is on private land along the S WA and N OR coast, and they judge it likely to be brought to market. There's no need to argue about it: the next 2 quarters will tell the tale. And, I agree, the Jackson Thinning sales might not receive bids for several years, perhaps even the 5 or 10 years you suggest. These are public issues, the facts will out: there's no need to be so irritable!
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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treeswarper
Alleged Sockpuppet!
Joined: 25 Dec 2006
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treeswarper
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Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:55 am |
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Yes. I have heard via the saw shop grapevine that Weyco has 80% of their yearly target/cut already on the ground from the wind, and it has to be salvaged this year as it is spruce. The market is at the lowest point unless it continues to fall, and anybody with helicopter units is trying to wait it out, and also with other units that are conventionally logged. Not a good time right now.
What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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RodF
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RodF
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Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:07 pm December 3 storm salvage
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Washington State DNR reports "In early December of 2007, a winter storm that included snow followed closely by extraordinary rainfall and unusually high winds caused an unprecedented amount of damage to forestlands and farms in southwest Washington...
"Current estimates show that approximately 17,000 acres of forestland were heavily damaged, and much of this will need to be salvaged in the next 16 months to maintain marketability and maximum value. Rough estimates suggest that salvage operations may bring as much as 600-800 million board feet of timber onto the market. Included in this number, DNR estimates blow-down timber from state trust lands to total approximately 100 million board feet. The remainder is from private landowners. These totals are very imprecise at this time.
"Since the normal harvest level in Washington State is about 4 billion board feet per year on private and state lands, the wind-blown timber represents between 15 and 20 percent of our state's annual timber harvest...
"DNR’s Pacific Cascade Region staff is hard at work to expedite recovery from storm damage. This effort includes harvest during the next 16 to 18-month period, clean-up of recreation areas, and necessary road repair. Approximately 100 million board feet of blown-down timber will be harvested."
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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RodF
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RodF
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Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:31 pm |
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| RodF wrote: | | This puts the net estimated value at only $83/mbf in a market which has almost certainly fallen by more than that since the Forest Service made the estimate. (New quarterly DNR economic forecast will be posted here.) |
WA DNR has now released its quarterly Economic Forecast. Actual DNR stumpage prices have indeed fallen by $80/mbf (from $350 average in 2007 to $270/mbf in January 2008) [Figure 2.6 on page 19 of pdf]. Further drops in log prices are expected, as the lumber market is not expected to recover for at least 18 months.
The Jackson Thinning is now unprofitable, and is unlikely to receive any bids. This is unfortunate. An area that would benefit from thinning won't be, and revenues to decommission roads throughout Olympic National Forest will not be available.
The problem is that the costs built into the Jackson Thinning project (helicopter and cable logging, road work, etc.) are simply too high to be economic. We can estimate these costs by taking last year's actual log price and subtracting ONF's projected stumpage revenues from this project: $485 - $83 = $402/mbf costs. In contrast, the average state DNR logging sale has costs of $485 log price - $345 stumpage revenues = $140 cost margin. (DNR reports "The margin between the DNR-composite log price and DNR stumpage averages $140/mbf and has been relatively constant over time" as depicted in Figure 2.6 for years 2000-2007 at the link above.) If thinning projects are to be done at all, the will have to have lower costs, and that means they will have to require less (or no) expensive helicopter logging.
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
"of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt" - John Muir
"the wild is not the opposite of cultivated. It is the opposite of the captivated” - Vandana Shiva
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peltoms
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peltoms
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Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:07 am |
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Between the rise in price of oil and the fall in the price of timber, just makes the window of profitability shrink all the more I would think. I would love if xan would provide a few google earth placemarks to indicate some of the key points referred to in this Jackson sale. Treeswarper, how is the bountiful blowndown salvage timber availability viewed by the loggers with a groan or a yipee, and why?
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