A Morning with Loggers

 
This morning I went out with the timber contract administrator to inspect the progress of an ongoing timber sale.  It was interesting for me, because normally I am in charge of all the preliminary work and never actually get to see the timber physically harvested; my work is done by then.  Not only was it neat to see all of their equipment in action, but it was also great to see what and how the BLM manages most of its land in terms of timber production.  Virtually everything that is cut in Roseburg is in the form of commercial thinnings of relatively young second growth (about 50 years old).  So anyway, here are some quick shots of that.  Butting up against this timber unit was a good chunk of land that had been slicked off by a private timber company that only had to abide by state forestry practices which are weak and full of loopholes.  It was still neat to see it all right at sunrise as all the valley bottoms were still shrouded in fog.

After a few hours watching them operate, I went up to an area where I'll be planning some restoration work.  You can see by the pictures that the streams in this area are largely incised due to past over-grazing followed by severe flooding.  My task will be placing wood and boulders in the stream in an effort to improve coho and cutthroat habitat by retaining gravels and increasing refugia.