Metolius MPMT Notes from November 1, 2004 meeting

11/1/ 04 Metolius Multi-Party Monitoring Team Meeting

Attendees: Elke Dortmund, Phil Blatt, Wade Fagen, Bob Flores, Bruce Berryhill, Lyle Miller, Cal Mukumoto, Dave Moyer, Bill Anthony, Keith from the Bulletin, Cindy Glick (notetaker).

Next meeting date: December 6 th from 12-4pm at the district office, Lunch at 1200. All should bring small amounts of food, Bob will barbecue a turkey. Please RSVP.

District Update: Currently the district is planning to treat 800-1000 acres for mow, thin < 8” dbh trees, and burn; funding is being sought to do more work this year. Work will be accomplished by Dave Priest’s crew, the inmates and the state crews. Title II money ($53,000) will cover mowing and burning, forest health thinning treatments funding amount is uncertain at this time. Implementation Plan for FY 05 work is being circulated around the specialists at this time by Cindy Glick. The plan is to implement starting November 15 th, if all necessary approvals and processes are completed. Cindy will be also do the implementation plan and write the prescriptions for FY 06 work.

Discussion: Can retention of receipts be used to finance more mowing and thinning? The timber stewardship sale will be marginal in value, so the district is unsure how much retention of receipts will help. The future 12”+ thinning will most likely be done with stewardship contracts, mostly using the Integrated Resource Contract (IRC) timber sale contract. The authorities that will be used include goods for services and retention of receipts. At this time, the district is unsure of how much we will be treating in FY 06, it may be 1500 acres… this work however, will be the focus of the work for the district. The authority of designation by description/prescription (dxd, dxp) will be used but when the trees are bigger and contain greater value, there is more risk. The district is not really willing do dxp, above 12”dbh. Work has been done by other units where the logs have been separated from the loggers- the Siuslaw NF and Wash DNR. There is not a plan to do this kind of work with this project at this time.

Update from the Regional Stewardship Meeting:

The most effective stewardship contracts so far have been shorter duration and not complex. The Stanislaus NF has broken up its’ huge 10 year contract into a few smaller, shorter contracts. However, there are examples of ten year duration stewardship contracts which include the Maidu project in California, The Apache/Sitgreaves NF Arizona, and the Lakeface Lamb project in Idaho.

Bonding requirements have been troublesome for smaller operators to come up with the money for some of the timber sale and service stewardship contracts. (Dave Moyer noted that the bonding requirements are minimal on the Sisters RD for service contracts.) It was noted that most of the Northwest’s projects did not promote local businesses.

A field trip was held on the BLM lands to look at the effects of “regular” contracting and stewardship contracting. Different logging methods were used: mechanized equipment, hand work, and logging chutes. In some areas, costs were very high $1200/acre, but gains were made in building public trust.

Most of the regional pilot projects were not appealed or litigated except for the Buck Pilot Project on the Wallowa Whitman NF and our project. When the Buck project was appealed, the Multiparty Monitoring Team successfully worked with the appellant to resolve the appeal. This was done by setting up soil monitoring plots and doing adaptive management.

The Met MPMT was involved during the planning phase of the project, which was somewhat unique among the other pilot projects.

Retention of receipts in the Siuslaw stewardship project was discussed, and it was noted that counties need to be involved somehow to insure they obtain money for roads and schools, when appropriate.

The Regional Team made plans for a continuation of support of stewardship contracting work by conducting forums in the future.

Update on the B&B Fire Recovery Project –

• Less than 6,000 acres are to be treated.
• One alternative is composed entirely of Northwest Forest Plan matrix allocations; trees to be harvested include those that are “dead and unlikely to live” on approximately 1800 acres.
• The MPMT encouraged the district to use stewardship contracts to enable use retention of receipts to do mitigation work and ecological restoration.
• The district plans to leave green tree thinning for a later date and it will likely be a lower priority project.

Phase I: Implementation of the 8”dbh and less thinning, mowing, and burning in the Metolius Basin EIS.

The actual on the ground implementation of Phase I is at least two weeks out. The Implementation Plan is currently being circulated among specialists.

The MPMT may want to focus on implementation monitoring, Cal, Elke, Phil, Karen, Gregory, Bruce, Cindy, and perhaps the TNC rep, will meet on what to monitor next Monday, November 8 th from 1-3 pm at the Sisters RD office.

Lyle suggested using youth crews and four wheelers with arches to do some of the fuels treatment work near the bike path and the Camp Sherman Community Hall. He is wondering if the FS will give this method a trail.

Non-profit status:

A small group focus was set up to come to the bigger group with a plan; Gregory, Bruce, and Lyle will help with investigating this opportunity. The purpose is to get grant money for monitoring.

Website-

Our team meeting notes and charter need to be accessible on the website and accessible by Google or other search engines. Cindy is checking into it with the website manager.