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Proposed timber sale at Yellowwood Lake causes ripples

Burney Fischer on the pros and cons

Members of a watershed advisory group for Yellowwood Lake in Nashville, Ind. are concerned about a timber sale there, which highlights complaints they have about the sustainability of the state's new forestry plan. Burney Fischer, SPEA’s resident forester, responds to the controversy.


Expert perspective: “The previous Division of Forestry administration established a Yellowwood Lake Watershed Planning Group (YLWPG) to provide input into activities in the Yellowwood Lake Watershed for both public and private lands. They have been quite active and have reviewed and provided comment on recreation trails, lake management, roads, and timber sales on state forest land. The group has been far less involved with regard to private land issues.

“The YLWPG did prepare and receive an EPA 319 watershed planning grant through the Division of Forestry to hire a coordinator and develop a plan for the watershed. The coordinator conducted a series of meetings and educational events over the past couple of years, which resulted in a completed plan of more than 200 pages. The YWLPG has fulfilled the original vision of developing a watershed plan. Its future direction will probably be to monitor the progress of the plan and to continue to provide input to the Yellowwood SF property manager. Hopefully, more time will be spent on private land issues.

“The state forest timber sale, which was recently sold in the watershed, was originally proposed and marked several years ago, prior to the development of the watershed plan. The YLWPG reviewed the sale and provided input to the Division of Forestry at the time. The sale was never finalized and after three years, it was re-marked to address some new forest health concerns (storm-damaged trees, recent tree mortality, and a change in policy with regards to timber management on state forests with the new administration), as well as to meet the standards of the watershed plan. The YLWPG did review and comment on the remarked timber sale before it was sold. It appears that the timber sale is within the guidelines provided in the watershed plan.

“The proposed timber sale was also part of the Yellowwood SF open houses the past two years. These open houses are held at each state forest annually and were initiated during the previous administration to provide for public notification of proposed and planned activities on each property. The process has been continued with the current administration. It appears that all the process steps to make a timber sale on the Yellowwood Lake watershed have been fulfilled, the sale has been properly sold, and the sale will harvested in the fall of 2006.

“The ‘other’ issue of increased timber harvesting is the larger volume being harvested annually from state forest land, which is the result of a IDNR Division of Forestry Strategic Plan 2005-07 which calls for a three-to-four fold increase in the timber volume and revenue from state forest lands. The basis for the increase in timber harvesting is the result of a state forest-wide forest inventory conducted during 2004-05 by the past administration. During 2005-06 state forest timber sales doubled the timber sale volume sold from the previous year. It is expected that timber sale volume will increase by approximately another 100 percent during 2006-07. Revenues from these timber sales are expected to increase from the past level of about $1 million/year to $3-5 million/year when the final increase is achieved.

“This three-to-four fold increase is appears to be biologically possible based on the current inventory data. How the forest will change and respond to the increase will be seen in the next inventory. However, is this increased rate of harvest compatible with all the other goods and services that these public lands are to provide to the citizens of Indiana? There's been no broad-scale analysis of these many 'ecosystem services' from the state forests. The only attempt at such an analysis in Indiana is for the Hoosier National Forest during their current planning process, which has been contested by many stakeholder groups.

“Arguments on whether the increase in state forest timber sales is sustainable go far beyond merely counting the increased volume being sold and harvested. Sustainable forestry considers maintaining the ecological processes in the forest, protecting the biological diversity of the forest and optimizing the benefits to the community from all the uses of the forests within these ecological constraints and the economic realities of managing forestland. There are also questions regarding the shifting of state forest revenues to non-public land initiatives, when state forest properties have always been under-funded. A test of state forest sustainablilty begins this fall as the IDNR Division of Forestry seeks Forest Stewardship (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) endorsed third-party certification for its state forests during 2006-07. This is an in-depth process to assess the sustainability of the state forest system under the current management philosophies, plans, and on-the-ground practices."


The SPEA Toolkit: Burney Fischer is a clinical professor at SPEA with a focus on forestry. He is teaching an elective course on sustainable forestry this semester; enrollment for the class is over capacity. He also teaches environment and people, urban forest management and the practice of silviculture during the school year. Fischer previously worked with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, where he served as director of the Division of Forestry.

Click here to learn more about Prof. Fischer.