Land Use Practices on Private Lands

Past land use on private forest lands has had a profound effect on fisheries habitat and stream conditions in the South Fork Trinity River and its tributaries. Past landuse practices on private lands are also likely to delay or prevent recovery of lower basin fisheries in areas downstream from Forest Glen. Issues of greatest importance on private forest lands, especially those on South Fork Mountain, include road abandonment, road maintenance, erosion control and prevention, road closure, harvest management and cumulative watershed effects.

Private forest practices have come a long way since the Z'Berg-Nejedly Forest Practices Act was adopted in 1973. Significant improvements have been made in stream protection, erosion control and road construction rules since 1987. However, specific improvements still must be made in regard to long-term road location and maintenance requirements (maintain it or close it!) and watershed planning for cumulative erosion and sedimentation effects. The U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not yet certified the forest practice rules as BMPs, pending development of an acceptable cumulative effects assessment procedure and a monitoring program to evaluate Best Management Practices (Kier, et. al., 1992).

Although most of the private land road network has already been constructed, there are locations where roads will still be built, and many areas where roads will need to be evaluated for future reconstruction. Improved standards for road location, road design, road construction and reconstruction, and road maintenance are needed to minimize the potential impact of additional road construction on the tributary basins of South Fork Mountain.

Road abandonment on private forest lands is one of the most serious land management problems which currently threatens the existence and recovery of the basin's anadromous fishery. Abandonment, and the consequent lack of road and drainage structure maintenance, threatens to seriously worsen sedimentation problems and stall the recovery of tributary streams and the main channel of the lower South Fork Trinity River. Many private logging roads have been abandoned and are no longer being maintained. Most drainage structures, especially stream crossings built in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, are either undersized, poorly or improperly constructed, or exhibit a high potential for plugging and stream diversion. Current state regulations do not prohibit the construction and long term abandonment of logging road systems.

On private forest lands, road and drainage structure maintenance is required only through the life of the timber harvest plan for which that road was built. Drainage structures on existing roads which are used to access a harvest area for log hauling are not required to be brought up to current standards for culvert sizing. Most stream crossings were built over a decade ago, and many are severely undersized by today's standards. Many also show the potential for plugging and/or stream diversion. Both these conditions can lead to extensive erosion and sediment yield during a large storm and flood event. Humboldt log crossings built during the 1960's and 1970's are still a common type of drainage structure found on private land roads. Many of these old log crossings show signs of deterioration and imminent failure.

The great majority of timber on private lands has already been harvested. Silvicultural methods for the remaining timber are therefore limited. Some isolated stands remain along steep, potentially unstable inner gorge locations. Removing this remaining timber, especially on inner gorge slopes, could have a potentially serious impact on slope stability and cumulative watershed effects.

Unfortunately, there has been little progress in the application of cumulative watershed analysis to guide land management on private lands in the South Fork Trinity River. Many watersheds in the basin, which contain lands of mixed ownership, or older management, have serious problems caused by poor past practices on private lands. In many of these watersheds, major impacts have yet to result, and the "gun" remains loaded for significant cumulative effects during the next large storm (Haskins, 1983).

The Forest Service manages the lower portions of many sub-watersheds on South Fork Mountain, with the middle and upper slopes under private control. It has been found that simply managing the lower portions of these basins is not sufficient to prevent the occurrence of significant watershed damage and cumulative watershed effects lower in the drainage. "High levels of management activities, although occurring mainly on non-sensitive [upslope private] lands, resulted in more mass wasting impacts on the unmanaged sensitive lands" (Haskins, 1983). Defining sensitive lands, and directly treating them will not always prevent impacts on adjacent or downslope sensitive lands. To be effective, "activities must be dispersed in time and space on non-sensitive lands to prevent off site impacts from occurring on the sensitive lands." (Haskins, 1983).

The mechanism to accomplish this is through an analysis of cumulative watershed effects and the subsequent application of restrictive timber management techniques and rates of extraction where conditions indicate. This regulatory mechanism does not yet exist for private forest lands. Currently, mixed ownership in several watersheds has caused the National Forests to defer timber operations due to upslope private timber harvesting (Furniss, personal communication, 1992).

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) initiated, and has since revised, its method of cumulative watershed impact analysis using a checklist filled out by foresters preparing a harvesting plan. In contrast to the Forest Service procedure, the CDF method is qualitative and does not involve input from a multidisciplinary team of resource specialists (Kier, et. al., 1992). It also does not employ a threshold concept that would trigger the implementation of altered harvesting or roading procedures. "A recent evaluation of CDF's timber harvest planning process [LSA, 1990] concludes that the current cumulative impact analysis methodology is inadequate since the process has very rarely identified the occurrence of cumulative impacts, despite evidence to the contrary" (Kier, et. al., 1992).

In 1986, in a 12-month study, a 4-person CDF "208 study team" set out to evaluate 100 sites in the field to determine if recent private land forestry operations represented BMPs. In its 1987 "208 Team Report" they concluded that, with certain improvements, the BOF rules process could protect water quality. These included:

1) increased training of operators,

2) improved enforcement,

3) specific rule changes, and

4) development of an on-going rules and water quality monitoring process."

One broad lesson [learned from the 208-Team study] was that, with few exceptions, the standard forest practices set forth in the Forest Practice Rules work fairly well in protecting the quality and beneficial uses of water, except where sensitive site conditions exist or where sensitive physical or biological resources are at risk" (Kier and others, 1992). South Fork Mountain has been clearly been shown to contain such "sensitive" terrain (Plate 2).

Best Management Practices

Unlike rules for private lands, U.S. Forest Service BMPs to protect water quality were accepted by the EPA in 1981. They have continued to be modified and improved as field conditions and resource sensitivity dictates. Some of the most recent changes and improvements are described below.

Fire salvage harvesting and yarding in the South Fork Trinity River basin has received considerable attention since the fires of 1987-1988. BMPs for salvage operations, while restrictive, were not judged sufficient to protect downstream resources (Harr, 1992). The method of removing standing, dead trees can have an impact on post-fire fluvial erosion rates. Removing standing, dead trees from slopes adjacent to swales and stream channels, where they would otherwise eventually fall and create channel roughness and barriers to erosion and sediment movement, can also result in increased erosion rates.

In evaluating the proposed USFS South Fork Trinity River fire recovery salvage project, Harr (1992) found that "...the proposed South Fork Fire Recovery Salvage Project [will] produce, sediment, that, acting cumulatively with sediment from all other sources, is likely to cause irreparable damage to salmon and steelhead populations of the South Fork Trinity River..." Although the sediment produced by a single salvage operation was deemed inconsequential by itself, its cumulative effect in the degraded South Fork Trinity River system was thought to be important.

However important the sediment yield from salvage operations, loss of living vegetation due to large-area burns is likely to generate the greatest problems for the protection and recovery of fishery stocks from some tributaries and the upper main stem of the South Fork Trinity River. Observations suggest that local inner gorge landsliding will be significantly accelerated, and these slides will deliver substantial volumes of sediment yield to the main channel of the South Fork Trinity River over the next several decades (Haskins, 1992, personal communication).

Because of the relatively dry years since most of the wildfires occurred, fluvial erosion may end up to be less significant than was initially feared. Of the substantial efforts expended to mitigate fluvial sediment production and yield on burn areas immediately following each fire, some projects were apparently worthwhile while others were less productive (USFS, 1990a). Unfortunately, few of the projects which were implemented have ever been "tested" by significant rainfall or runoff (USFS, 1991a).

The Land Management Plan (LMP) directs the basic strategy for traditional resource management activities in each National Forest (the LMP for Shasta-Trinity National Forest is currently being revised and only portions of the draft were available for review). Within this document, BMPs spell out how activities outlined in the LMP are to be conducted in the field; they form the standards-and-guides that control operational requirements for land use practices.

The most recent strategy for managing Forest Service lands in the South Fork Trinity River basin has been influenced by restrictions on logging of old growth areas, and with a view to managing the resource, including timber, on an ecosystem approach. For example, in the draft LMP, new standards have been forwarded for managing riparian areas with the goal of maintaining and restoring ecosystem function in the riparian zone. The desired future condition of riparian areas is determined and a specific set of nine riparian condition goals are established to guide land management activities in and near those zones.

Once Riparian Management Zones (RMZ) are established, a laundry list of techniques will guide activities in those sensitive areas. For example, RMZ boundaries for Class I streams is to extend to the first break-in-slope (Haskins' (1983) sensitive zone) and practices are to include such techniques (or restrictions) as:

No timber harvest in RMZ1; equipment exclusion; fully suspend logs; no landings; no new road construction; inventory and upgrade stream crossings to handle 100-year flows; develop protective road maintenance techniques; no sidecasting beyond roadway; close and restore temporary roads that are no longer needed; (as well as various range, recreation, minerals, fire, hydropower, and watershed/restoration management techniques).

Under the standards-and-guides for Riparian Management, projects are considered on a basin-wide scale, and emphasis is placed on controlling the cause of riparian degradation before any restoration work is initiated.

In designated "key watersheds," the potential effect upon the aquatic ecosystem is to receive first priority in consideration of management alternatives. Overall goals for key watersheds, including the South Fork Trinity River basin, are to:

a. provide habitat essential to healthy anadromous fish populations,

b. aid in recovery of at-risk anadromous fish populations, and

c. maintain aquatic biodiversity of riparian ecosystem.

To accomplish this, an interdisciplinary review of all forest roads (system and non-system) is proposed to be conducted in key watersheds to arrive at the desired future condition of the road network. Roads will then be prioritized for relocation or closure, based on their threat to riparian resources and various other factors. Acceptable road densities for the key watersheds will be established, striving for lower road densities. Stream crossings in riparian zones of key watersheds will be inventoried and upgraded to handle 150-year flows, all new road crossing will be designed with natural stream bottoms. Roads not a part of the transportation system will be obliterated and restored.

These revised standards-and-guides for land management on federal forest lands exemplify the rapidly changing emphasis from fiber-driven resource management to a watershed-wide emphasis on resource protection and ecosystem maintenance and recovery, where silviculture is consistent with riparian values. Implementing these new standards through the whole of the South Fork Trinity River watershed will go a long way toward lessening the potential magnitude of future impacts from past land management and reducing the impacts of future activities on fisheries of the South Fork Trinity River and its tributaries. Recovery from past impacts will still be a long term process, requiring decades, or longer, in the most degraded channels. Chapter 6

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