Chapter 6

The Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm,
Lewis County, Washington

"The best investments I've made are in timber. They didn't look so good when I made them, but they came through." -- Doug Stinson   Photo: Doug Stinson (Right), with son Steve.

The Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm

On 985 acres of forestland in southwestern Washington, five members of the Stinson family apply their different specialties to a single task: managing their forests ecologically.

Doug Stinson learned to recognize good tree-growing ground during his many years as a buyer of timberland and logs for Champion Pacific Timberlands. His wife, Fae Marie Beck, is a birder and botanist (as well as an artist). Two of their children, Julie and Steve, are foresters with graduate degrees in silviculture and ecosystem management.

While the concentration of so much technical expertise in a single family makes consensus difficult at times, all the Stinsons agree that their forests should be managed for ecological diversity, and their forestland must remain intact.

The Stinsons manage their tree farm with the following goals equally in mind: To earn a living, live in balance with nature, leave their land in better condition than they found them, and educate the public and other forestland owners about ecological forestry.

Good Tree-Growing Ground

As a professional forester Doug Stinson observed Lewis County, Wash., to be prime tree-growing country. The area, on the west side of the Cascade Range midway between Seattle and Portland, supports fast-growing Douglas fir, and its gentle terrain offers easy harvesting with minimal damage from erosion and logging roads.

He and Fae Marie purchased the first tract of the Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm in 1971, and over the next 20 years they bought three more tracts. The four parcels lie in Lewis County, in the watersheds of the Cowlitz and Chehalis rivers, not far from the small town of Toledo, where the Stinsons live.

The original Douglas fir stands on the Stinson properties were harvested at the turn of the 20th century. The stands are now in differing age classes, and are dominated by second- and third-growth Douglas fir, with varying components of other tree species.

Elevations on the four parcels range from 200 to 1,100 feet, with few slopes steeper than 15 percent; the gradual terrain allows year-round access. Soil types are mostly gravelly loams and are not readily eroded or compacted. Annual average rainfall ranges from 35 to 45 inches among the different tracts.

On average, Douglas fir makes up 85 percent of the merchantable timber on the tree farm, while the remaining volume is in western red cedar, western hemlock, grand fir and red alder. Additional hardwoods include big-leaf maple, Oregon ash and black cottonwood.

As a result of intensive logging in the 1940s and 1950s by prior landowners, the mean age of most conifer stands on the Stinson property ranges from 50 to 60 years, although a portion of the Stinson stands are dominated by Douglas fir with an average age of nearly 100 years. Although the family is working toward uneven-aged management at the stand level, some of the property remains in even-aged plantations.

Three-quarters of the Stinson acreage is high-productivity managed forest, with the 50-year site indexes ranging from 110 to 135 feet. Another 10 percent of the tree farm comprises non-stocked areas, including rights-of-way, bogs and "mountain-beaver pockets" -- places where tree regeneration is suppressed by these foraging rodents. The remaining 15 percent of the Stinson property is mostly stream corridors and forested wetlands so harvest activity is limited to occasional single-tree selections.

Ecological Forestry

The Stinson family is a complete forestry team in itself. Steve and his father, Doug, do most of the forest management and devote much of their time to stand improvements. During the summer and fall, Doug usually spends a portion of each day pruning trees to promote boles of knot-free wood, which usually command higher prices.

Fae Marie is a retired teacher who has identified many plants on the property along with their traditional and medicinal uses. The three Stinson children, Ann, Julie and Steve, spent much of their childhoods on the tree farm where they worked on thinning, pruning and planting projects. Steve and Julie went on to become foresters; Julie even named her youngest son Timber. Ann is a teacher in New York City and, while not involved in the day-to-day management of the forest, she supports the goals of the Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm.

The main challenge for the Stinsons has been to introduce and nurture complexity in their forests, particularly in the form of coarse woody debris and legacy structures. When they acquired their land, most of it consisted of second-growth Douglas fir, and some was poorly stocked because it had been neglected silviculturally.

Their goal has been to convert these stands into productive, uneven-aged, mixed-species forests that are structurally and ecologically complex. The Stinsons are convinced that complexity not only improves forest health and enhances wildlife habitat, but also diversifies wood products, allowing them to take advantage of different markets.

Thinning and tree-planting are two important tools used to increase diversity in species and age. Thinning out Douglas fir provides an opportunity to select and retain high-quality trees and let them grow; it also makes room for interplanting or natural regeneration of other conifer species, specifically shade-tolerant hemlock and cedar.

During commercial thins the Stinsons generally leave existing hardwoods, mainly red alder and big leaf maple. Doug Stinson used to consider alder a pest and he culled it from stands. But some of the wetter areas that favor red alder proved to be impossible to regenerate with conifers, so he stopped removing it.

Now the Stinsons recognize much potential in these hardwood species. A market for alder pulp and logs has developed in recent years, and Doug refers to it as the "healer tree," because it fixes nitrogen and speeds forest regeneration. In areas where laminated root rot infects the Douglas fir, alder is an antidote because this species resists the disease and is thought to block its soil-borne spread from one tree to another. Recently, a mature big-leaf maple was harvested and marketed for musical instrument wood, commanding a superior market price.

Two conifer species, western red cedar and western white pine, also are key in the effort to slow the spread of laminated root rot, which is caused by the native fungus Phellinus weirii. Both of these conifers are resistant to this fungus, and both have their niche markets. When patches of large Douglas fir affected by root rot are harvested or blown down (their roots weakened by the fungus), the Stinsons interplant cedar and pine among the surviving fir to slow the spread of the disease and create a mosaic of multi-layered, multi-species stands.

The Stinsons perceive western red cedar as a valuable investment for future market conditions and plant between 5,000 and 10,000 seedlings a year. These are put along road edges, in small natural forest openings, and in the openings left from group selection cuts.

Deer and elk in the Northwest favor red cedar as the lettuce of the woods, so the application of a blood meal solution is necessary to limit browse damage and help seedling survival. When seedling cost, planting labor, blood meal spraying and remaining expenses are considered, each cedar seedling costs around $2.50, the Stinsons estimate.

Western white pine seedlings are obtained from nursery stock grown from seeds of trees that have survived an outbreak of white pine blister rust, and which therefore are thought to be resistant to this usually deadly disease.

Wildlife species on the Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm benefit from the Stinsons' efforts to enhance habitat. These efforts are focused on forested wetland or riparian areas which at most will be accessed for single-tree selection. Although the tree farm contains no major streams, it does include areas of wet ground that provide good habitat, and these areas are managed for this value.

Steve Stinson explains: "We're trying to do a lot of our habitat enhancement on areas that are within or at least on the edges of these forested wetlands, both because you have greater habitat capabilities in the forested wetlands and because they're non-productive timber sites, so leaving trees there is not such an economic burden."

The Stinsons preserve living wildlife trees, such as those harboring pileated woodpecker holes, and snarled or broken-topped trees with nesting potential. During logging operations they avoid relict logs or snags from the past old-growth stands.

The retention of snags in the forest and coarse woody debris on the ground is a cornerstone of the Stinsons' ecological management. These components contribute to forest health by diversifying habitat, supporting birds that eat insect pests, and protecting and enhancing soil. Woody debris harbors mycorrhizal fungi, Steve Stinson explains, which enhance nutrient and water uptake through tree root systems. Debris on the ground also retains water in dry summer months and provides shelter for seedlings at exposed sites.

"I think we're starting to understand that the structural complexity of a forest is a pretty critical issue," he says. "By maintaining levels of coarse woody debris, you can increase the complexity of that structure."

The family has started to recruit new snags in stands by girdling big-leaf maple trees and topping some scraggly conifers with little merchantable value. They also have experimented with leaving a few high stumps in stands at the time of harvest.

Sometimes it is economically hard to justify the recruitment of large logs and snags into future stands. "Of all the challenges of trying to mimic what happened naturally and improving the ecological functions out here, creating the coarse woody debris is really tough," says Steve Stinson. "Because as soon as something starts getting big, then it starts having value. And so it really gets tough to leave it."

One solution: Some wildlife trees are designated and topped when young so their future commercial value is diminished. "This makes it a little easier for the next generation to leave them there," he says.

Doug and Fae Marie have built a home on one of the four family parcels, the 250-acre tract nearest the village of Toledo. A 90-acre portion of this tract is a model of an uneven-aged forest managed with individual tree selection; it harbors many large trees, in which the oldest Douglas firs regenerated about 1900. The Stinsons have actively managed this stand for 20 years. They salvage many of the dead and windthrown trees, while leaving "legacy" snags behind, and they have commercially thinned most of the stand.

The resulting woodland on the home parcel contains a broad mix of species and sizes of trees. Douglas fir dominates, but it shares the canopy with western red cedar, western hemlock, grand fir, red alder, Oregon ash and big-leaf maple. Cedar and hemlock in particular have regenerated in the lower canopy and now create a rising labyrinth of vegetation in this forest where fire is rare. For the foreseeable future the century-old stand on the home place will not be subject to harvests other than thinning and salvage entries.

Public Outreach

The Stinsons often conduct tours of their tree farm for forestry groups, students, and others, to educate people about ecological forestry. Their hands-on experience and multiple disciplines make them effective in this role. "What we're doing on the tree farm is a departure from forestry practices that maximize present net value for shareholders," explains Steve Stinson. "It's good for the land and it still yields a financial return.

"Since most people that aren't involved in forestry think of forestry in terms of maximizing revenue, we feel that we need to get as many people out as we can to show what we're doing, so they can see the other side."

The family also hopes to increase public awareness of the challenges that owners of private forestland face. "The problem is so much of our total forestland is being taken for other uses -- development, roads, powerlines," he says. "You know, it's something like 100 acres of forestland a day in the state of Washington are being transferred to another use."

More incentives are needed to help private forestland owners keep their land in trees, adds Doug Stinson. Although the Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm makes money as forestland, it would make more if subdivided for residential development. Other disincentives to keeping working forests intact are the public's bias against logging, and neighbors' potential opposition to timber operations near their property. The Stinsons hope people will recognize the importance of private forestlands on the landscape and work to preserve them.

"There is nothing to encourage us to stay in the timber business but our own stubborn wills," the elder Stinson has observed. In 1996 the family's management of its forestlands was recognized with the state's Tree Farmer of the Year Award.

Thinning From Below

Most of the forests on the Cowlitz Ridge Tree Farm are managed on harvest rotations of 70 to 80 years. At the end of the rotation age the trees are harvested using the variable retention approach, in which varied trees and clumps of trees are left standing to serve as "legacies" for the next generation of woodland.

In some cases, the harvest is conducted with group selections and patch cuts, which are miniature clearcuts ranging in size from half an acre to 20 acres. These entries create a mosaic of uneven-aged stands and are intended to mimic natural disturbances such as windthrow and fire, which also remove sections of forest ranging from small openings to large swaths, while leaving undisturbed some trees and islands of trees.

As the stands develop, they benefit from periodic thinnings using individual-tree selection, in which single trees are chosen for removal to allow the remaining trees more sun and growing room.

Commercial thins on the Stinson property are light, resulting in removal of less than 20 percent of the stand volume. This maintains a high growth rate while keeping some competition between trees to induce the clear bole wood that results from fewer lower branches. Keeping thinnings light also reduces the risk of windthrow among remaining trees, which are more vulnerable to wind when adjacent trees are removed. Stands are re-entered every 10 to 15 years for commercial thins.

Although the Stinsons expect commercial thinning operations to at least pay for themselves, they believe that tree selection in commercial thins should be guided by silvicultural considerations, not by the need for quick financial return.

When Doug and Steve Stinson thin, they consider which trees they are leaving behind and how stands will develop. They "thin from below," trying to free each remaining dominant conifer on two sides of its crown. They choose trees as they go, adjusting for spacing and species composition, selecting the less vigorous or diseased trees for harvest.

They also focus on logistics, such as proximity to skid trails and how to reach them with the least damage to the trees left behind; individuals with bark torn by heavy equipment or branches broken by nearby falling activity become vulnerable to disease and may grow more slowly.

"The very, very first consideration is, 'Can we get the wood out of here without scarring the other wood when we take it out?'" Steve Stinson explains. "If we can't do that, then no matter what the other reasons are for falling that tree, we won't do it." When they do scar a tree, it is harvested.

"Thinning takes a lot of practice," he says. "Anybody can make a clearcut, but it separates the men from the boys in terms of logging skill when you get to thinning."

Pre-commercial thinnings are conducted on a case-by-case basis. Where the level of stocking is too heavy, slowing the growth of future crop trees, the Stinsons sometimes choose to do a pre-commercial thin to reduce density to 300 trees per acre, retaining the most vigorous individuals. However, if the ground is suitable for a mechanical harvester, or crop trees in dense stands are maintaining good growth, the Stinsons will wait until stands are 20 to 25 years old and then conduct a commercial thin.

"I don't recommend pre-commercial thinning across the board by any means. It really depends on the site," Steve Stinson says. "There have been a couple of instances where the success of the first commercial thinning was dependent on whether the site had been pre-commercial thinned or not. The stands that hadn't been, didn't pay. And those that had been, did."

Salvage harvests are conducted on an ongoing basis. Doug and Steve try to access stands every year to recover mortality from windfall, root rot or senescence. Even so, they estimate that they leave 50 percent of the dead material in stands.

Pruning of lower branches is practiced in some stands. It increases wood quality and helps create habitat features necessary for some bird species.

The Stinsons have an extensive rocked road system that allows them year-round access for thinning and salvage operations. To minimize reductions in tree-growing space the roads are designed to be just wide enough to get truckloads out. In stands where trees are 50 years old or more, the forest canopy closes over the entire road.

Economics

Doug and Fae Marie Stinson are relying on timber (both current timber receipts and past timber receipts that have been invested elsewhere) for their retirement and for some current income.

"Successful timber management has to be part of a diverse investment portfolio," Doug Stinson says. "We don't depend on the forest for our primary source of income all the time. There are other places we derive income from when the timber market is down. And that's a very important part of our success.

"It has all been derived from timber, but we've been able to diversify the portfolio because of our success in selling [timber products] at peaks in the market. But if you have to cut timber every year in order to put beans on the table, it's very hard to look forward into the long term."

On average, the Stinsons harvest 150,000 to 160,000 board feet annually. Harvests are timed to take advantage of markets. In recent years, they estimate a return on investment of 10 to 12 percent.

"What's tough in tree farming is that it's bucks up front right now. You won't see it for years," says Doug. "The best investments I've made, though, are in timber. They didn't always look so good when I made them, but they came through. You just can't count them out."

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