The
Broughton family has owned ranchlands and forests in Columbia
County, Wash., since C.J. Broughton purchased his first
3,000 acres in 1902 and formed the Broughton Land Company.
A century later, the holdings of the family partnership
have grown to 38,000 acres, including more than 4,000 acres
of forestland. These extensive stands of mixed conifers
have produced cattle, crops and timber for four generations
of owners.
Only
in the past generation, however, did the family start
managing its forests to correct serious health and productivity
problems. These problems had arisen as once-dominant
ponderosa pine gave way to Douglas fir and true fir,
and had worsened over the decades.
The
effort to restore the health of the Broughton forests was
launched by George Wood, the husband of C.J. Broughton's
granddaughter Rebecca. Wood's goal was to return the forests
to the vigorous condition in which the settlers had first
found them.
Wood
died in 1998. But the work he started has been carried
on by the Broughton Land Company's general manager, Dan
McKinley, and it has created forestlands that are healthier,
bigger and less crowded than they have been in a hundred
years. Habitat is diverse and rich in wildlife, including
deer and elk. Harvests in the company's stands provide
sustainable income for the family partnership, and the
Broughton forests continue to expand, helped by the reforestation
of 600 formerly treeless acres.
Stock-raising
and crop-growing continue alongside silviculture on the
timbered lands, showing that well-managed private forestland
can be productive in a variety of ways.
Good
Ground, Rich History
The
Broughton acreage lies in the southeastern corner of Washington,
where rolling plains of wheat and alfalfa meet the Blue
Mountains. The company's 38,000 acres include cropland,
range and 4,100 acres of managed mixed-conifer forests.
The
Broughton Land Company, or BLC, is headquartered in Dayton,
a town of 2,500 in the valley of the Touchet River, a tributary
of the Walla Walla River, which drains into the Columbia.
Dayton is the seat of Columbia County, and lies along the
route taken by Lewis and Clark on their return journey
in 1806.
The
Broughton forests occupy the slopes of the Blue Mountains
about 12 miles south of Dayton, along a Touchet River tributary
called Robinson Fork. Elevations range from 2,200 to 4,500
feet, and average temperatures range from 10 to 80 degrees.
The lowlands receive an average of 19 inches of annual
rainfall, with more at higher elevations.
Surveys
have shown the composition of the modern-day Broughton
forests to be 62 percent Douglas fir, 20 percent white
fir, 12 percent ponderosa pine, 5 percent Western larch
and a few Engelmann spruce.
Mixed-conifer
stands occupy higher and north-inclined slopes, while the
lower, drier and more southerly slopes tend toward pure
ponderosa stands or grassland. This mosaic of pasture and
forest creates postcard-perfect scenes of rolling fields
adjoining conifer-covered hills and ridges.
In the
early years the company managed its woodland property for
grazing and for the harvest of old-growth ponderosa pine,
which then was the dominant forest tree. As elsewhere in
the Blue Mountains, many stands were high-graded: Harvests
focused on the larger, better-quality pines, and left behind
the diseased and defective pines along with less desirable
species. By the 1950s these high-grade cuts had taken nearly
all the old-growth, and the forestlands were left to regenerate
on their own.
The
high-grading, combined with the advent of livestock grazing
and the fire-suppression policies of the 20th century,
allowed the Broughton forests to regenerate into something
quite different from what they were in pre-settlement times.
Rather than the fire-adapted, ponderosa pine-dominated
stands that once existed, the second-growth forests grew
back thickly with a dominance of true fir and Douglas fir.
Ponderosa pine are resistant to fire but cannot tolerate
shade, but true fir are the opposite, fire-tender and shade-tolerant.
Hence they thrived in the new shady, fire-free conditions,
and outcompeted the sun-loving pine.
These
overcrowded and unhealthy stand conditions were an open
invitation to forest pests and parasites. They also presented
a serious fire risk because of accumulations of ample dead
wood and dense fuel loads.
Tackling
the Forestry Problem
George
Wood grew up in Columbia County, Wash., and earned bachelor's
and master's degrees in agricultural economics from Oregon
State University. In 1958 he married Rebecca Broughton,
a granddaughter of C.J. Broughton, the Touchet Valley pioneer
and founder of the Broughton Land Company. After their
marriage Wood served in the Air Force and spent eight years
in Asia working for wheat marketing groups.
In 1979
George and Becky returned to Columbia County and bought
a house in Dayton, Becky's hometown. That's when Wood developed
an interest in his in-laws' neglected forestlands.
The
forest health problems he faced included mistletoe infestations,
root rot, Douglas fir tussock moth, Western spruce bud
worm and various pine beetles. Growth had stagnated in
many of the dense forest stands, and Wood knew they were
highly susceptible to fire.
His
education had been in agriculture, not forestry. So he
started attending forestry classes and reading up on the
subject. He talked with advisors from the U.S. Soil Conservation
Service and other agencies, who toured the property with
him. Within a year of his and Becky's return, Wood drafted
a forest management plan, laying out objectives and steps
to be taken. The Broughton partnership accepted Wood's
plan, and he contracted with the company to carry it out.
He would eventually become land manager for all the Broughton
lands.
With
forester Wes Slaughter, Wood cruised the property and produced
a forestland inventory in 1980. "What I found was that
in the 1950s, when it was last logged, it was high-graded
-- all the best timber was removed and the worst was left," he
told a reporter in 1990. "It had been logged very heavily,
and the trees that had come up since then were doghair
thick."
The
forest inventory found 1,200 acres of the commercial timber
type, with an average of 10,000 board feet per acre in
these stands. Another 1,600 acres held about 1,500 board
feet per acre. Douglas fir made up over 60 percent of stand
volumes, and was often infested with dwarf mistletoe and
weakened by Armillaria root rot.
Wood
and the company decided the goal of forest management should
be to enhance the resource while maintaining harvest income
and pasturage. Specific objectives were to improve the
condition of forest stands, protect and enhance soil and
water, provide wildlife habitat, maintain grazing for livestock
and earn income from wood products.
In 1980,
Wood launched a series of pre-commercial and commercial
thins that would create more open forest stands and larger
trees more resistant to disease and fire. These more spacious
forests also would improve grazing and enhance wildlife
habitat.
White
fir were targeted while ponderosa pine were spared and
encouraged to regenerate, leaving healthy trees in stands
as seed trees. At times during the initial thinning harvests
there were so many stems to take out that loggers marked
the "leave" trees, and cut those that weren't marked.
Selective
thinning continues in the BLC forests and the objectives
are the same, explains Dan McKinley, who manages the company
now.
"I've
continued with the forest management that George Wood implemented," McKinley
says. "Our plan is to continue this type of harvest until
we have covered all of our timberland. By the time we get
over it once it will be time to go back and harvest where
George Wood started the thinning in the 1980s.
"There
will be some high-quality timber harvested off that land,
and there's a nice new stand of younger trees started that
we'll leave on the same 45-foot spacing," he notes. "If
our plan works out we'll always have some high-quality
timber to market."
In addition
to the thinning cuts, large volumes of timber have been
removed in some locations to reduce mistletoe infection
in stands suppressed by this parasite. Sometimes these
cuts are group selections (small clearcuts) in which aggregated
or dispersed green trees are retained. Other harvests resemble
40 to 50 percent cuts showing a variety of harvest approaches.
Openings
as large as 15 acres are formed by salvage harvests of
trees infected with root rot or heart rot in stands dominated
by Douglas fir and white fir. Crews often replant these
openings with ponderosa pine because it's more resistant
to these diseases. The company has experimented increasingly
with group selection cuts in disease-free areas as well,
to create the larger openings more favorable for pine regeneration.
Crews also interplant thinned stands with Pinus ponderosa
where appropriate.
An
Expanding Forest
The
Broughton Land Company's aggressive thinning and salvage
harvests probably have exceeded growth since they began
two decades ago, the company reports. These measures have
been necessary for the restoration of BLC's stressed and
crowded forests, and company officials believe the resulting
improvements in forest health and wood quality will more
than compensate for this lack of an inventory increase.
Additionally,
the deficit will be offset by new stands planted on once-unforested
Broughton land. The company has put in several ponderosa
pine plantations on decommissioned cropland near the town
of Dayton, and the reforestation effort also has included
more than 600 acres of former mountain cropland. "That
higher-elevation farm ground was no longer farmed,"
Wood explained in 1997. "It was starting to have a few trees
regenerate, and we just planted it to speed up the process."
Due
to the dry, exposed conditions, many of these stands are
ponderosa pine exclusively, while some more north-facing
slopes have been planted with a mix of ponderosa pine and
Douglas fir. Wood estimated a 95 percent survival rate
for seedlings planted in most areas. The seeds of both
species are collected on BLC lands and grown in Lewiston,
Idaho, says Becky Broughton. There the seedlings are nurtured
for two years before being planted.
"We
do collect some seeds from the area here and try to get
it from various elevations and try to keep track of where
we're putting them," said her husband in 1997. "When we
plant in lower elevations, we plant mostly ponderosa pine,
but some Doug fir on the north slopes. So we do mix it
up a little bit there, but the pine does best.
"If
we're logging in a site, if it happens to be the right
time, we'll collect cones while we're logging," Wood said. "If
not, I have a big thing with a hook, and I just go out
and pick them off and get what I can. Since we don't use
great quantities of seedlings, that's enough to keep a
supply available for two or three or four years out in
advance. I look for the best trees that I can to collect
from."
Wood
believed that 2,000 to 3,000 acres of former agricultural
land in Columbia County would be reforested in the coming
years. Though he didn't live to see it, his prediction
is coming true.
"His
example has encouraged farmland and non-farmland owners
to plant trees,"
says Becky.
A
Place for Wildlife
With
guidance from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife,
Wood and now McKinley have enriched forage for cattle and
elk alike by broadcast-seeding orchard grass and legumes
in their forest stands. Honeysuckle and other plant species
favored by wildlife also have been planted.
The
company managed its riparian corridors protectively even
when the law did not require it. Now, increasingly protective
regulations are catching up to the standards BLC already
had in place. McKinley carefully monitors and maintains
roads next to riparian areas. The company closed down a
haul road next to one sensitive site.
During
the first few years of management in the early 1980s, the
Broughton managers did not retain snags in the forest.
They later came to view them as important for bird habitat
and, therefore, for insect control. "Birds are about our
best forest health protection you can get up here," Wood
said. Now during harvests, at least four to six snags or
down logs are retained per acre.
Varied
wildlife is found on BLC lands. The impressive list includes
white- tailed and mule deer, elk, snowshoe hare, black
bear, coyote, mountain lion, a variety of songbirds, woodpeckers,
ducks, pheasant, quail, great blue heron, weasels, many
burrowing rodents, Well's tree squirrels and flying squirrels.
The
Broughton Land Company has been actively involved in educating
the public about forestland management. George Wood routinely
hosted field tours of the property for hands-on education
in forestry. He gave presentations at the Columbia County
Conservation District, and he and Becky hosted a booth
at the county fair.
Visiting
schoolchildren have helped in the campaign against the
yellow star thistle on the company's lands by capturing
a beetle that feeds on the thistle, and distributing the
beetles through patches of this invasive plant pest.
Harvests,
Logging and Roads
The
Broughton Land Company's forest management plan calls for
stands to be entered about every 20 years, with rotation
lengths of up to a century. The rotation length is based
on the "culmination of mean annual increment," the point
at which tree growth begins to slow down. In some of the
Broughton stands this can come as late as 120 years of
age.
Forest
products currently being marketed from company lands include
saw logs, log cabin logs, chips (pulp) and fiberwood. Logs
resulting from the thinning of western larch stands can
be sold as corral poles. Wood harvested commercial firewood
for a while, too, but found the cost of labor too high.
In addition
to managing BLC's forestlands and, later, all company lands,
Wood became a logger in his own right, and he and Becky
started their own successful logging firm. Today that firm
is managed by their son, Chris Wood, who contracts his
services to BLC and other timberland owners. He uses a
Valmet mechanical processor and forwarder in a process
sometimes known as "cut-to-length harvesting."
Patrick
Jensen, George and Becky's son-in-law, also contract-logs
for BLC. He does both tower and ground logging using equipment
including a line machine yarder, log loader, CAT skidder,
rubber-tired skidder and log truck. Most recently, the
company has been harvesting in steep terrain where crews
were using selective cutting with the machine yarder on
a high-line cable.
The
company uses helicopter logging where the terrain is served
by too few roads and too steep to make road extension attractive.
Some of these more remote sections still have not been
accessed for harvest in the 22 years since active forest
management began.
The
company has helicopter-logged about 500 acres in two operations.
Because of the expense and lack of ground access, BLC general
manager McKinley doesn't plan to enter these stands frequently.
They do not mark trees in the helicopter operations, but
verbally instruct the fallers what to select.
Slash
from logging operations normally is lopped and scattered.
Because slash can contribute to insect outbreaks, harvests
are timed for late spring or summer, after the sap has
run and the slash can dry quickly. In particular, pine
beetle numbers can explode with fresh sap-filled slash
in the spring, so crews try to avoid logging pine in any
quantity between December and July.
Fun
and Profit
Many
of the harvests in the first 10 years following the start
of active forest management in 1980 were stand improvements
that yielded little income. With increasing vigor and growth
rates over the next 10 years, and greater volume in larger
trees, profitability increased considerably.
Net
return depends on the cost of logging, the distance to
the mill and the market price for logs. As an example,
Wood once described an operation in which the helicopter
contractor charged $220 per thousand board feet to lay
the logs on a landing. Limbing, bucking and loading cost
another $40, and the haul to market cost $70. With a market
price at $450 per thousand, the stumpage value (margin
of profit) barely cleared $100 per thousand board feet.
The
Broughton Land Company's timberlands are self-supporting
in any event, and forest management has remained in the
black. "Most of the money from the company comes from farming,
but the family has been surprised by the profit of the
timber sales over the last several years,"
Wood explained in 1997.
"We
manage it for the fun of it," he added. "But it's also
got to pay its way for us."
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