Volume 1 • Issue 2 • Winter/Spring 1997 Communicating Issues and Ideas Important to the Management of Montana's State Forest Lands BRAIN SALAD Last June at our biodiversity training, we talked about the need to view the State Forest Land Management Plan (SFLMP) as a strategic plan, and about the cre- ative thought and innovation it will take to implement the plan effectively. A recent article in Business Week reminded me that we need to keep beating that drum. The article was focused on changes in the world of stra- tegic planning. Many businesses are now describing the strategic world they operate in as an “ecosystem.” The point of that approach is that they need to look beyond the traditional circle of influence that affects their business decisions: “By looking at the entire eco- system, it provides a broad perspective to them. It gets people out of their boxes.” This thought has some obvious parallels to our efforts to implement the SFLMP. For example, producing rev- enue by applying a landscape approach to management is not generally what we’re used to. As the business gurus suggest, we’re going to have to get out of our “boxes” to make it work. The article goes on to talk about the concept of strate- gic intent. It defines strategic intent as: “A tangible corporate goal or destiny that represents a stretch for the organization. It also implies a point of view about the competitive position a company hopes to build over the coming decades.” The competitive position targeted in OMEGA is to maintain solid cash flow, long-term healthy forests, and options for alternative revenue gen- eration. There are certainly elements of the OMEGA alternative that are a stretch for our department, but it is those same elements that will provide us the com- petitive edge we will need in the next century. Gary Hamel, business strategist, states in the article that: “It is imagination and not resources that is scarce.” The SFLMP leaves us plenty of room for imagination. Please keep that as an underlying focus as we imple- ment the policies provided by the SFLMP. Focusing on innovation and creative thought may not only help us better serve trust beneficiaries, but should also help to make our jobs even more satisfying. Winter/ Spring 1997 LIBBY UNIT...Like most units or areas, the Libby Unit has a collection of foresters that have more interest in particular phases of their jobs. They decided they might be able to take better advantage of their varied interests or talents by reorganizing their respective duties. John Schotzberger now gets to focus primarily on timber sale design, layout, and administration. He leaves the envi- ronmental analysis and write-up to Mike Justus. They have to coordinate their efforts carefully, but so far it seems to be working. They feel it’s a more efficient way to get the job done and allows them to focus on the work at which they excel. SWAN UNIT...Dan Roberson has been using a soft- ware package, the Stand Visualization System (SVS), to depict the stand treatments proposed for the Mid- Soup Timber Sale. The SVS allows the user to enter an actual stand table that the program will then visually depict on the screen. After entering the stand table, the user can go in, “squirt” the trees to be removed, and display the residual stand. The SVS appears to be a great tool for simulating “before and after” pictures of a project proposal for the public. It may also be helpful in describing proposals for the State Land Board. At this point the SVS will not display landscape simu- lations; it’s limited to stand simulations. However, the landscape capability may be on the horizon, so to speak. KALISPELL UNIT...Bev O’Brien is working with the Flathead Forestry Project (FFP) to sell some timber from trust lands with a slightly different approach. The FFP is an ad hoc group of loggers, conservationists, sports- men, mill owners, and civic leaders working to improve public forestry practices. The approach allows the suc- cessful bidder do the sale preparation work as well as the actual logging activities. Bev will provide prospec- tive bidders with a description of the final products we want, as detailed in a silvicultural prescription and project goals. The bidders will then submit technical proposals for achieving the prescription and project goals, and price proposals for the stumpage. This ef- fort is a small demonstration project for the public that also allows us to try a different way of doing our forest management activities. The results will guide whether we try to expand this approach to more of our projects. FOREST IMPROVEMENT TEAM...The Forest Improvement (FI) Team has requested that the nursery grow a portion of next year’s seedlings in 10-cubic- inch containers. The rationale is that the bigger the containerized stock we plant, the faster it will grow ini- tially. As a result, the survival rate should be higher, and less plantation maintenance should be required. The FI Team members are hoping that all these advantages will greatly offset the increased cost for these seedlings. DNRC RATES HIGH IN 1996 FORESTRY BMP AUDITS The results of the 1996 Forestry BMP audits have been out for some time, but it doesn’t hurt to emphasize the positive! DNRC had five sites audited. Sites were located in the Missoula, Bozeman, Stillwater, Clearwater, and Kalispell Units. DNRC rated the highest of the four ownership groups in BMP application and effective- ness. We were the only ownership group with no (that’s zero) “major” departures from BMP application. We also had the lowest percentage of sites with impacts, averaging only one minor and temporary impact per site. No major impacts were recorded. The limited departures that did occur primarily concerned road drainage, side casting, and maintenance of erosion con- trol features. The departures were isolated and few in number. Great job on your commitment to implementing BMPs and promoting water quality protection in our timber sale program! 2 Forest Management Newsletter (ffyfro Dear Dr. Hydro: What’s the story with the new SMZ widths that are in OMEGA ? The table that is part of Watershed Resource Management Standard (RMS) #10 is a bit ambiguous. Signed, Committed To Water, Bozeman Dear Committed, I agree; that table in OMEGA is confusing. For in- stance, if the slope is 40 percent and the soil erodibility is moderate, the table says the SMZ should be 90 feet. But the SMZ law says 100 feet. Who’s right? Well, obviously, the SMZ law takes precedence here. I sug- gest using the following table as a clarification. This table should come out officially with the implementa- tion guidance in the next several months. There are three things to keep in mind when faced with this issue. First, the areas that historically had more open canopies were the dry sites. When we remove vegeta- tion, the increase in water yield can be expressed as a percentage of the annual precipitation. A water yield increase of 10 percent in a 12-inch precip zone is an increase of only 1 .2 inches. Probably not a problem. On the other hand, where we get 60 inches of precipita- tion, a 10 percent increase would mean 6 additional inches of water coming off the site. If this amount of water becomes streamflow during the peak flow pe- riod, we could have some significant bank erosion. This leads to the second consideration, channel stability. The sensitivity of a channel to erosion is a primary con- sideration in determining the level of allowable water yield increase. A stream that has healthy, deep-rooted riparian vegetation and a large portion of rock in the stream bank is probably going to handle all but the most SLOPE SOIL ERODIBILITY CLASS HIGH MEDIUM LOW 0-14% 50 ft. 50fL tllll . ill S : 15-34% 60 ft 50ft. 50 ft. 35*49% 120ft. 100 ft. 100 ft 50% or greater 200 ft. 150 ft 100 ft. Thanks for the question. It is exactly the type of input the OMEGA-maniacs here in Missoula love to hear. Keep them honest; let them know of difficulties in ap- plying the standards to your real-world work. Along those same lines, I understand that the savvy Bill Caldwell up there in Big Wet Country brought up an interesting hydro-type question regarding the silvicul- ture and biodiversity standards and how they would affect water yield. The question, essentially, was, “If we take certain sites back to a more open canopy to mimic historical stand structure, wouldn’t we also run the risk of increasing water yield beyond acceptable limits?” Goooood question. The short answer is “Yes, we would.” The risk is going to be low, however, in most situations. catastrophic flood. If, on the other hand, the riparian area is cow-burnt, and the root mat is shallow and wimpy, and the stream bank is made up entirely of sand . . . well, we probably shouldn’t accept much water yield increase at all. The third point is that, in areas where we have mucho encroachment and sensitive channel conditions, we may have to approach the OMEGA prescription incremen- tally. Remove the canopy a little at a time, with a pe- riod of time between treatments, which allows the chan- nel to adapt to the higher flows naturally. How much time? Well, I don’t want to give away all my secrets. ‘Til next time, remember, water ain’t the only thing that flows downhill. Q)r-. dS/d/v 3 Wintpr/^nrin p 199Y UPDATED INVTRY SOON TO BE RELEASED The Inventory Section will soon complete another ver- sion of INVTRY. We will send an updated user guide with the new INVTRY program. Each office will re- ceive a diskette to update existing copies of INVTRY. A complete updated copy of the program will be avail- able upon request to install on new computers. There are three options to complete the updating pro- cess: someone on the unit or area can do the updating, Will Wood will walk you through the process over the phone, or Will will come to your office and do the up- dating. By early March a memo describing the updat- ing process in detail will be sent to all field offices cur- rently using INVTRY. The following changes were made to INVTRY. 1. The logscale module was linked into the system (logscale still uses the original user interface screens). Reciprocal Access Up and Running The 1995 Legislature passed SB 347, which allowed DNRC to gain legal access to trust lands by negotiating reciprocal access agreements with owners of inter- mingled lands. Under this legal authority we can ex- change easements, rather than cash, and pay up on bal- ances at least every three years. This is a valuable tool for us as we try to ensure future management opportu- nities. As you know, if we can’t get there, we can’t manage it. Getting access is becoming an even bigger issue as Montana’s real estate gets more and more frag- mented. Our right-of-way folks and our foresters are running with this program and getting a lot done. In the last year and a half, we have acquired permanent legal ac- cess to about 1 1 3 miles of road and reciprocated with the granting of about 46 miles of legal access. With thousands of miles left to acquire, we expect to see this program continue to grow. Thanks to Jeanne Fairbanks, Kurt Gelderman, Mike Conner, and others who have helped get this program off the ground. 2. Regression for height/DBH (for all volume equa- tions) can now be filtered by tree history and cut/ leave. 3. Sample tree frequency can be entered to the near- est hundredth for tree count cruising. 4. Coml, Com2, and Com3 were added for printer port options. 5. In the stratum/unit screen, the number of sample trees was changed to the total number of trees in a unit for tree count samples (currently it is the total number of measure trees). 6. There is an option to create files that are compat- ible with the Stand Visualization System (SVS) soft- ware. 7. The bell can be turned off from the system to make data entry quieter. Forest Management Newsletter SPRING TRAINING Mark your calendars for June 3-5 for forest management training in the Northwestern Area. Everyone who works in the Forest Management Program is asked to attend. Your area budgets will not have to cover any of the expenses. The very tentative agenda looks like this: June 3 — 8:00 a.m. 3:00 p.m. 5:00 p.m. Seedling Quality Workshop (optional) Forest Management Plan Update / Special Topics Break 7:00 p.m. Techno Update - Display of who is doing what with the latest technology (OASIS, Stand Visualization System [SVS], etc.) June 4 « — 8:00 a.m. CONCURRENT SESSIONS 5:00 p.m. A. Landscape Analysis / Biodiversity Field Workshop B. Analyzing Our Thinning Decisions (classroom and field) End of day’s training June 5 — 8:00 a.m. 5:00 p.m Same concurrent sessions as June 4 End of training session Attending the Seedling Quality Workshop is optional. If you are prescribing planting on the sites you man- age, you will want to attend. Everyone in the program should plan to attend the For- est Management Plan Update at 3:00 p.m. This session will also serve to kick off the training for the next two days, during which concurrent sessions will be held. On the first day, half of the attendees will be in the field discussing how to do landscape analysis and address biodiversity in silvicultural prescriptions. The other half will be spending half the day in the classroom learning the latest on evaluating thinning decisions, and then they will be in the field looking at thinning. On the second day, the groups will reverse topics. The feedback on last year’s biodiversity training ex- pressed a need for all in the Forest Management Pro- gram to get together and exchange ideas more fre- quently. This planned training attempts to address that need. Please put it on your calendar. 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Forest Management Newsletter CONTRACTING, A BIG ADVANTAGE By Charlie Stevens It all started when Bob Rich asked me what my experi- ence in Idaho was with contracting. I explained that Idaho was just starting with contract marking and was having mixed results. Based on what we learned talking to some of the for- esters in Idaho, we decided to forge ahead with the idea of contracting. Truthfully, I was lukewarm about the idea at first but, at Bob’s urging, decided to pursue the idea. We had a commercial thinning project that needed to be marked, in bad snow conditions, in a short period of time, with no help, so I decided to contract the mark- ing. Soon I was administering 1 80 acres of marking at Timber Creek. The project turned out really well, with the contractor, Chuck Seeley, doing as good a job of marking, if not better, than we did on 40 acres we saved to mark ourselves. Since then I have marked over 700 acres by contract in the Sula and been involved with the contract marking of over 1,000 acres while at the Missoula Unit. Need- less to say, this has really helped me complete timber sales on time and actually start to get ahead. I’m cur- rently at the point where I am starting on sales that will not be sold until FY 2000. 1 am planning to use con- tracting for marking, cruising, and locating section lines and comers in the future, and I am exploring the possi- bility of using contracting for administering large road construction projects. After such a flowery discussion on contracting, you may be ready to run out and try it. A few things that I have learned may be helpful. First of all, contracting takes planning. After starting on a contract, it currently takes several months before a bid is awarded and the con- tractor starts on a project. This means that, if you want to mark or cruise a sale this spring using a contract, you should start on the process now. Fit it into your time line so that, when the EA/EIS for a sale is finished, the contract is through Helena and ready to send out for bid. You can always adjust the final contract specifica- tions prior to the bidding, based on the results of the final EA/EIS. Also, plan on spending some time with your contractors, especially when they start. Whoever gets the contract will be a professional, but you need to spend some time with the contractor to show what you expect, the same way you would spend some time with other foresters from the department if they were mark- ing your sale. One exception to this may be cruising contracts, where good written instructions and maps should be all that is needed. One other hint is to make sure unit boundaries are in and easy to follow. If you are contracting marking and if your units are flagged or follow roads, you could also contract the marking of boundaries as part of the marking contract. Contracting seems to work especially well for big projects because of the time involved in putting all the pieces together and administering the contract. So, when you are considering a sale, think big. I don’t mean cut- ting every acre in a section, but do include enough ground in the analysis so that there is some efficiency. By contracting, you may be able to spend time else- where, such as reconnaissance of more sections, so that one environmental analysis can cover several years of sales and allow you to get ahead. This advance work complements further contracting, since contracting works exceptionally well when there is 9 to 12 months between when an analysis is done and when the sale package is due. Not only has contracting helped me get ahead, but it has also reduced my job stress. Just remember, con- tracting takes time, but continues to become more effi- cient and can save you incredible amounts of time. 7 FOREST IMPROVEMENT UPDATE Winter/ Spring 1997 The Forest Improvement (FI) Team is currently work- ing on a number of projects including a re-assessment of where we are and where we, as an agency, want to take the program. We have continued to work on items deemed high priority from our initial feedback ques- tionnaire. From our new round of priority setting, we find that communications still ranks as the highest pri- ority. Communications, by necessity, is an ongoing effort that we can all get better at. It simply does not happen unless someone makes the effort. To that end I want to compliment the FI Team for sharing the infor- mation on budgets, practices, accomplishments, and other items as they become available. They also bring to the table the concerns and questions that you all bring to their attention. Keep up the two-way communica- tion. Our budget proposal has made it out of subcommittee, the first hurdle, and now awaits full committee and fi- nal general budget approval. We are focusing consid- erable attention on ensuring we have the necessary tools available to accomplish the work we said we could do with the budgeted amount. For example, we are work- ing on development of two types of thinning setup con- tracts to help increase the amount of work we can com- plete within current FTE constraints. One is for a more or less typical contract where we would identify projects needing setup and issue a contract for the work. We are also working on development of a more flexible con- tract for thinning setup that would put more of the work load on the contractor. We all need to make additional Herculean efforts to have sufficient projects ready to go so that the authorization is used on worthy projects. Topics to focus on for the upcoming biennium include thinning, road maintenance, right-of-way acquisition, and capital improvements (such as bridge replacement). Each of these represents a growing concern that will take foresight and long-term planning to implement successfully. I encourage each of you to identify your project needs early on, and relay that information to managers and FI foresters so we can develop budgets and work plans. We also plan to sponsor a seedling quality workshop for those interested. Topics will include how to deter- mine whether a seedling is worth planting, types of test- ing and what they mean, and causes of damage to seed- lings. It should be valuable to anyone who expects to be supervising planting jobs. Finally, I want to commend the members of the FI Team for their commitment to the program and their willing- ness to take on the added responsibilities that come from their involvement. Through those efforts I think we are building credibility with the field, with management, and, ultimately, with the elected officials who approve our budgets. Thanks. Persons with disabilities who need an alternative, accessible format of this document should contact DNRC at the address below. Phone 406 5424269 • fax 406 5424274 150 copies of this document were published at an estimated cost of $.40 per copy. The total cost of $70 includes $60 for printing and $10 for distribution. Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Trust Land Management Division 2705 Spurgin Road Missoula, MT 59801 Communicating Issues and Ideas Important to the Management of Montana's State Forest Lands