When disease strikes a forest, the normal procedure is to clear-cut—remove all the trees in an affected stand. In the case of the Sawtooth National Forest, which encompasses Bald Mountain and the ski trails of the Sun Valley Ski Resort in Idaho, clearcutting was impractical. It would remove necessary windbreaks, make snow control more difficult and reduce the scenic quality of the trails.
But the conifers on Bald Mountain were seriously infested with dwarf mistletoe. This incidious little host-specific fruit attaches itself to Douglas-firs and lodgepole pine, robbing them of essential nutrients. This leads to spiked tops and witches brooms, making the conifers susceptable to insects and fire hazard.
The Forests Service developed a management program to rid the ski area of the parasitic plant and clean up the debris from ski-run cutting as well as trees killed by insects. The 10-year plan calls for selective removal of dying conifers a row at a time and replacing them with Engelmann spruce and Ponderosa pine, which are immune to the specie of dwarf mistletoe attacking the fir trees. Such careful, almost delicate, work calls for larger crews, special logging techniques and a long-term commitment at a slow pace.
In the summer of 1983, when the project began, a crew of 13 Forest Service employees cleared 41 acres and planted thousands of seedlings. In some places as much as 300 tons of debris per acre was removed. Some of this material was burned under the direction of fire fighting crews in training, while cut trees were logged and yarded (collected at a central point) to be purchased by the Sun Valley Company to use as firewood.
This past summer, crews working a short period and on steeper terrain, cleared another 32 acres. It is estimated that 500 acres on Bald Mountain are affected by the dwarf mistletoe. Score: 73 down, 427 to go.
—Janet Nelson
Machine Against Mistletoe
A crew of two and the FMC FT-180 did the work of a crews of 10.
One of problems with the Sun Valley mistletoe project was the slow pace of the work because of steep slopes and narrow working areas. What was needed was a machine that could slip easily between standing trees, operate at a tolerable cost and, most importantly, do the job with as little environmental impact as possible. Such a machine showed up during the summer by pure chance.
The scenario began unfolding in the spring when the FMC district sales manager, Garred Scharmann, attended a Rocky Mountain Logging Association conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. At this seminar Ketchum District Ranger John Phipps gave a presentation, outlining the Sun Valley mistletoe control program.
Scharmann immediately realized that the FMC Skidder was a machine Phipps could use. It easily handled slopes up to 60 percent on up and down skids, negotiated side slopes to 40 percent and required no skid roads. But the most important benefit was that it could do all this with little or no environmental effects.
Scharmann offered to provide the Ketchum district staff with an FMC 180 for the summer along with a couple of weeks training by Jim Medley, from the FMC head office in Lexington, KY. The machine was free; the Forest Service supplied fuel and maintenance.
The mistletoe operation finished for the season on October 15. “We had a 12-person crew this year and two of them worked on the FMC while the other 10 worked by hand and with cable systems,” said Phipps. “We did about the same number of acres on the FMC side, using two people, as the 10 person crew did. And we did it in a lot less time.”
The FT 180 has a 118 Hp diesel turbocharged engine with a three-speed power-shift transmission. Its weight is 23,860 lbs. and it will pull 18,000 lbs. It also has a 23,000 line-pull winch. Its tracks are 22 inches wide and ground pressure is 6 psi.
—Ward Johnson
