NORTHWEST PENNSYLVANIA Foresters work to save timber downed by summer storms

Mercer County was one of the areas declared a disaster by the president.
KANE, Pa. (AP) -- It's been nearly five months since high winds, heavy rains and tornadoes downed thousands of trees on federal, state and private lands in northwestern Pennsylvania and some foresters are still salvaging the downed timber, working against the clock before the valuable cherry, oak and maple stain and deteriorate.
At least six counties -- Crawford, Forest, McKean, Mercer, Venango and Warren -- were raked by storms last July, leading President Bush to declare the region a major disaster area. One storm, on July 21, is best known for spawning a tornado that toppled the historic, massive Kinzua Viaduct in McKean County.
Thousands of acres damaged
The storms also caused trees to blow down in spotty patches across private lands, the Susquehannock and Elk state forests and the Allegheny National Forest. No one can say for certain how much land was affected in total, but by most accounts, thousands of acres saw damage and the storms felled millions of dollars worth of trees.
"The national forest probably took the biggest hit," said Tom Wallace, the district forester for Susquehannock State Forest, where about a quarter of the land was damaged by the storms. In Elk State Forest, several hundred acres experienced damage.
But when it comes to the value of timber, whether it is the more vulnerable maple or the harder -- and much more valuable -- black cherry veneer, time is of the essence.
One thousand board feet of black cherry veneer can cost as much as $8,000 as soon as it is cut, said Nancy S. McCloskey, chief forester and co-manager of Forecon Inc. But it loses value as soon as it hits the ground and within three years, that hardwood could be worthless, she said.
A large logging truck of the kind often seen rolling out of forest typically contains about 3,000 board feet, McCloskey said.
Most of the private companies involved have salvaged a large portion of the timber and will have completed their part of the job by spring. State foresters, for the most part, have identified and sold the timber the state is willing to sell to loggers, and most of the trees will be out of the forest by next summer.
Could take a year
For the private sector and the state forests, the task of surveying the damage -- which involves patrols by air, as well as by foot -- marking the timber eligible for harvesting and sale, cutting up the logs and finally hauling the timber out of the forest could take months, if not a full year.
"The damage caused by the storm was widespread and very spotty; it was not like a long strip that a tornado would normally cause," said Susan Swanson, the executive director of the Allegheny Hardwood Utilization Group. "Under the best circumstances, this will all take a year."
But faced with additional restrictions, such as threatened- and endangered-species surveys and heritage-resource surveys, the U.S. Forest Service might not salvage a portion of trees in the Allegheny National Forest until 2005.
By that time, trees originally worth as much as $1,000 each would be worth a couple hundred dollars or nearly worthless, said McCloskey and Swanson, whose group includes loggers, sawmills and governmental agencies.
"Most people would feel that allowing that kind of blow-down to just lay there would have a negative impact on the environment and the economy," Swanson said. "There's a frustration that we all feel that this should be a fairly simple process of cleaning something up and maintaining any economic value of the timber."
Officials roughly estimated that 10,000 acres of the national forest were affected by the storms and within those acres, anywhere from a few trees to 60 percent of the timbers were blown down, said Allegheny National Forest spokesman Stephen K. Miller.
Swanson said forestry experts have estimated that the blown down timber in the national forest is worth about $50 million.
The national forest has salvaged about a half million board feet from July to October, Miller said. Timber within another 1,400 acres of the national forest will be salvaged by 2004 and the rest of the salvageable timber will be hauled out of the forest by 2005.
Equivalent to harvest
Although the storm damaged thousands of trees, state foresters and officials from companies such as Kane Hardwood Division of Collins Pine Co. and Forestry Investment Associates said the amount of timber blown down is equivalent to what they would have harvested in a year.
"I would characterize it as a major event that was unusual in my lifetime, but not unusual in the lifetime of the Allegheny Plateau," said Jeff Kochel, the northern regional manager for Forestry Investment Associates.