This unit was particularly challenging because of just all the tower setups the
steep slopes, the vicinity of the U.S. Forest Service road going through the
middle of the unit and operating around traffic going in and out,
stringing lines across the road, working along a medium, non-fish buffer and a large fish buffer.
This operation had some difficulties to it and with a medium non-fish stream
some steeper slopes and a large fish stream in the area
and then it's a high-use public area.
Weyerhaeuser always put safety first
so the first thing that we want to select the logger by is their safety record
and be able to produce logs safely. Second, we want to look at
how they treat the land and that they're environmentally friendly.
Another thing we want to make sure they can produce on a regular schedule
so we can keep customers happy.
We want to make sure we can keep customers happy through also
log quality and Steve excels at all of these different things.
When it comes to operations with Steve I have a lot of trust in Steve
that he's gonna do the job right.
Steven is an outstanding logger.
He has a goal to produce a product for everybody that he's serving,
which includes the landowner, the state, the mills.
He works to produce a quality product in every aspect of the job.
And Steve aways looks to the resources that he has to protect.
He walks units many times before we discuss negotiations with him and
he identifies usually all the safety hazards and all
the environmental concerns that he thinks there is out there.
If he's out operating and runs into a potential protected resource
such as a bog or a wet area within the operation
he doesn't hesitate to let us know about it
and then also goes and implements the protection until we can get out there to
to identify what protection standards need to be met.
He doesn't take the easy way out. He likes to make sure things are done the right way the first time.
Steve always does a great job operating around all the wildlife trees.
He makes sure to try to protect them. He tries to fall timber away from them. He tries to
fall timber away from streams and stream channels - small N stream channels.
[If] we have to cross them Steve's always great about putting a
log crib in and crushed crossing it and then after he crosses it he's pulling out
and restoring the stream banks.
Steve did well in meeting the Forest Practices Act of leaving the the wildlife trees that are needed
and the snags in the area and the down woody debris as well.
Steve does a great job of protecting trees that aren't quite merchantable yet but are
growing good. He always looks for opportunities to protect these younger
trees that, that are hard to establish in some of our sites like we see behind us here.
These trees are 25 to 30 years old.
Steve directionally fell all the mature timber away from these and yarded it without
disturbing it and he looks to protect as much of this as possible.
So Steve was actually did really well working around these natural region pockets and keeping
them intact. For one [thing] they provide... it's a cost savings
to the landowner for when they go to reforest and two it adds a nice
aesthetic value to, to the operational area by leaving those trees in place.
Leaving some little bit of trees out here allows for the birds of prey to be
able to land on and to be able to hunt. He's also left some of his
tailhold trees for perching trees as well.
From what I observed I think Steve did a good job
of maintaining and managing riparian buffers. He had trees they
felled them away from the the riparian buffers
they did well at not disturbing those riparian buffers.
He's looking at streams, about how is he going to cut it.
How's the cutting gonna affect the logging? Can we do that to minimize the footprint?
He's out there looking for wet soils and how we can avoid getting
machines in wet soil so we can preserve the soils.
If it's too wet to log you'll find him out diverting water off of roads
and if it's too hot - the RHs are too low - Steve will shut down early on his own
and we don't even have to work with him or coordinate with him on that.
Steve has been very great on the fire safety front. To start out with, his log freshness is probably second to none
that I've ever worked with because he's usually this days when he's on
buncher ground cutting so he's in fresh slash all the time, and he's reducing the
fire hazard. So it's little steps like that, that makes Steve such a...makes it
comfortable for me to have Steve operating in a fire-prone environment
like Hood River County.
He's always meeting or exceeding the fire season requirements that the state has.
We don't have to worry about him making a bad choice. We know Steve's gonna make the good choice because
Steve is always up front and he is, he is the one that's going to make that choice
to shut down. He's going to do the right thing, he's gonna not operate when
conditions are extreme. He's not gonna operate or haul when roads shouldn't be hauled on.
He knows, he knows what the limits are and he shuts down
before he has to be told. He's a leader.
His intent is always to do the right thing.