The Blackhawk blues
By Andrew Smith

Hey, let me tell you about tree marking.

My pals and I are marking trees right now for a timber sale near Blackhawk. If you drive over there you might see a couple blue looking fellas wandering through the woods, wearing blue shoes, with blue moustaches and beards, and being followed by a ratty looking pack of blue dogs. That'd be us. And you might see some trees with blue paint on them too. Those are the ones we marked.

The timber sale is a total of almost 3300 acres. Of that, myself and company are marking about 2500 acres. The rest of the area is being marked by another contractor.

The 3300 acres isn't going to be one big enormous massacre in the forest. It's broken up into 14 separate pieces of between two and three hundred acres each. Some of the units are right up against homes and subdivisions, and some of the units are stuck out in the middle of the woods, and not close to anything.

So far, we've been working close to houses and the road, and we've been getting a lot of questions from people about what we're doing. A lot of the people are glad the forest is going to be thinned out and opened up. Others are unhappy about the prospects of logging so close to their homes. Some are just curious. One man stops and tells us he would like all the trees along the road cut, so that sunlight can melt the ice and snow off the pavement in the winter. Almost as soon as he leaves a woman stops and tells us we should save all the trees along the road because they stop snow from drifting across it in winter.

The trees we're marking are the trees that we want the cutters to leave. In the Black Hills blue paint always denotes a tree that is not to be cut. Orange or yellow paint is used when marking trees that are to be cut. Only leave trees or cut trees will be marked in any given unit. They are never both marked in the same unit.

Each tree marked has a softball sized stump mark on the downhill side of the tree stem, and a horizontal stripe on each side of the tree between four and five feet off the ground. The stump mark lets the sale administrator know if any trees were cut that weren't supposed to be. The stripe lets the cutters know which ones are to be taken or left.

When we mark trees we follow a stand prescription written by a Forest Service silviculturalist for each timber stand in the sale area. The prescriptions are based on the forest plan, and information gathered during stage II timber cruises. Every stand in the sale, and many that aren't in the sale, is cruised before a decision is made on whether or not to log the area. The stage II for Blackhawk was completed about two years ago.

The stand prescriptions tell us what density to mark the timber at, any special wildlife requirements, and what the goal of the marking should be. Based on the instructions in the stand prescriptions we then examine the trees in the stand to see which ones meet our requirements.

A marking crew actually examines every tree in the sale area to see if it meets the stand prescription. Many get just a quick look over, because spacing, defect, or disease disqualifies them, but many others get a more thorough examination. Our crew will be looking at close to a million trees over the next month or two, trying to select the best and weed out the worst.

The goal of tree marking is to select the genetically superior, healthiest trees, so those get left behind as a seed source for the future forest, and as a source of high quality wood for future logging operations. Much of the timber near Blackhawk is small and suppressed. It was logged around the turn of the century, and then, for the most part, forgotten. Mountain pine beetle is evident in many sites, although there is no major outbreak at present. Western gall rust has infected better than half the trees in many stands, and they are deformed with large oozing wounds. Forked and twisted trunks are common.

We try and weed out as much of the damaged and diseased wood as we can, and leave behind a forest of relatively young, healthy timber that will grow quickly when the canopy is opened up and plentiful sunlight is available. In addition we mark large old trees with evident lightning scars, dead tops and rotten trunks, as nesting places for wildlife. Trees around squirrel caches, raptor nests and turkey roosts are also saved for wildlife. All these trees are marked with a WL instead of the regular stripe across the stem.

Along subdivisions and areas with dwellings we are thinning out the forest more than usual to provide a firebreak around private property. That way any fires on the forest can be stopped before they damage someones home. Also, along private property we are putting our marks facing away from roads and houses so the paint creates as little visual disturbance as possible.

When we're done, the sale will be cruised again to determine the merchantable volume of timber, and then it will be put up for sale. After logging is completed the trees will be left to grow for ten to twenty years before another harvest is considered.

And now you know about tree marking.