The Colville National Forest has awarded a 10-year stewardship contract to a Northeast Washington sawmill owner, allowing logging in return for restoration work. Vaagen Brothers Lumber Co. was the sole bidder on the contract, which is valued at up to $30 million.
The goods-for-services contract will allow Vaagen to log up to 50 million board feet of timber throughout the next decade. In return, the lumber company will undertake stewardship of the land such as thinning dense stands of trees, maintaining roads, and conducting prescribed burns and watershed restoration projects.
Forest Service officials say the contract could become a national model for helping the cash-strapped agency get restoration work done.
The contract covers 54,000 acres in the Three Rivers Ranger District’s Mill Creek watershed. Some ponderosa pine stands in the watershed have thousands of trees per acre as a result of decades of fire suppression, said Russ Vaagen, the company’s vice president. The dense stands are unhealthy and prone to catastrophic fires, he said.
Vaagen said the project grew out of conversations that his dad, company President Duane Vaagen, had with the staff of U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Forest Service officials.
From The Spokesman-Review: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/sep/19/colville-national-forest-awards-10-year/