A helicopter brings a load of logs toward the deck where they will be deposited. The Pilot/Steve Kadel

ROGUE RIVER-SISKIYOU NATIONAL FOREST – The “thwack, thwack, thwack” of helicopter rotors reverberates through the forest on a rainy morning.

Suddenly a sturdy Vertol helicopter appears in the gray sky with two Douglas fir logs hanging from a cable. The aircraft lowers itself toward a log deck and drops its cargo onto the ground before speeding back across the valley where other logs await.

While the helicopter makes its return trip, a worker on the ground cuts limbs off the logs with a chain saw. Then a diesel loader lifts the heavy prizes one by one and deposits  them with other logs in a neat pile off to the side.

The process repeated itself over and over as the Low Meadow logging project by South Coast Lumber Co. inched toward completion.

Alan Vandiver, district ranger for the U.S. Forest Service’s Gold Beach Ranger District, watched with appreciation.

“We like to see local people put to work,” he said.

The Low Meadow timber sale, about 25 miles east of Brookings, not far from the Chetco River, is one of five Forest Service sales this year on the Gold Beach Ranger District. In all, there were 12 Forest Service sales in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

South Coast bought rights to the sale in 1999, but logging was delayed by the 2002 Biscuit Fire that burned nearly 500,000 acres on the national forest.

The purpose of the Low Meadow sale is to remove trees encroaching on a meadow, Vandiver said. It not only benefits the land, but also helps wildlife thrive by increasing forage for deer, elk, small mammals and ground-nesting birds.

“A timber sale is a tool to achieve a land management goal,” explained Amy Lowe, a Forest Service timber sale administrator who joined Vandiver to monitor the work this particular day.

“Meadows are an important part of the ecosystem. We’ll do a prescribed burn so the meadow doesn’t get overrun by shrubs, and we’ll seed it to give grass a head start.”

Lowe said helicopter logging is expensive, but there are no roads into the Low Meadow harvest area and the Forest Service didn’t want a new road to be built.

“It’s lighter on the land to  use a helicopter,” she said. “We are always concerned with the effect on the land when we make a sale.”

Ann Vileisis, president of the Kalmiopsis Audubon Society, says the approach has merit.

“If you’re going to log in unroaded areas with steep slopes, sensitive soils and high-value fisheries, helicopter logging is certainly less damaging than building a new road,” she said. “New roads fragment wildlife habitat, cause erosion and then sediment in streams, and add to a huge backlog of Forest Service road maintenance, with long-term costs borne by taxpayers.”

Lowe’s job is to monitor the harvesting operation to make sure timber companies follow guidelines, including putting a catch pool of plastic sheeting under a diesel fuel tank to catch anything that might spill.

She also watches for possible safety violations, saying, “Safety is the number one thing out here.”

Part of the Low Meadow contract required South Coast to improve the existing road to the two landings where logs were stacked before being trucked away. Blading the road, adding gravel and reconstructing or replacing culverts is a normal part of timber harvest contracts, Lowe said.

South Coast officials declined to discuss the sale, but Lowe called Low Meadow, with 3.3 million board feet, an average-size sale. Because there’s no road to the cutting site, timber fallers have to walk a trail for almost two miles, carrying chain saws and gasoline.

“They’re pretty burly,” Lowe said.

South Coast subcontracts the helicopter and its crew, and chose Columbia Helicopter from Portland.

Vandiver said thinning of trees is a popular tool for improving the health of remaining trees. He pointed out examples of the technique a few miles from the Lowe Meadow log decks, including work on Mineral Fork that was done in 2007 and more intensive thinning on Long Ridge performed this summer.

Forest Service wildlife biologists walk the thinning sites beforehand to mark individual trees they want taken out and others that should remain. They like to preserve what Vandiver calls “limby” trees, ones that provide good habitat for owls and other species such as the marbled murrelet, which lays its eggs on the limbs.

The trees left after thinning grow better because they get more sunlight.

“It makes trees more resilient than when they’re choked in,” Vandiver said.

Trees marked for preservation can be up to 300 years old, he added.

Vileisis, of the Audubon Society, said thinning is beneficial in many areas, especially in forests close to communities, where fuel reduction is important to lessen fire danger. But she believes the Forest Service has carried thinning too far in some cases.

“Too often, in the past, many big trees were removed to pay for the costs,” she said. “And so, it was pretty much clear-cut logging as usual.”

Although the Pacific Northwest timber industry has been through tough times in recent decades, particularly with efforts to save spotted owl habitat, log trucks do roll through Curry County these days. That makes Vandiver happy because of the benefit to families and the local economy.

“It is so cool to see people working on their public land,” he said. “It feels good.”