UI Extension forestry ecology education branching out to east Idaho

North Fremont students learn how wildfire suppression has hurt forest health

University of Idaho Extension forestry specialist Randy Brooks showed a North Fremont High School horticulture class two cross sections of tree trunks, one of which was about triple the size of the other.

Despite the disparity in circumference, Brooks assured the class that both specimens were roughly the same age based on tallies of their tree rings. As the class learned, Idaho forests have become overcrowded and species composition has shifted due to decades of management emphasizing fire suppression, and resulting over-competition has stressed and stymied the growth of many trees.

Though northern Idaho is the hub of forestry in the state, Brooks and the UI Extension forestry program have emphasized educational outreach and student recruitment efforts in eastern Idaho lately, believing good environmental stewardship should be taught statewide.

Lewis and Clark saw a very different type of forest than we have today.Randy Brooks, UI Extension forestry specialist

During his recent educational and outreach trip to Fremont and Teton counties, Brooks offered a dire diagnosis regarding the health of the Gem State’s national forest lands: massive, devastating wildfires are occurring frequently due to overgrowth and declining forest health caused by long-term fire suppression. The current situation contrasts starkly with the natural fire cycle, in which fires traditionally burned shade-tolerant seedlings in the forest understory every five to 60 years and the largest, shade-intolerant trees are mostly unharmed.

“Lewis and Clark saw a very different type of forest than we have today,” Brooks said.

Skewing species composition

Shade-intolerant trees — such as ponderosa pines — have thick bark and shed their lower branches, making them far less likely to burn when wildfires sweep through the landscape. Following years of fire suppression, shade-intolerant trees — such as firs and spruces — which have limbs that grow all the way to the ground, have gained a foothold and crowded forests, choking out the competition.

Bark beetles can sense when trees become stressed by competition for nutrients, sunlight and water. Beetles emit a pheromone alerting one another of a host tree, as well as when a tree has become fully occupied by beetles and it’s time to seek the next host.

Matchstick forest

A demonstration Brooks conducted for the North Fremont students drove home his point about fire risk from forest overcrowding. He stuck matchsticks into small holes evenly spaced throughout two square boards (matchstick forests) — one with the matches close together, simulating an overcrowded forest, and the other with matches spaced further apart, at half the density. When he lit a single match on both model forests, the tightly packed matches flashed in flame. Only a few of the matches that were spaced further apart caught fire.

“Because we’ve excluded fire from the western ecosystems and because everyone thinks fire is bad and destructive, what’s happened is now we’ve got fires like we’ve never had before,” Brooks said. “They’re burning higher and hotter and destroying all the trees. They weren’t doing that very much a couple hundred years ago because fire was more frequent and not controlled.”

East Idaho outreach

While in eastern Idaho, Brooks also spoke to Teton High School agriculture students and helped train the North Fremont County FFA Forestry Competition team to compete at the Idaho FFA Career Development Events, to be hosted June 3-6 in Moscow. Furthermore, Brooks helped facilitate an Eastern Idaho Forestry Field Day on May 2 in Driggs, teaching homeowners who live at the urban-wildland interface about forest ecology and fire-wise concepts to protect their properties. Brooks will return to east Idaho for a second forestry field day in Island Park on July 31.

Extension educator Tom Jacobsen, Fremont County, is a former North Fremont High School agriculture teacher who contacted area agriculture teachers about having Brooks as a guest speaker. Jacobsen believes Brooks’ presentations speak to the heritage of Fremont County, where logging was once central to the economy. While Fremont County once supported several sawmills, Willmore Lumber in St. Anthony is the county’s sole remaining mill today.

History in rings

UI Extension gathers data on Fremont County Courthouse Centennial Grove

Fremont County Commissioner Blair Dance had long wondered about the history of an enormous Colorado blue spruce growing in the local courthouse lawn.

Thanks to University of Idaho Extension, Dance has new insights into the towering evergreen, as well as a deeper appreciation for the historic Fremont County Courthouse grove.

After chatting about the impressive spruce tree with a county tree trimmer, Extension educator Tom Jacobsen, of Fremont County, decided to take a closer look at the grove. That’s when he noticed a plaque on a sidewalk detailing how Gov. Cecil Andrus designated the stand as a University of Idaho Centennial Grove in 1989, in recognition of the university’s 100th anniversary.

Jacobsen arranged to have a pair of forestry experts — UI Extension forestry specialist, Randy Brooks, and Lauri Stone, an Idaho Department of Lands timber resource specialist — visit the courthouse and study the grove on April 30. They brought specialized forestry hand tools, including a clinometer, used for measuring vertical angles to assess tree height, a loggers D tape for measuring tree diameter and increment borers, used to take tree cores for counting rings and estimating a tree’s age.

“This courthouse is on the National Register of Historic Places so we try to maintain it and keep it restored,” Dance said. “I think that tree would have a story behind it because it may have come to this location somewhat in relationship with the construction of this courthouse.”

The forestry team’s findings were consistent with Dance’s suspicions — that the spruce was planted as landscaping in conjunction with the courthouse’s construction. The building was dedicated in 1909. By counting tree rings, the foresters estimated the tree’s age at about 130 years old. The spruce would have been about 14 years old when it was purchased from a nursery and planted in the courthouse lawn. The team also estimated the spruce is 93 feet tall with a 45-inch circumference, harboring nearly 2,000 board feet of lumber.

Four other trees in the grove — a Douglas fir, a ponderosa pine, a larch and a white pine, which is Idaho’s state tree — tested as being about 40 years old, consistent with them being planted as 4- or 5-year-old seedlings at the time of the Centennial Grove dedication ceremony.

“Those are four of the 10 coniferous trees used in production forestry native to Idaho,” Jacobsen explained. “The other trees that are missing are subalpine fir, lodgepole pine, grand fir, hemlock, cedar and Engleman spruce.”

Jacobsen and Brooks hope to collaborate with Dance on sourcing the six trees needed to complete the collection at the courthouse grove from the Franklin H. Pitkin Forest Nursery at U of I’s Moscow campus. In Brooks’ estimation, such a grove would be akin to having a living museum exhibit in tribute to Idaho’s important forestry industry. He’d like to plant the additional trees during a second dedication ceremony, which could double as an opportunity to educate local youth.

“We could have FFA students come and plant them. That’s an Extension class I offer is how to plant seedlings properly,” Brooks said. “Plus it raises awareness of U of I and the Pitkin Forest Nursery.”

Furthermore, Brooks believes having all 10 of Idaho’s commercial conifers in one public location would be useful for local high school students who are training to compete in the FFA State Forestry CDE competition during the annual Idaho FFA Career Development Events (CDE), which is hosted during the first week of June in Moscow on the U of I campus.