Horse Logging Makes Comeback In Panhandle Forests District Offers Sales In Response To Requests For Less Damaging Methods

Saddle up.

Horse logging may be riding back into the picture.

This month, the Idaho Panhandle National Forests will offer the first of two horse-only logging sales, a move horse loggers hope will turn from an experiment into a trend.

Forest Service timber sales tailored for horse logging are uncommon, said Gregg Caudell, who runs the Horse Logger International Newsletter and his own equine logging operation in Keller, Wash.

“We are hoping somebody bids it because (the district forester) is kind of sticking her neck out.”

The St. Joe District decided to offer horse-logging sales because the public is pushing for it, said Tracy Gravelle, district forester and planner. “It gives people more work and they think it does less damage,” she said.

On one of the two upcoming sales, “the hydrologist said if we were going to harvest it, we were not going to have equipment on the site,” because of potential damage, Gravelle said.

Both of the sales are about four miles southeast of Emida. The 18-acre Cow Pony sale goes on the auction block Friday. It encompasses commercial thinning of about 87,000 board feet of grand fir, white pine and larch.

On April 29, the Forest Service will offer 365,000 board feet of lodgepole, white pine, grand fir and Douglas fir in the Horses’ Aspen sale.

It is not clear how many more of these horse-logging sales will be offered.

“We need someone to buy it,” Gravelle said. “We need success.”

Part of the difficulty is that smaller sales are more expensive to administer because they have to be more intensively cruised. And foresters aren’t sure how large a sale they can throw at horse loggers without burying them.

The horse-logging industry has to get a start somewhere, says Caudell, who estimates there are at least a half-dozen horse loggers in North Idaho and 10 in northeastern Washington.

“Unless they set up the sales, we can’t build the industry,” he said.

Horse logging has a lighter touch on the land and is a good public relations tool for logging, Caudell said.

And horse loggers can get by harvesting a lot less timber because they have a lot less overhead. “This isn’t the panacea to our problems in the forest,” Caudell said, “but it’s one option.”

, DataTimes