Timber Sale Monitoring in the Cherokee:  Multiple Sale Areas Show Erosion and Poor Regeneration

This summer we visited sites from timber sales that have closed in the last four years to see how they are doing.  We visited several sites that the Forest Service  surveyed in 2015 as a part of their Monitoring and Evaluation, partially in response to the disasters that were happening post-logging at the Hogback sale, as well as some other sites that were not evaluated.  All were sales in Polk County in the Ocoee district of the Cherokee. As shown below, the Forest Service's report shows some problems at several sites- and we found these problems repeated at several other sales.  We visited over a dozen post-logging sites at the Hogback, Hawkins Branch, Hopper Branch, Greasy Creek and Buck Gap sales.  All were cuts meant to regenerate or promote oaks and/or shortleaf pine. Some patterns, which the picture below will attest to, were fairly consistant:

• They generally were shortleaf/seedtree cuts.
• They all had oaks (typically chestnut oak, white oak, scarlet oak, and some northern red oak) as leave trees, and several had shortleaf as well.
• There main vegetation that has seceded the earlier stand is generally poplar, maple, sassafras, sumac, blackberry, and sourwood. 
• What oaks did regenerate were often coppice.  Few, if any, of the stands could be considered successful oak regeneration.
• Shortleaf regeneration/restoration, in keeping with other stands we have seen, was, with one exception, limited.
• Skid road persistence. The downslope roads had some washout.   

In other words, the supposed economic and ecological benefits are small, and in some cases even negative.  As the Cherokee nears a new Long Range Management Plan revision, it's time to evaluate what is and isn't working on the ground.