Ga. forestry officials focusing on water quality, surveillance

By S. Heather Duncan
TELEGRAPH STAFF WRITER

August 8, 2006

Georgia forestry officials are putting new emphasis on monitoring water quality around logging sites and conducting surveillance for destructive invasive species.

For the first time, the state Legislature provided funding this year that allowed the Georgia Forestry Commission to hire full staffs for both missions.

The appropriation covers just four employees in each program, but commission officials say it will make a big difference in their ability to respond to the public and catch dangerous pests before they spread.

Public concern and media coverage helped prompt this broader focus on environmental health in Georgia forests, said Rick Hatten, state chief of forest management.

James Johnson, forest health coordinator for the forestry commission, said better management of invasive species will benefit all Georgians, not just the timber industry.

"Anybody that has trees is threatened by some of these," he said.

Dirt washing into streams also has broad impacts, Hatten said.

"Forest water quality is probably the most important issue we have to deal with, in the short term and the long term," he said.

The Georgia Forestry Commission already checks logging sites in response to complaints, educates loggers about best management practices to avoid harming waterways and conducts assessments of logging sites.

But Frank Green, who coordinates the commission's water quality program, said the new full-time water quality positions will allow the agency to be more proactive in checking logging sites early, before problems arise or complaints are filed.

When residents do complain, "We're going to be more responsive to allegations and concerns," he said. For example, response times between complaints and inspections are likely to be drastically shortened, from sometimes weeks to within a day or less, he said.

"It's a huge step in the right direction," said Altamaha Riverkeeper James Holland. "It's overdue in coming, and I'm so glad it's finally happened."

In the past few years, Holland has repeatedly clashed with the commission over logging in river bottoms and has complained about slow response times.

Green said he wants employees to take monthly flights over 66 watersheds that have been identified as containing too much eroded sediment, looking for logging operations that might have poor stream crossings or other problems. Most of these dirt-laden waterways are in Middle Georgia and north Georgia.

Green said the commission also will start checking south Georgia streams that contain too little oxygen, a condition that can be caused by poor farming or logging practices that destroy wooded buffers along streams.

Like water quality, invasive species - exotic plants and animals that wreak havoc when they are introduced to a habitat where they have no predators - have also made headlines in Georgia during the past few years. They are a leading cause of extinctions and crop damage and can even be a potential form of bio terrorism.

"We're recognizing these threats in a whole new way, and it's gained importance in our organization," said James Johnson, forest health coordinator. "We're now actively doing things on the ground we were never able to do before."

Training loggers for the first time to recognize invasive species will give forestry officials new eyes and ears to catch invaders early, Johnson said.

Among the projects that will be enhanced or begun because of the new staff are additional surveys for sudden oak death fungus around all 75 nurseries that purchased potentially infected plants in 2003 and 2004, Johnson said.

Forestry officials are gong to oversee herbicide spraying of 54 areas in 11 south Georgia counties where cogongrass has been choking out plants that are important to the survival of quail.

"We think we can spend a few pennies on the dollar now and eradicate it," Johnson said.

Johnson said the new funding will allow broader surveying for pine beetles and more quality control to annual trapping and tracking of gypsy moths, which kill oak trees by devouring all their leaves. The staff also will focus on a potential new threat: wood wasps that kill pine trees, Johnson said.