Cheryl Carpenter is not unfamiliar with Shawnee State Forest.

“This is where my dad would take me camping and hiking,” Carpenter said, as she walked down Road 2 in the forest.

She passes a lone fisherman, settled back with his line in the water.

“This is where I caught my first fish,” she laughs. “It was a sunfish.”

Carpenter, of Voices for the Forest, now comes upon a huge pile of cut trees left at the side of the road and spots a large suspicious looking oily liquid. As she kneels down to sniff it she turns and says, “Just as I thought. It’s diesel fuel. It comes from the equipment used for the clear cutting.”

Carpenter is at the same time angry and perplexed over the massive clear-cutting being done along Road 2, brought about by Ohio’s worst forest fire in April of 2009.

Carpenter said the state plans to clear cut 366 acres of the forest this year, and the job has already been contracted for.

“One of the jobs is finished. Two of them are going on right now and one is to start soon,” Carpenter said. “They’re clear cutting in the areas where the highest intensity fire was. But there are areas where there were trees that possibly could have survived, but they are taking out everything. The reason they do that is that they want to have some trees to sell for lumber.”

The area where the clear cutting is being done is the scene of a single piece of heavy equipment at work, but on up the road, a trailer from a semi sits off the side of the road with a large load of trees.

As she walks, she talks. “This particular point which the locals call Sunset Point is a beautiful overlook where a lot of people come to watch the sunset. The clear cutting is directly behind a sign which says ‘Partners in Conservation,’ and was done prior to the burn. It was routine logging, a part of 101 acres of clear cut between Mackletree and Road 2. And then the other clear cut directly to the left of that was also a part of that 101 acres of clear-cutting that had nothing to do with the forest fire. But the sign they have up here leads the public to believe that this clear cutting was a result of the fires, but it was not.”

While Carpenter says the fire was in that particular area, she says that clear cutting was done prior to the fire.

Carpenter says she understands the plan by the Division of Forestry of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is to clear-cut another 366 acres this year in the area that was burned — south of Road 2 and north of Road 2 toward Mackletree.

“They have completed about 200 acres of clear cutting, over 100 of which is right along side of Road 2, that you can see from the road,” Carpenter said. “My concern is, I’ve done some research on this salvaging after fires, and I talked to the Division of Forestry about this, Dave Lytle (state forester and chief of the ODNR Division of Forestry), and the research says, if you come in and you salvage a log after a fire, it is more likely to be a fire hazard than not salvage logging.”

Lytle told the Portsmouth Daily Times the reason for the salvage harvest.

“We had hundreds of acres of trees that were killed. If not 100 percent mortality in those areas, at least close to 100 percent mortality,” Lytle said. “And we were concerned with the future health of the forest, and also the opportunity for additional wildfires in the area, because of all of that dead material, much like the ice storm (of 2003), would accumulate in the forest and would eventually accumulate, and pose a wildfire risk.”

According to the Shawnee Wilderness Area Management Plan effective Sept. 14, 1999 through Sept. 14, 2009 — “Although man-caused fires have played a role in the history of the Shawnee Wilderness Area, discussion of the ‘natural role of fire’ which is so important to western forest and wilderness fire plans, simply cannot be applied to a wilderness in an Appalachian hardwood forest.”

Carpenter is quick to add that she believes there is no simple answer to clear up the problem.

“Do you leave the dead trees that can catch fire and throw embers places, which is exactly what happened when the burn was ignited?” Carpenter said. “Or do you cut it, and it’s going to be a fire hazard one way or another? I don’t see any clear answer — it’s a bad situation, and in my opinion it was all due to the result of the escape of the prescribed burn.”

According to an article in Science Daily, provided by Carpenter, a new study on the effects of timber harvest following wildfire shows that the potential for a recently burned forest to reburn can be high with or without logging. Investigators used a computer model to project how fuels and fire hazard would change over time. — “The computer simulation showed that the difference in surface fuels between logged and unlogged units would persist for about 15 years. The simulation also showed that if a fire did start during this time, it would likely kill most young trees as the fire carried through either logged or unlogged stands, even though the logged stands had higher slash fuels. This is because other components of the fuel bed (grasses and shrubs) would contribute significantly to fire conditions, whether sites were initially logged or not.”

For the record — the Division of Forestry denies the fire was caused by escaped embers, and believes the fire that occurred last year was the result of arson.

In July of 2009, Judge William T. Marshall signed a document dismissing the charges filed against Michael Thompson, 22, of 676 Naces Run Road, Stout.

The West Portsmouth volunteer firefighter had been arrested April 26, 2009 in connection with the fire in Shawnee State Forest.

At that same time the Division of Forestry made a statement in support of dismissing the charges, and at the same time made references to exploring “new leads on additional persons of interest.”

Forestry officials still maintain the two wildfires that burned out of control were the result of arson and that their prescribed burn did not cause them.

“This is based on not a feeling, but on facts that were looked at by career professional investigators,” Andy Ware, spokesperson for the Division of Forestry, told the Portsmouth Daily Times in August of 2009.

That month, a team of investigators from the West Virginia Division of Forestry, at the request of the Ohio Division of Forestry, reviewed the evidence submitted by Ohio officials and concluded that the wildfire resulted from arson.

In April of 2010, Ware said — “These fires were set immediately along the road - three separate fires — within minutes of each other. That’s classic arson behavior.”

So does the Division of Forestry still believe the fires were caused by arson?

“Absolutely,” Lytle said.

“Even if one believes that arson occurred on Mackletree, there were approximately 1,100 acres that burned south of Road 2, which is the side of the burn that came from their (prescribed) burn,” Carpenter said. “Forestry is responsible for at least 1,100 acres. It still has not been proven in my opinion when that burn escaped — prior to the call of the alleged arson fires, or afterwards.”

Carpenter said wildfires are occurring in national parks all across the country.

“I was in Yosemite recently, and they had an escaped prescribed burn out there — the Big Meadow burn — It started as a 91-acre burn, and it mirrored Shawnee so much. There were about three or four spot-fires that went outside the unit from dead snags. It burned 7,000 acres,” Carpenter said. “They had an investigation done and they determined that the burn plan was inadequate and the prescription was inadequate.”

Snags are large trees that are burned, but still standing, sometimes hollow, from burning inside.

It is easy to see that the clear-cutting and prescribed burns have taken a toll on Carpenter’s emotions, and the dispute continues, between those who believe the fires were intentionally set and those who believe they were caused by prescribed burns getting out of control.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Carpenter continues to visit the forest on a regular basis, concerned that with the clear cutting and prescribed burns, if there will be a Shawnee Forest to be enjoyed by generations to come. So she sits on a makeshift bench and looks into the woods she grew up in.

“I think they need to stop (prescribed burns) completely,” Carpenter said “They’re inappropriate. They don’t work. Obviously they are extremely dangerous. But, at least a freeze needs to be put on them (prescribed burns) until this can be investigated, and some conclusions drawn as to what happened out here and how it must not happen again.”

FRANK LEWIS may be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 232 or flewis@heartlandpublications.com