AVA, Ill. — With winds clocked in excess of 100 mph, an early-season tornado that ripped through eastern Missouri and much of southern Illinois on Feb. 28 left two people dead, destroyed 46 homes, crippled two large family farm operations – and wiped out a 275-acre swath of old-growth oak and hickory trees in the Shawnee National Forest.

 

Many of those trees surrounded part of Kinkaid Lake, a key water source for nine communities around southern Illinois, including Carbondale and Murphysboro. And those downed trees, many felled with huge root balls exposed, pose a significant risk of adding silt to Kinkaid Lake.

 

It is primarily for that reason that the USDA’s Forest Service, led by local silvicult urist Justin Dodson, is movingquickly to put together a plan that would harvest the downed trees and reforest  the area to restore it as much as possible to its pre-tornado condition.

 

Given the federal bureaucracy and its penchant for moving slowly, Dodson said the Forest Service hopes to begin a commercial harvest of the wood by mid-summer, well after spring rains could wreak some havoc on the level of sediment flowing into the lake.

 

Kinkaid Lake provides the source of more 2.1 million gallons of water per day to the region, not to mention it is a heavily-used recreation area for boating and fishing.

 

“It’s vital that we protect it from the sedimentation, because if it continues to fill up, we won’t have the water anymore,” said Scott Wilmouth, manager of the Kinkaid-Reed Creek Conservancy District.

 

Dodson said the reforestation plan is being developed now, with a public comment period slated to end by May 8 with the hopes of a green light given to the project shortly after.

 

“With a large forested area … trees intercept rainwater, slowing its impact from hitting the soil,” he explained. “It slows the energy of the rain and allows it to soak into the soil and replenish groundwater. When there are no trees, there’s nothing to intercept it, so rain can hit directly on the soil, starting its movement downhill (and into the lake).”

 

Another significant benefit to reforesting soon is to eliminate the risks of wildfires and diseases that may impact other parts of the forest, Dodson said.

 

“With these downed trees, you have an increased potential for insect and disease outbreaks that could affect mature forests that are nearby.”

 

He couldn’t estimate the price tag for the overall project in large part because he and others are continuing to inspect the area to know how much of the wood is worth. Splintered trees aren’t as valuable as ones cut fresh by loggers, he noted.

 

But under the plan he’s developing, all of the commercial value of any wood harvested from the area would be used to cover the costs of reforestation. Even busted up, wood from century-old oak and hickory trees carry significant value. “It’s fairly common across the nation, when there’s a disaster, whether it be a hurricane, tornado, whatever, to move fairly rapidly to move into trying to salvage (trees), to utilize them, because otherwise they just sit there and rot when they could go to the economy and go to goods and services,” Dodson said.

 

The project details can be accessed online at www.fs.usda.gov/project/?project=51536

  

Anyone wishing to make a public comment can do so via email at comments-eastern-shawnee@fs.fed.us or by USPS mail at: USDA Forest Service, 602 N. First St., Vienna, IL 62995.