Amid the trees that cover more than half of the 6 square miles that make up Camp Bonneville, one might find Hunter Decker carefully tying a pink ribbon to the trunk of a Douglas fir.
He’s marking boundaries within “thinning units” — where they’re removing trees to make room for the healthier trees to grow. And it’s also the season for identifying lumber for transmission poles: those tall columns of wood that support power lines.
“Timber cruisers” were out on Camp Bonneville grounds on a recent sunny Wednesday morning, looking for ideal trees for future utility poles. Part of Decker’s job, in addition to permitting, is to set up timber sale auctions for Clark County.
“We’re thinning the transmission pole trees right now. So, like the ones you see on the side of the road with the power lines — that’s what they’re keying into and we’re selling. They’re going to mark the trees to remove them, then I’ll come give my blessings,” Decker said.
Steve Knight has been “cruising” for 20 years and was out looking for ideal timber with a newbie, Melynn Vandehey. They work with McFarland Cascade Holdings Inc., which has corporate headquarters in Tacoma.
“There’s a 63-acre patch here, so we’re sampling that 63 acres to find out how many poles are in here,” Knight said as they dodged bees nests in the muddy forest area. They’ll do an appraisal, make a bid and then if it’s accepted, they come back out, mark the future poles and log it.
Decker is careful to explain that he’s not just giving his blessing for anyone to come in and chop down any old tree. The makeup of the forest at Camp Bonneville, which spans 3,840 acres, is problematic. There had been several fires over the decades and almost no old growth, he said. The Army, which previously owned the land, planted too many trees, too close together.
“It was in really bad shape. There hadn’t been any forestry efforts done for probably 20 years. Pretty much, the forest was dying,” said Greg Johnson, the munition safety advisor who oversees the explosive ordinance remediation effort at Camp Bonneville.
The site was used to train soldiers between 1909 and 1995. Ownership was transferred to Clark County in 2006. The efforts to clean up explosives have continued ever since, and future plans include a recreation area for the public.
Some areas of trees are “sicker” than others at Camp Bonneville.
“He targets those areas for thinning and basically has brought the forest back to life there,” Johnson said.
Narrow path
Decker has been on a narrow path to a career in the outdoors his whole life. He achieved Eagle Scout in 2005, according to an announcement in The Columbian that year. During his childhood, he spent much time with family at a wooded 200-acre property in St. Helens, Ore.
Rewinding further, Decker dug into his own family history and learned that the land came into ownership by his great-grandfather, Joseph Denton, in the 1940s. Denton was a sawmill engineer during that time for The Flier & Stowell Co., based in Wisconsin. The St. Helens property was owned by the Day Lumber Company, which logged timber on the land in the early 20th century, according to his research.
In 2012, Decker completed his master’s degree in forest management at University of Washington. His master’s project was a forest management plan for his family’s property. Later, he wrote the countywide forest management plan.
“It gives you direction, what someone before you identified as, ‘Hey, these are issues. In year 2020, you should go out and do something,'” Decker said.
His predecessor was Jim Vandling, who was the forester at Camp Bonneville since 1998. He had something of an eye on Decker while he was still in college. It helped that Decker called Vandling directly when he realized what he wanted to do was forestry in Clark County.
“I was like, ‘I want to be that guy,'” Decker said. But Vandling told Decker that he needed to do more schooling and other jobs before jumping into the job with the county. After getting some other experience, including in the private sector, Decker applied and was offered the job in 2016. Vandling was 1 1/2 years into the two-year mentorship with Decker before his retirement when he died at home. Now Decker is on his own.
Johnson, who’s worked at Camp Bonneville for 16 years, has noticed that Decker has a knack for market forces. The price of transmission polls may go up during certain times — such as when there are hurricanes on the East Coast.
“There’s times saw logs are really low and really high, so (Decker) really focuses on that, and he brings in the maximum revenue for the county. Without Hunter, I seriously doubt we’d be able to sustain the park as revenue neutral,” Johnson said. He said that the money Decker helps bring in through the thinning helps improve Camp Bonneville, including building bridges, graveling the roads and installing culverts.
Decker just hopes to continue the sustainable forestry efforts at Camp Bonneville started by Vandling. He’s still learning more and more about forestry as research becomes more robust with time.
“Forestry, it used to be simple. It was like, go in, cut everything down, plant it and walk away,” Decker said. “It’s not simple. You can’t just go through and do that … forestry is complex.”
He doesn’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. He has an office at Camp Bonneville — in the old Camp Killpack barracks — but it’s been temporary. He is usually based in downtown Vancouver’s Public Service Center building, 1300 Franklin St., where he focuses on permitting. Departments were shifted in 2016, however, and they’re still making room for staff as they reorganize. For now, he chose to stay out at Camp Bonneville, where there’s a bed for his dog, named Douglas fir, who accompanies him sometimes out in the forest.
“Honestly, I mean I plan to just — this may sound weird, but — die here. I want to be here. I am an only child too so family is really important to me. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I love it here, I care about this area,” Decker said.
