Bush USFS plans biggest logging operation in U.S. history- in Oregon Roadless Area

Posted on Mon, Nov. 17, 2003

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercuryne...al/7287250.htm


Biscuit Fire salvage tests legal standing of roadless rule
JEFF BARNARD
Associated Press

MEDFORD, Ore. - The U.S. Forest Service proposal to salvage burned
timber from the massive Biscuit fire released Monday represents a
major effort to log within so-called roadless areas once off-limits to
logging but now in a state of legal flux.

Scott Conroy, supervisor of the Siskiyou and Rogue River national
forests, said he anticipated the salvage logging plan could be
appealed and perhaps challenged in court if plans to log 200 million
board feet of timber on 12,000 acres of inventoried roadless areas
remain.

"The inventoried roadless area is likely to be the most contentious
issue," Conroy said of the draft environmental impact statement on the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project.

The Biscuit Fire burned nearly 500,000 acres on the Siskiyou National
Forest in southwestern Oregon during the summer of 2002 and threatened
a string of small towns in the Illinois Valley. It was the biggest
wildfire in the nation for that year.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement includes seven alternatives.
The one now preferred by the Forest Service calls for logging 518
million board feet of burned timber across 41,000 acres, or about 9
percent of the fire area outside places such as wilderness where
logging is prohibited by law.

The timber volume amounts to more than 20 times the annual cut on the
Siskiyou and Rogue River national forests combined, and would support
$250 million in economic activity and 3,000 timber jobs, according to
the Forest Service.

The alternative also calls for replanting 50,200 acres of burned
forest, creating 309 miles of 400-wide fuel breaks where large trees
are left standing but brush and small trees are removed, and studying
the effects of salvage logging and restoration efforts on fish and
wildlife habitat affected by the fire.

The Roadless Rule was created administratively by the Forest Service
in the closing months of the Clinton administration, and has since
been challenged by the timber industry. A federal judge in Wyoming
struck it down and issued a nationwide injunction. But the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld it.

Environmentalists said they are waiting to decide whether to challenge
the plan until they see if the Forest Service changes course as it
evaluates public comments. The 45-day public comment period expires in
January.

"We're hoping the Forest Service listens to us and listens to the
public and isn't being controlled by the Bush administration so much
that they can't leave the roadless areas out of the proposal," said
Lori Cooper, attorney for the Siskiyou Regional Education Project.

"We believe if the Forest Service tries to do roadless area logging in
Biscuit they would lose legally, because the 9th Circuit has spoken,
and we are in the 9th Circuit," she added.

Barring any challenges, the soonest logging could begin would be next
June, nearly two years after the fire, Conroy said. He acknowledged
that appeals and lawsuits could delay logging another year, which
would mean 40 percent to 50 percent of the timber volume could be lost
to rot and insects.

The Forest Service had been considering a volume of 96 million board
feet in salvage logging until a report from a group of Oregon State
University scientists - known as the Sessions Report - suggested
boosting that to as much as 2.5 billion board feet.

Conroy said the Sessions Report led to broader consideration of
salvage logging possibilities, but denied any outside influences led
to the preferred alternative.


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USFS offers the single largest logging operation on federal land in US
history.