California Sues Over Sierra Nevada Logging Expansion
Reuters News Service
February 2, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - The state's Democratic attorney general said he had followed through on a threat made in November to sue over the plan announced a year ago that would allow four times more wood to be harvested from the Sierra Nevada than in 2001.

With no basis in science and no new facts, the Bush administration has jettisoned the product of more than 10 years of study, public participation and consensus building," Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a statement.

"What the Forest Service disingenuously calls a fine-tuning is really a complete overhaul that will make our communities less safe from fires at the same time it damages treasured forests," he said.

Environmental groups filed a similar lawsuit on Monday.

US government officials say the expansion of logging to 700,000 acres (283,300 hectares) over the next 20 years will curb wildfires.

By allowing timber companies to log more commercially desirable trees, the new regulations will also encourage the clearing out of smaller trees and brush that can increase fire dangers, a Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said.

"We have too many smaller-diameter trees due to well-meaning but overzealous fire suppression in the past," Mathes said.

"We would have to pay somebody $1,000 per acre top cut and remove those trees and brush, and that thinning work is needed on literally millions of acres in the Sierra Nevada," he said.

Lockyer, a potential candidate for California governor in 2006, says the US plan would violate national environmental protection laws.

The Sierra Nevada region spans 400 miles (644 km) along the eastern edge of California and is home to black bears, Bighorn sheep and sequoia, pine, and aspen trees.

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State Sues over Plan to Boost Sierra Logging
Forest Service Failed to Disclose Crucial Data, Lockyer Says
By Glen Martin, San Francisco Chronicle
February 2, 2005

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer waded into the Sierra Nevada logging fracas Tuesday, announcing a lawsuit against a U.S. Forest Service management plan for the region's 11 million acres of federal woodland that could increase the number of trees that are cut by up to four times what has been allowed.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for eastern California in Sacramento, foreshadowed a decision expected soon by Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey over the fate of the plan, which has been in effect on the Sierra's 11 national forests and one special management area since January 2004.

Rey's decision to review the plan could conclude in any of several ways: He might allow the plan to stand as it is, or order a new planning process with emphasis on more or less logging.

Lockyer's suit, filed in association with similar litigation sponsored by several environmental groups, contends that the Forest Service failed to disclose critical scientific data regarding the impacts the plan would have on the Sierra's old-growth forests, water and wildlife.

Environmentalists applauded the state's entry into the conflict, while timber interests deemed it misguided.

The plan, the brainchild of Jack Blackwell, the agency's regional forester for California, revises a Clinton era "framework" for the Sierra that halted most logging and emphasized forest restoration.

Blackwell's plan shifted the focus from resuscitating old-growth forest ecosystems to wildfire hazard reduction, upped the anticipated annual timber cut from 100 million board feet to 400 million board feet and allowed for the taking of some larger trees to defray fuel treatment costs.

"The Bush administration jettisoned 10 years of work, study and public participation, violating a number of environmental and administrative procedural laws," Lockyer said in a phone-in press conference Tuesday, referring to Blackwell's revision to the Clinton framework.

Lockyer said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had been informed of the lawsuit.

"We hope he wishes to participate," he said. "We haven't heard back from him yet."

David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association, said Lockyer's suit is unfortunate.

"They are badly misrepresenting or they don't understand what the plan proposes," Bischel said. "The only logging that is authorized is thinning for restoration, salvaging burned areas or harvesting trees that pose a risk to life or property."

But Bischel isn't really happy with Blackwell's plan either. His group filed suit against it late last year, contending it ignores the Forest Service's historic mandate of providing a continuous supply of produced timber from the national forests.

Jerry Franklin, a professor of ecosystems analysis for the college of forest resources at the University of Washington, criticized the Blackwell plan for allowing the logging of some older trees.

"The old-growth trees are the structural backbone of the Sierra's forests -- they're essentially irreplaceable," Franklin said. "Removing them may result in some economic or safety benefit, but not an ecological benefit."

Franklin dismissed agency claims that conifers 30 inches in diameter are not truly old-growth trees.

"In Sequoia National Park, of course, a 30-inch (sequoia) tree is a sapling," he said. "In a Jeffrey pine forest, it is immense."

Jim Lyons, an undersecretary of agriculture during the Clinton administration and an architect of the original Sierra Nevada framework, said Forest Service claims that thinning costs could be mitigated by logging bigger trees are specious.

"You look at the costs of laying out a timber sale, the amount of money you spend on roads and monitoring, and it always exceeds the revenue that's generated," Lyons said.

Matt Mathes, a spokesman for the Forest Service's California region, said the vast majority of trees harvested under the plan would be much smaller than the 30-inch diameter maximum.

As to the cost-benefit ratio of timber sales, said Mathes, "It may well be true that expenses exceed revenue in many cases. But these aren't the old days. Now, we're thinning only to reduce fire danger, not logging commercially. "

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Lockyer Sues Over U.S. Timber Plan
By Sam Stanton and Andy Furillo, Sacramento Bee
February 2, 2005

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer sued the U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday in a bid to stop it from scrapping a logging plan for the Sierra Nevada and replacing it with one that he said is designed to maximize logging and profits from 11.5 million acres of California forests.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, seeks to stop the Forest Service from revamping the landmark 2001 "framework" plan that was designed to balance logging and conservation needs in 11 national forests in the Sierra.

"The Bush administration just tossed that plan overboard," Lockyer said in a telephone conference call with reporters. "It jettisoned the plan, violating a number of environmental and administrative procedure laws."

That plan was the result of 10 years of study and negotiation, but the Forest Service approved a revised plan late last year that would triple logging in forests, a plan that Lockyer's suit said "reflects the agency's new willingness to risk long-term, irretrievable losses in exchange for short-term economic gains."

A Forest Service spokesman strongly denied those claims, noting that the agency already has been sued by timber interests over the revised plan and adding that changes had to be made to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

"We're disappointed that anybody would sue us over this," spokesman Matt Mathes said. "We must get going on reducing fire dangers in the Sierra Nevada mountain range before we lose communities and wildlife habitat."

Lockyer, a potential candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2006, has cast the Forest Service's changes in the framework as a political move that began when President Clinton was succeeded by President Bush.

The Forest Service adopted the plan Jan. 12, 2001, but by Dec. 31, 2001, officials were discussing radical changes in it, the lawsuit states.

"On the change of administration, the Forest Service's apparent commitment to the 2001 framework was short-lived," the suit says.

The suit names the Forest Service; its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and various officials involved in the plan, including Regional Forester Jack Blackwell. A coalition of environmental groups that includes the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a similar suit Monday.

Environmentalists contend that the changes would allow a tripling of the amount of logging that can be conducted within the 11 national forests, from 150 million board feet annually to 450 million, and that the new plan allows much older trees to be harvested to increase profits.

The 2001 plan allowed felling of trees no more than 20 inches in diameter, and limited cutting in old-growth areas - about 4 million of the 11.5 million acres in the forests - to trees 12 inches in diameter. Now, 30-inch trees can be cut throughout the forests.

Although size and age vary greatly, a 30-inch tree could be 80 to 100 years old.

Opponents of the new plan also contend that the changes increase the likelihood of forest fires endangering area communities because they give logging firms incentives to cut down larger, older trees far from existing towns.

"They have a program to log big trees in the back country to prevent fires in forest communities, when all of the science, including their own, says they should be clearing brush in the communities themselves," said Carl Zichella, regional staff director for the Sierra Club in Sacramento. "In fact, their policy is a prescription for more fire, not less."

But Mathes disputed that, saying the changes were driven by a desire to reduce fire danger and that old-growth groves are not being targeted.

"The vast majority of trees that will be cut will be less than 20 inches in diameter," he said. "We're only going to thin trees considered small-or medium-size.

"The large, old-growth trees greater than 30 inches in diameter are off-limits to cutting. ... We don't want to cut old growth."

The Lockyer lawsuit also contends that the new plan does not take into account the need to protect sensitive species that may be affected by increased logging in some older areas, species such as the California spotted owl, the Yosemite toad and the willow flycatcher.

Under the original plan, 70 percent of the logging was to take place near communities to help in fire prevention, versus 50 percent in the new plan, said John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resources Center in Twain Harte.

The changes amount "to a gift to the timber industry," said Buckley, who worked for the Forest Service for 13 years.

Buckley added that some could argue the 2001 plan was too generous toward environmentalists and that there was room for a compromise that some groups might have accepted, such as increasing the size of trees to be harvested to 15 inches to 25 inches in diameter.

"There really was a middle-ground solution," Buckley said. "But the Clinton administration provided a very nice environmental gift, and then under the Bush administration the pendulum swung to the extreme.

"It's unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit to cause a long, drawn-out replanning effort to fix what they could have voluntarily done."

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