Trees Fall at Disputed Timber Sale
By Alex Breitler, Redding Record Searchlight
April 22, 2005

CALLAHAN -- Eight years after a timber sale was first proposed near this southern Siskiyou County town, crews recently began cutting down trees.

But conservationists who fought the project from its beginning aren't going away quietly.

Forest Service officials call the "Jack" project a "thinning" sale, arguing that removing relatively small trees averaging 18 inches in diameter will lessen the odds of a devastating forest fire.

But the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center calls Jack an old-growth sale. Trees more than 200 years old are being axed, potentially causing erosion into salmon-bearing streams and actually increasing fire danger, the conservationists say. The two descriptions almost sound like different timber sales.

"What the Forest Service is doing is using that language of forest health and fuels reduction to do the same sort of old-growth logging that they know they should abandon," said George Sexton of the Ashland, Ore.-based wildlands center.

Whether it's really old growth is not a matter of size alone, said timber sale planner Bill Bailey of the Klamath National Forest.

"An old-growth tree can be 2 inches or it can be 80 inches," he said. "That's the problem."

Klamath forest officials say the work will improve forest health while also producing wood commodities -- about 8.5 million board feet of timber, enough to build 850 homes.

Residents in the area have inquired about all the log trucks, but they've said those trucks are carrying smaller-sized trees, forest officials said. They added that many of the larger trees would be left for wildlife.

The Jack sale, which spans about 1,500 acres, was first proposed in 1997, but was stalled in federal court because the Forest Service did not look for potentially affected species under the "survey and manage" requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan.

Weakening protections -- including the elimination last year of the survey and manage program -- has opened the door to projects that once had been halted, such as the Jack sale, Sexton said.

"It's taken them years to change all of the rules," he said.

Sexton's group considers "old growth" to be an appropriate term on the Klamath forest for trees above 20 inches, he said. The wildlands center released pictures which it said were taken on the sale site, showing a hefty conifer well over 20 inches that was marked with blue paint -- presumably for cutting.

This sale marks the first old-growth logging on the forest in two years, Sexton said. The last such sale drew tree-sitters to the forest in the summer of 2003.

Sexton said other Klamath projects are legitimate, taking out small-diameter trees close to communities. A trio of conservation groups recently sent a letter to Forest Supervisor Peg Boland expressing appreciation for those projects and pointing out that none of the 16 operations on the forest's spring schedule have been appealed.

However, conservationists already have challenged at least two other sales that they say do target older, larger trees.

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