Group Fights Salvage Logging
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press
May 24, 2005

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — An environmental group wants a judge to halt further sales of timber burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire unless the U.S. Forest Service restores extra buffer zones along streams intended to protect threatened coho salmon.

The Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics sent out a formal notice yesterday to the Forest Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries. The group warned that it would file a lawsuit after 60 days, seeking a halt to further timber sales unless the Forest Service consults NOAA Fisheries over the effect that changes in the logging plan will have on salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Andy Stahl, executive director of the Eugene-based group, said not requiring secondary buffer zones — designed to leave large trees along perennial and intermittent streams — after saying they would be created amounted to a "bait and switch."

The Biscuit fire burned across 500,000 acres of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in the summer of 2002. Since then, it has become the focus of an intense political, scientific and courtroom battle between environmentalists and the Bush administration.

Environmentalists have tried to strictly limit the amount of burned timber removed from the burn area. They argue that cutting the trees and hauling them off promotes erosion that chokes salmon streams and removes essential building blocks of a new forest that will benefit fish and wildlife.

The Bush administration, backed by the timber industry, has pushed to increase the harvest. The administration argues that it provides a boost to the timber economy, as well as money the Forest Service can use to plant new trees and control brush, speeding the growth of fish and wildlife habitat.

The proposed logging plan the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest showed to NOAA Fisheries called for 348 feet of buffer zones on each side of perennial and intermittent streams outside areas considered critical habitat for coho, the notice said.

No trees could be cut in the first 174 feet. Only trees smaller than 24 inches could be cut in the second 174 feet.

After NOAA Fisheries found that the proposed logging plan was not likely to harm coho, the final logging plan dropped the second 174-foot buffer, the notice said.

"This modification permits logging of thousands of additional large trees across hundreds of streamside acres assumed during the consultation process to be protected," the notice said.

Tom Lavagnino, spokesman for the Biscuit salvage-logging project, said the Forest Service would look at the claims.

"We are intending to follow all rules, regulations and laws," he said. "If there is something we missed, we certainly will respond to it."

NOAA Fisheries did not immediately respond to telephone calls and e-mails for comment.

In other actions, Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics has won a lawsuit demanding that the Forest Service mark the trees to be left behind for fish-and-wildlife habitat, rather than leave the job to loggers. The group also lost a lawsuit claiming the Forest Service had failed to leave enough dead trees standing along salmon streams.

The salvage-logging plan for the Biscuit fire area called for harvesting 370 million board feet of dead timber from 19,465 acres, less than 5 percent of the area burned by the fire.

More than half of it was supposed to come from roadless areas, which environmentalists want left untouched. To date, the Forest Service has sold 65 million board feet, and has yet to decide whether to go ahead with the sales in roadless areas.

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