Long After Biscuit Fire, A Rotten Sale
Oregonian Editorial
June 10, 2006

You can imagine all sorts of useful things the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest could have worked on Friday, such as thinning overstocked forests or restoring areas scarred by the 2002 Biscuit fire.

Instead, the agency was auctioning a complete loser of a timber sale, the Mike's Gulch salvage sale, a small but costly cut of dead and decaying old-growth trees in Oregon's largest roadless tract.

The timber sale is a total waste of time, money and public trust in the Forest Service. The timber is in bad shape. The required helicopter logging will be expensive. Meanwhile, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and thousands of Oregonians who have testified in public hearings or sent letters to the Forest Service have made it clear that this state opposes logging in roadless areas.

Yet the Bush administration went ahead with the Mike's Gulch sale anyway. Two bidders submitted proposals by Friday's deadline, and the apparent high bidder was Silver Creek Timber Co. of Merlin. The total bid price for taking chain saws to 261 acres of roadless area is a little over $300,000.

It's not worth it. Not for the Forest Service, which will get nothing but controversy and ill will out of the sale. Not for the public, which will get stuck paying for the high legal and security costs. Not for the roadless forest, which, once logged, even by helicopter, is finished as a candidate for wilderness protections.

The issue here is not fire salvage. We've consistently argued that the Forest Service should actively pursue salvage in burned forests to create jobs and economic activity in forest communities. But this is neither the time nor the place for salvage.

Environmental groups are seeking an injunction to stop the sale, but their claim is likely to be denied. Gov. Ted Kulongoski also vowed Friday to seek an injunction, if necessary, to block the sale. Oregon is among four states suing the Bush administration for abruptly changing President Clinton's rule declaring 58.5 million acres of national forests off-limits to logging, road-building and other development.

The courts should intercede. This sale makes no economic or environmental sense. It is only the Bush administration forcing its way into a roadless Oregon forest, just to prove that it can.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.

Court Rejects Appeal; Logging To Go Ahead
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
June 8, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday rejected efforts to block the sale of 350 acres of timber in the largest swath of roadless forest along the Pacific Northwest's coastline.

The Forest Service is planning to take timber-company bids today.

Government and timber-industry officials said the auction for helicopter logging in Oregon's Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, which must draw a minimum bid of roughly $235,500, is an attempt to salvage logs damaged by a 2002 forest fire. But environmentalists said it marks the first time officials are allowing logging under new forest rules issued by the Bush administration two years ago.

The fight over Mike's Gulch, a steep slope of primarily Douglas fir trees lying in 367,000 acres of protected forest, opens a new front in the long-running battle over the nation's roadless areas. In July 2004 the administration reversed a Clinton-era rule that made nearly 60 million acres of national forest off-limits to road-building and development; the Forest Service is now pressing ahead with timber auctions in these areas.

Forest Service spokesman Joe Walsh said the move to auction timber in Mike's Gulch and a separate 1,000-acre area nearby next month is a way for the federal government to make money and cope with damage from the Biscuit Fire, which roared through the region four years ago.

"What we are doing is addressing that catastrophic fire," Walsh said, adding that the area would not have been protected under the Clinton policy because of the fire damage. "It has nothing to do with the roadless rule."

But Rich Fairbanks — a Forest Service officer who led the Biscuit Fire recovery project before he retired and now works for the Wilderness Society, an advocacy group — said the logging would damage a pristine landscape on its way to recovery. The area provides habitat for species ranging from the spotted owl to steelhead trout.

"They are changing it from a wild area to more of a tree-farm operation," Fairbanks said. "There's really no good economic reason to do this. There's no good ecological reason to do this."

A coalition of Western governors and environmental groups has sought to block the new logging regulations but has been unsuccessful so far. Walsh said federal authorities offered to abandon the two impending Oregon auctions if environmentalists dropped their suits, but the advocacy groups refused.

Aides to Oregon's Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who along with the governors of California, New Mexico and Washington went to court in an effort to keep roadless forest areas off-limits, said Wednesday the logging will deprive the state of some of its oldest trees.

"The only trees that have any real value in the area are the old-growth trees," said Michael Carrier, Kulongoski's policy director for natural resources.

But timber officials argue they could have logged a broader range of trees if activists had not spent so much time trying to block the salvage sales.

"What the environmentalists have been trying to do is create more wilderness without having to go through Congress," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forests Resource Council. "You would think we were cutting the last tree in Medford, Oregon, if you listen to the rhetoric."

The sale will involve a tiny fraction of the Siskiyou forest, the Forest Service's Walsh said, and will not require new roads. Timber companies would have to clear some areas to land helicopters and would then transport the logs to existing roads, which the government would pay more than $130,000 to refurbish under the terms of the auction.

Walsh said the federal government would make money off this week's timber auction, but public watchdog groups were skeptical. Franz Matzner, a senior policy analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense, noted there are already 430,000 miles of road in national forests, and the government faces $10 billion in maintenance costs it has been unable to pay.

"The last thing taxpayers need is more roads the Forest Service has proven it can't adequately manage," Matzner said.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.