A plan the Forest Service is touting as “a
measurable, science-based assessment” of logging’s
impact on California spotted owls and other forest species is
raising hackles in California. The proposal, released in December,
calls for cutting up to 600 million board-feet of timber —
enough to build 60,000 houses — and bulldozing 160 miles of
roads on 183,000 acres of the Plumas and Lassen national
forests.
The goal is to find a way to implement the 1999
Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act, which calls for cutting
trees to reduce fire risk in spotted owl territories, while staying
within the parameters of the 2001 Sierra Nevada Framework, which
protects wildlife and limits logging throughout the Sierra Nevada
range (HCN, 8/27/01: Restoring the Range of Light). The new
proposal is designed to “assure ourselves the activities
called for by the Quincy plan will not put species at risk,”
says agency spokesman Rick Alexander.
But members of the
Quincy Library Group — a coalition of environmental and
timber industry representatives that hashed out the sweeping plan
behind the Forest Recovery Act — are among the new
proposal’s most outspoken critics. The group’s original
demonstration project called for logging over a billion board-feet
in five years, but it involved no new roads and protected 500,000
acres of roadless and environmentally sensitive areas.
The
group has threatened to sue the Forest Service over what co-founder
Michael Jackson calls “a false demonstration” of the
Quincy Library forest thinning plan.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Timber proposal undercuts Quincy Library plan.
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