The timber industry and environmentalists can agree
on one thing: The Forest Service’s Biscuit Fire salvage
logging program has been a fiasco. Despite accidentally allowing
logging in a botanical reserve, the agency has sold just one-fifth
of the timber it promised (HCN, 5/16/05: Unsalvageable).
Now, two Oregon Republicans have a plan to prevent similar failures
in the future — by speeding up post-fire logging. Rep. Greg
Walden and Sen. Gordon Smith plan to introduce parallel bills in
the next several weeks. They say the bills will help expedite
forest recovery in the aftermath of fires, blowdowns, and other
catastrophic events. “If you don’t get in and remove burned
dead trees,” says Walden, “you’ll get a brush forest” that
has little commercial value and encourages fire to return.
But salvage logging is destructive, not restorative, says
George Sexton of the nonprofit Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center in
Ashland, Ore. He and other conservationists worry that Walden and
Smith want to use fire as an excuse to log in protected areas,
ignore ecological concerns and public input, and “lock the
courthouse door” to judicial review.
University of
Washington biologist Jerry Franklin thinks there’s room for
compromise. He suggests accelerating salvage projects in areas
already being managed for timber production, and otherwise letting
nature take its course. That could give industry a chance to cut
smaller timber before it rots, while leaving the bigger trees that
are important for wildlife even after they’re dead.
Loggers can be expected to leave behind some large trees, says Dave
Schott of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association, but
not all of them: “Most mills don’t want just small-diameter
logs.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Salvage logging speeds up.
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