Dear HCN:
The emergency timber
salvage sale amendment tacked on to the budget package in the House
and the Senate spits in the eye of the public and does nothing to
improve the health of our national forests (HCN, 4/3/95). Now, we
must urge President Clinton to veto this attack on our forests and
our economies.
The emergency is in Congress, not
in our forests. Throwing out the Endangered Species Act, the Clean
Water Act, the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act and locking people
out from their forests – in the name of forest health – is a sham.
It says the Forest Service and timber workers can’t follow laws and
do their jobs, so shortcut the laws and cut the
trees.
This approach will fill sawmill yards with
cut-rate logs, further dropping stumpage fees, leaving taxpayers
and woodlot owners holding the bag.
The tight
46-48 vote in the Senate at the end of March on the salvage
amendment does not indicate how even the sides are, but rather how
little the public was involved. If forest scientists and
strategists were able to bring information to Congress, in public
hearings in Washington and at home, the purpose of this salvage
rampage would be transparent.
But the salvage
scam was jammed through in a tag-on amendment because it couldn’t
stand the light of day. Timber salvage after fires has nothing to
do with forest health or ecological restoration. Post-fire timber
salvage is an economic decision, not an ecological one. Taking out
black trees by salvage logging does not fix pre-existing problems
of roads, stream sedimentation and wildlife habitat fragmentation.
It also doesn’t prevent fires or fix potential fire hazard
elsewhere.
On Idaho’s Payette and Boise national
forests, where I live, forest fires covered almost 500,000 acres in
1994. The forests did not burn up, though many trees were killed.
The Forest Service is planning the largest timber sales in the
state’s history to reap some economic value from those burned
trees. The planning process includes public comment, meetings,
field trips. If we are not satisfied with the sales or the
analysis, we can appeal or go to court.
At this
point we don’t think the agency’s plan to salvage log 263 million
board-feet in the Boise, announced in Mid-March, will protect
riparian areas inhabited by the threatened bull trout. We are also
concerned that it will eliminate the closest undesignated
wilderness to the state capitol, the
Breadwinner.
But the proposed salvage scam just
passed by Congress locks us out from any public process. The Idaho
logging sales will double in volume and size. A proposed addition
to the Sawtooth wilderness and four other potential wilderness
areas on the Payette and Boise will be logged along with the
Breadwinner; ongoing studies of potential Wild and Scenic Rivers
and Research Natural Areas will be discarded, and the areas logged.
The careful planning of the Forest Service to limit roads and leave
some trees for wildlife will be cast aside.
If
Congress sets the rules with this amendment, an additional 3
billion board-feet – on top of the current annual Forest Service
cut of 4 billion board feet – will fall to the saws without public
involvement.
Idaho forests will become stump
fields.
John
McCarthy
Boise,
Idaho
The
writer is conservation director for the Idaho Conservation
League.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Salvage logging bill spits in our eye.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
