Did the Forest Service burn
New
Mexico enviros?
On the day President Clinton
signed what’s become known as the “logging without laws’ rider last
July, a nearly 10,000 foot-high peak in southwest New Mexico burst
into flames. Now federal plans for salvage logging of this area –
Eagle Peak near Reserve, N.M. – have led environmentalists to
charge that the fire was no accident.
The
Southwest Center for Biological Diversity believes Forest Service
officials, at the very least, allowed the fire to burn to justify
salvage logging in the roadless area. The Center’s Kieran Suckling
cites internal memos in which members of the fire-fighting team
complained that Forest Service officials held them back during the
fire. Team member Jim Sullivan wrote that he “felt Forest was
trying to dictate tactics. Wanted to get more aggressive with fire,
but felt they couldn’t – Forest interfering.” Another team member,
Steve Blest, said a forest official was “interfering with an air
attack.”
Gila National Forest officials make no
bones about their interest in logging Eagle Peak. The sale of the
fire-scorched timber “is critical in establishing what the region
will be able to do regarding salvage,” wrote deputy supervisor Carl
Pence last October. But the agency maintains it fought the fire
cautiously for safety reasons and that if it had been able to log
the area, the fire would not have been so intense. The fire burned
20,000 acres, including several core habitat areas for the
threatened Mexican spotted owl.
In January,
environmentalists grew angry again when they learned that federal
officials pulled a provision in a recovery plan for the owl that
would have effectively killed the Eagle Peak Sale. The provision
would have banned salvage logging in steep-sloped and roadless
areas.
Nancy Kaufman, regional director for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acknowledges that the owl recovery
team changed the provision Oct. 17, one day after she approved it,
but says “the decision had nothing to do with the salvage sale.”
The plan was revised, she says, to provide more management
flexibility.
*Tony
Davis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Did the Forest Service burn New Mexico enviros?.
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