Big ponderosa pine trees came crashing down Sept. 30
near Ojo Caliente, N.M., after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in San Francisco denied yet another attempt by the
environmental group Forest Guardians to stop part of the La Manga
timber sale.
“This is the last 3 percent of the
forest that has old-growth ponderosa pine left,” lamented Sam Hitt
of Forest Guardians. Even though the Forest Service has voluntarily
protected some never-logged trees in the Carson National Forest,
Hitt said he believed any trees estimated by the Forest Service as
75 to 250 years old should not be cut.
Antonio
“Ike” DeVargas has pressed the Forest Service to allow the sale,
and his firm, La Compania de Ocho, quickly moved to cut trees. The
sale has been held up since 1994 by three different
lawsuits.
DeVargas said the sale has 845,000
board-feet of timber, enough to keep his company working for almost
a year. He will employ 12 people who will make $12 to $16 an hour,
and this will help the poverty-ridden villages of northern New
Mexico, he said.
Hitt said Forest Guardians
intends to file a contempt-of-court motion against the Forest
Service, covering 22 old-growth sales in the Southwest, most of
them already partially cut. The group will continue the La Manga
case as part of that motion, even though many big trees will likely
be gone by then.
El Rito District Ranger Kurt
Winchester, who oversees the sale, said although the lawsuits are
far from over, he’s glad to have some logging activity. “We’re
getting something done now,” he said. “We’ve got some people going
back to work.”
*Jason
Lenderman
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Big trees fall in contested sale.
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