OREGON
In June,
federal land managers announced one of the largest timber sales the
Northwest has ever seen.
Two years ago, the Biscuit Fire
torched 500,000 acres in southern Oregon and California. Now, in a
final environmental impact statement, the U.S. Forest Service and
the Bureau of Land Management propose opening parts of the burned
forest to “salvage” logging. The preferred alternative calls for
logging on 19,645 acres, generating 370 million board-feet of
lumber. This is a reduction from the 29,000 acres proposed in the
draft impact statement, and less than the 2.5 billion board-feet
salvage proposed Oregon State University professor John Sessions
(HCN, 12/22/03: Massive logging plan shakes Northwest).
As an added twist, the plan also requests that Congress designate
64,000 new acres of wilderness. But more than half of the proposed
logging zone falls within roadless areas where timber companies
will use helicopters to extract the wood. According to the Heritage
Forests Campaign, it would be the first time logging has been
approved in a roadless area previously protected by the 2001
Roadless Rule.
The agencies anticipate the plan will
create up to 6,900 temporary jobs, mostly timber-related, and
generate $12.9 million earmarked for forest restoration. “We
won’t accept anything that won’t pay its way out of the
woods,” says Tom Lavagnino, Forest Service spokesman.
But
the consulting firm ECONorthwest and the nonprofit Taxpayers for
Common Sense say the plan would lead to, at minimum, a $34 million
deficit because the agencies lowballed their cost estimates, and
because the trees could flood the timber market, driving prices
down.
The salvage plan will not officially go into effect
until July 2005, but logging is likely to start next month under
emergency provisions. Because burned timber decays rapidly, the
Forest Service says, delaying the salvage could result in a $3.3
million loss in timber revenues.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline High-stakes logging plan gets go-ahead.
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