Environmental Fights Could Reduce Salvage Logging Court Battles Over Salmon, Bull Trout May Throw Off Sales, Thomas Predicts
Court battles over laws protecting Northwest salmon and bull trout may keep the Forest Service from doing as much salvage logging this year as officials would like, Chief Jack Ward Thomas told Congress on Friday.
But Thomas said environmental laws are not the primary reason that less than half of the dead and burned timber from last year’s national forest fires will be offered for sale in the coming year.
Many Republicans, and some Western Democrats, want to exempt salvage logging and thinning from environmental laws to help ease fire threats and retrieve dead wood before it rots. Senate legislation to authorize such exemptions was offered Thursday by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
Environmentalists say salvage efforts could do more harm than good and should be conducted within existing laws.
Thomas said about 3.7 billion board feet of timber was damaged by fires on national forests in the West last year - an amount about equal to the total harvest the Forest Service plans in fiscal 1996, which begins Oct. 1. The agency expects to sell about 4 billion board feet this fiscal year - 624 million of it in Oregon and Washington.
About 1.7 billion board feet of fire-damaged timber won’t be recovered because it involves small-diameter or severely damaged trees that lack commercial value, or is on steep slopes that are “not reasonably accessible,” Thomas told the House Agriculture subcommittee on resource conservation and forestry.
In addition, between 300 million and 1 billion board feet will be off limits to comply with a half dozen environmental laws, he said.
The Forest Service is anticipating salvage sales of about 1.5 billion board feet in the coming year, Thomas said.
A federal judge last month tentatively granted an injunction sought by environmentalists to block all commercial activity on national forests that could harm endangered fish species, on grounds that the Forest Service had violated laws requiring it to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service about possible impacts on fish.
The Clinton administration secured a stay of that ruling and has until March 15 to complete the required consultation. Thomas said Friday he expects to beat that deadline by as much as two weeks.
Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Slade Gorton, R-Wash., testified in support of exemptions to speed up the logging. Gorton is a co-signer on Craig’s bill.