Timber Industry Leaders Urge End To Appeals Congressional Panel Also Hears From Forest Service, Environmentalists On Logging Issue

Timber industry leaders urged Congress Wednesday to further restrict citizen appeals of logging on national forests, but Forest Service officials said the current appeals system is working well.

“We believe that the new process is working smoothly and with good results,” Associate Chief Dave Unger told a Senate subcommittee.

The number of administrative appeals filed against proposed activity on national forests, primarily logging, fell from 2,600 in 1993 to 610 in 1994, Unger said.

Anne Heisenbuttel of the American Forest and Paper Association acknowledged there had been improvements in the appeals process, but that the appeals that have continued often involve the largest amount of timber.

She said the Forest Service should reconsider a proposal the agency made under the Bush administration in 1992 to eliminate all administrative appeals of individual timber sales.

“Appellants frequently appeal timber sales simply because they disagree with the idea of cutting trees,” said Heisenbuttel, the industry group’s director of forest planning and policy.

Jim Rarick, president of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association in Spearfish, S.D., said the current system “limits the ability of the Forest Service to make and implement decisions in a timely fashion.

“Frankly, I would just as soon abolish the appeals process,” Rarick said in his testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on forests and public land management.

“The people who file appeals in the Black Hills aren’t looking for better management. They are looking for no management,” Rarick said.

He recommended that appellants be required to post a bond commensurate with the cost of the appeals.

Unger said the appeals cost the Forest Service an average of $15,000 each.

Citizens have been using administrative appeals since 1906 to challenge logging and other commercial activities on national forests.

A bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee would exempt some salvage logging from administrative appeals.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate subcommittee, also has introduced a bill that would end administrative appeals of certain salvage logging operations in cases where the harvests were necessary to combat emergency situations, such as fire threats, insects and disease.

Craig said Wednesday that the late Sen. Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., crafted the National Forest Management Act in 1976 to try to end court battles over public forests.

“As we discuss appeals and litigation over Forest Service decisions, I can’t help but reflect back on the senator’s comments and think about all the forests we have destroyed to write appeals briefs and all the innocent animals that have been sacrificed to make the legal attache cases to carry those briefs since 1976,” Craig said.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said, “We’ve got a system here that is really clogging up the works.

“The public should have some say in how our public lands are used but this process is being misused,” he said.

Environmentalists told the panel ending citizen appeals runs contrary to the push in Congress to take power away from Washington D.C., and emphasize local control.

“The public’s right to influence decision-making on public forests is an essential part of democracy,” said Barry Rosenberg of Inland Empire Public Lands Council in Spokane.

Rosenberg said administrative appeals of logging plans most often are filed by residents who live near the forests. They also include the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Orient Water Co. of Orient, Wash., which “had to use a back hoe to dig sediment out of their water system” as a result of excessive logging.

“The list goes on and I hope puts to rest the myth that appeals are frivolous and are filed by those who do not have a stake in their communities,” Rosenburg said.

Jack Tuholske, a lawyer in Missoula said he has helped prepare appeals for ranchers, hunters and fishermen upset with logging plans.

“Local folks want to have local input on issues that affect their neck of the woods. These groups are not what you would call radical environmentalists,” he told the subcommittee.