Meeting Revives Chances To Save Cedar Grove Timber Company Has New Ideas That May Work, Forest Service Says

There’s hope for saving a historic cedar grove at Upper Priest Lake after an eleventh-hour meeting Friday, both sides agree.

“We just agreed to work out the problems and proceed,” said Jim Palombi, timber manager for Riley Creek Timber Co.

Kerry Arneson, U.S. Forest Service public information officer, said it’s “certainly not a no-go situation.”

“It sounds like Riley Creek had some ideas for doing some things differently,” and those may work, she said. Arneson did not have specifics, and Idaho Panhandle Forest Supervisor David Wright wasn’t available for comment.

Wright recently wrote Riley Creek Timber, saying the Forest Service could no longer afford to swap the company for 520 acres at Upper Priest Lake. Riley Creek purchased the land in 1992, expecting to swap it for national forest property it could log.

The value of the cedars, some of them 1,500 years old, has risen in the interim. Meanwhile, the value of the timber mixed conifers on the Forest Service land has dropped.

Environmentalists and the logging industry agree it would be best not to log the area. Riley Creek won’t say what it will do if the trade isn’t made.

Others in the industry say economics dictate some harvest.

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