Senator Stifles Objection To Timber Sale Salvage Logging In Idaho Called Threat To Salmon, But Letter Was Kept Quiet
The Interior Department condemned salvage logging in Idaho as a threat to endangered salmon, but quietly withdrew the critique after an angry objection from Republican Sen. Larry Craig, internal documents show.
Logging the burned-over “Thunderbolt” area along the south fork of the Salmon River likely will “increase the risk of the extinction of chinook salmon,” Willie R. Taylor, director of Interior’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, said in a previously undisclosed letter obtained by The Associated Press.
“Restoration without timber removal is the alternative that provides the best protection for aquatic resources and fish and wildlife,” he said in a Nov. 22 letter to the U.S. Forest Service supervisor of the Boise National Forest.
Despite those concerns, the Forest Service sold the rights to more than $1 million worth of timber northeast of Boise to the Boise Cascade Corp., which logged some in February and plans to resume operations in May.
In February, two months after hearing from Craig, Taylor withdrew his criticism. He says the Idaho Republican’s concerns were not a factor.
The government memos and letters obtained by the AP offer a glimpse of both dissension within the Clinton administration and the external politics at play in federal logging policy.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service earlier raised similar concerns about the logging’s threat to the salmon that navigate area rivers to migrate 900 miles to the Pacific Ocean and then return to spawn.
But the Forest Service, under pressure from Western members of Congress to produce more timber for local mills, dismissed their objections as well.
The “Thunderbolt” sale has become a sort of poster child for both sides in the fight over a law Congress passed and President Clinton signed last summer suspending fish and wildlife protections to expedite salvage logging nationwide.
Clinton has asked that the so-called “salvage timber rider” be repealed. But Sens. Craig and Slade Gorton, R-Wash., helped turn back a repeal effort in the Senate last month.
Taylor’s two and one-half pages of objections went beyond the concerns raised by the fisheries service last year, adding bull trout and cutthroat trout to the species that could be harmed by logging in the sensitive watershed.
“Since we are concerned with impacts to fish and wildlife resources from this project, we encourage the (Forest Service) to consider all our comments since they were not disclosed to the general public for review,” Taylor wrote Nov. 22 on letterhead stationery from the “Office of the Secretary.”
Two weeks later, Craig, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on forests, wrote urging Taylor to withdraw his comments.
The Forest Service had already decided to go ahead on the salvage sale, Craig wrote, and Taylor’s comments were inappropriate given a pending court battle with environmentalists who had sued to block the logging.
“Your letter, issued after the (lawsuit) was filed, smacks of an attempt to influence opinion about the merits of the case. If so, that is clearly unethical,” Craig wrote Dec. 1.
“I am suggesting in the strongest of terms that you retract your letter of November 22, for obvious reasons.”
Taylor did just that.
“Our comments were not intended to contradict a decision that was made to move forward with the proposed action,” Taylor wrote in a conciliatory letter Feb. 15 to Forest Supervisor David Rittenhouse.
“We had no intention to influence opinion about the merits of the case given the current litigation on the project, nor were they intended to signal an unwillingness to accept the administration’s direction on this matter,” Taylor said.
xxxx TAKE THAT BACK Excerpts from letters written by federal officials and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, regarding the controversial “Thunderbolt” salvage logging in Idaho: “The proposed project … is likely to pose unacceptable risks to aquatic resources, including the chinook salmon, bull trout and cutthroat trout.” - Willie R. Taylor, director of Interior Department’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, in Nov. 22 letter to David Rittenhouse, Boise National Forest supervisor. “I am suggesting in the strongest of terms that you retract your letter of November 22, for obvious reasons.” - Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in a Dec. 1 letter to Taylor.