Glickman Defends Salvage Delay Ag Secretary Says Cutting Will Resume After ‘Salvage Rider’ Expires And Harvests Are Subject To Normal Rules
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Wednesday his recent decision to postpone some salvage logging in national forests was necessary to avert “warfare in the woods” between environmentalists and timber workers.
Glickman said he would defend his decision on Capitol Hill today during what he anticipated would be a confrontational hearing before Republican leaders of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
He said he found it necessary to hold up the logging called for under a bill President Clinton signed into law last summer because it prohibits citizens from challenging the logging through the normal administrative appeals channels.
Glickman, who oversees the Forest Service, said some of the logging won’t occur until next year after the law - the so-called “salvage timber rider” - expires and the harvests are subjected to the normal regulations protecting fish and wildlife.
The rider, intended to speed logging of dead and dying trees posing catastrophic fire threats, exempted the cutting from many of the usual environmental laws.
“As I looked at the situation, particularly as it developed with very little public comment in the process, we were creating a scenario of warfare in the woods, all the time, on every timber sale,” Glickman said Wednesday night in an interview with The Associated Press.
“We estimate there will be some amount of timber that will not be offered pursuant to the salvage rider. After the first of the year, it will go forward with the normal public comment in accordance with existing environmental laws,” he said.
The rider, “whatever its intentions were, created a scenario of great distrust between the environmental community and the timber community and the Forest Service,” Glickman said.
“We think we had reached a truce before the rider. We have to figure out a way to talk about these things and stop being so polarized,” he said.
Most of the postponed logging will be harvests in areas where there currently are no roads, areas least likely to subject people or buildings to fire dangers, Glickman said.
Salvage logging will continue where there are imminent threats of fire, or imminent threats of disease or bug infestations, he said.
xxxx SALVAGE LOGGING Salvage logging will continue where there are imminent threats of fire, or imminent threats of disease or bug infestations, said Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.