Old-Growth Trees To Be Spared

The Clinton administration and the timber industry have agreed to spare 44 tracts of old-growth trees in Oregon and Washington and to replace the timber volume with trees cut in less environmentally sensitive areas.

The agreement is consistent with a June federal appeals court decision that upheld the administration’s and the environmental community’s view that the 44 sales, totaling 176 million board feet, should not go forward because the tracts include nesting sites for the marbled murrelet, a threatened sea bird.

All of the 44 sales in question in the new agreement were originally halted in 1992 when the marbled murrelet was ruled to be a threatened species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.