Tribe, Cove Mallard Face Hard Road In Building Halt Nez Perce Forest, Dixie Project Ride With President’s Proposal

The Clinton administration’s proposed moratorium on road-building in roadless areas could cut timber production on North Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest in half.

It also may do what Earth First! activists failed to accomplish: derail future logging plans in the Cove Mallard area near Dixie.

The initial accounting shows 17 million board feet of the 30 million scheduled for sale this fiscal year.

“We just have a rough estimate is all,” Nez Perce Supervisor Coy Jemmett said.

And Clearwater Forest Supervisor Jim Caswell in Orofino said he does not know how much of his forest will be affected.

The new policy calls for an 18-month moratorium on new roads in roadless areas larger than 5,000 acres. It also would ban roads in areas of 1,000 acres or more if they are contiguous to other undisturbed acres.

It does not ban logging in untracked areas if the timber can be removed by helicopter or reached from existing roads.

An Idaho Conservation League accounting of national forest timber sales that could be affected listed 14 sales on the Nez Perce. Five of eight sales planned in the Cove Mallard area could apply, Jemmett said.

Richard Willhite with Shearer Lumber Co. in Elk City, said the move will make the hunt for federal timber harder.

“It’s sort of like the king’s forests where they’re trying to keep the peons out,” Willhite said. The company has bought the three previous Cove Mallard sales and would be a bidder for future ones, he said.

“You can’t argue with the fact that roads are one of the most impacting activities that man does on the landscape. It has benefits and has impacts,” Caswell said.

Last year, the agency reviewed its road-building practices after the Clearwater was plagued with stream-clogging landslides from heavy rainfall. An independent science panel blamed 58 percent of 906 landslides on road construction.

Those studies do not establish a link between roads and a decline of species such as salmon and steelhead trout, said Stefany Bales of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association in Coeur d’Alene.