Backcountry residents await logging law

DIAMOND LAKE, Ore. – When Sharon Karr’s cabin was built on the shores of this high mountain lake in 1928, there were few neighbors and little thought given to the prospects of wildfire.

There are now 102 cabins on this land on the Umpqua National Forest, and fears of a big fire have grown. Young trees have crowded in among the big ones, and an increasing number of pines are turning red and dying from the borings of mountain pine beetles.

The Bush administration had proposed lessening fire dangers by thinning trees around the cabins and also in the backcountry.

Conservation groups are closely watching the logging proposal as a test of whether President Barack Obama follows through on his promise to break from the Bush administration and protect the 58 million acres of national forests across the country that are known as roadless areas from commercial logging.

Karr is resigned to cut trees around her cabin to reduce the risk of fire, but is less sure about thinning far from the cabins in the backcountry, where the U.S. Forest Service says it needs fire breaks so firefighters can stop a fire before it gets to the cabins.

“It’s at that point where I can’t decide if we need to save the roadless area or we need to protect what we call the urban interface,” she said.

Steve Koch, general manager of the Diamond Lake Resort, has no doubts thinning in the backcountry will help prevent a disaster. “Once it (a fire) gets going, it’s not going to stop. It’s going to walk right over the top of us,” he said.

Roadless areas have escaped logging largely because they have been too remote and rugged to make timber harvests profitable. But with the government spending $1 billion a year to fight wildfires, pressure to do something is growing. A 2001 Clinton administration rule allows thinning to reduce the danger of wildfire and control insect infestations – both factors around Diamond Lake.

In August, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack gave a speech saying conserving national forests was a necessity and they would be managed to protect clean water and combat climate change.

Some conservation groups remain wary.

Rob Vandermark of the Heritage Forest Campaign of the Pew Environmental Group said they expect Vilsack to uphold the 2001 rule, but ultimately they are putting their faith in legislation recently introduced in Congress that would turn the policy into law.