Public Meeting Set On White Pine Sale

The controversial White Pine Timber sale is being revived.

The U.S. Forest Service is holding a public meeting tonight on a revised logging plan for the acreage, located about 40 miles northeast of Moscow, near the North-South Ski Bowl. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Potlatch High School Multi Media room.

The sale originally covered 6.7 million board feet of timber on 680 acres of the Palouse District of the Clearwater National Forest. Environmental and industry groups filed five separate appeals of the sale last year.

Environmentalists argued logging and road construction would damage already devastated watersheds. An industry group said the Forest Service didn’t offer enough of the trees for sale.

Some of the environmental appeals were upheld by the U.S. Forest Service regional office in Missoula. The regional office ordered revisions in the sale plan.

, DataTimes