Forest Service May Ease Rules On Thinning Trees

The U.S. Forest Service may loosen environmental protections east of the Cascade Mountains to allow thinning of old-growth stands and improve forest health.

Residents in Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon have until April 10 to comment on the agency’s plan to revise regulations that critics contend have locked up federal timber.

Environmentalists say the regulations, dubbed “East Side screens,” have stemmed decades of devastating land practices.

The screens were enacted temporarily in August 1993 and finalized last May. They will be replaced next year by new standards guiding federal land management through an ecosystem management project headquartered in Walla Walla.

The screens are designed to protect fish, wildlife and old growth.

But the old-growth standards are so rigid they prevent the agency from addressing unhealthy forests, said the Forest Service’s Jim Schuler in Portland.

Many ponderosa pine forests, for example, are losing the competition for limited nutrients and rainfall to aggressive fir trees, he said.

Historically, the Forest Service says, the Inland West’s ponderosa pine forests have been open, parklike stands. Now they’re overstocked with fir.

The timber industry says the screens slashed timber production by 86 percent in 1993 from projected targets.

“Our position is that we should not have the screens around at all. But we welcome any change that provides flexibility,” said Chuck Burley of the Northwest Forestry Association in Bend, Ore.

Conservationists say the screens are the only barrier between the East Side’s last big trees and chain saws.

The regulations require 300-foot buffers around fish-bearing streams, a certain number of dead trees for wildlife and no logging in areas where old trees number below historic levels.

“A lot of the big trees are gone. It’s going to open the door for massive thinning,” said Republic environmentalist Mike Peterson.

He said since most big trees grow where the water is, streamsides could be logged over and the most majestic - and lucrative - trees removed.

The Forest Service’s Schuler said a review team last year found that the screens were hurting the very trees the agency is working to save.

The agency needs more flexibility, he said.

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