Senate Tentatively Oks Logging Exemption Plan Would Ward Off Legal Challenges While Dying Trees Are Harvested

The Senate narrowly backed a plan Thursday to exempt some national forest logging from environmental laws in an effort to ease fire threats and harvest dying trees before they rot.

Senators gave their tentative approval to the proposal by Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash. It would insulate the logging from legal challenges under the Endangered Species Act and other laws protecting fish and wildlife.

Gorton has been pressing for such legislation since the northern spotted owl was declared a threatened species in the Pacific Northwest five years ago.

“It’s the first time since 1990 the Senate has voted for any kind of relief for timber communities,” he said in an interview after the vote.

On a 48-46 vote, senators rejected an amendment by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would have required the salvage logging and thinning of overstocked forests to occur largely within the confines of existing laws.

“It was a little bit closer than I thought it might be,” said Gorton, adding that two other unidentified senators who skipped the vote were willing to vote on his side if he needed their support.

A final vote on the comprehensive budget bill including the logging provision was expected by today. The House already has approved a similar logging measure, although President Clinton has indicated he opposes the idea.

Nathaniel Lawrence, legal counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, said the logging provision “is another important reason for the president to veto” the overall rescision bill.

“This was a pretty big blow,” Lawrence said. “I can only hope this is a wakeup call for anybody who cares about public resources. I view it as a clear victory on a very close vote for extremists in Congress who plan an allout war on the public lands.”

Murray said expediting logging exempt from the environmental laws likely will lead to additional court battles that will slow timber harvests in the future.

“For me, it is another notch in the belt of Congress this year making short-term decisions that are going to hurt us in the long run,” she said after the vote. “Our timber communities are really just now getting back on their feet.”

Backers of the Gorton plan say expedited salvage logging free from the constraints of the laws is needed to remove dead and diseased timber from Western forests where fuel buildups raise the threat of catastrophic fires.

Critics say the salvage operations actually increase fire threats. The harvests also promote soil erosion, damaging fish habitat by clogging rivers and streams with sediments, they say.