Company Buys Salvage Timber For Minimum Bid Environmentalists Warn Erosion Could Damage Salmon Spawning

The Boise Cascade Corp. has offered the minimum bid for the Thunderbolt timber salvage sale where environmentalists warn erosion could severely damage salmon spawning near Cascade.

Boise National Forest spokeswoman Lynette Berriochoa said the company on Monday offered the minimum $1,050,710 for 13 million board feet of timber

A Nov. 9 timber sale on salvage timber from the 1994 Thunderbolt blaze went without bidders.

Six environmental groups went to court to halt the cutting.

Other federal agencies had panned the sale along the South Fork of the Salmon River, a vital spawning ground for the endangered Snake River chinook.

The Environmental Protection Agency classified the sale as “environmentally unacceptable.” Will Stelle, regional director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, maintained logging there defied common sense.

John McCarthy of the Idaho Conservation League said the bid occurred Monday without contacting the public.

He also charged the Forest Service and the timber industry want to be able to log in the South Fork drainage, and employing the federal salvage sale rider allows them to do it without a conventional environmental impact statement.

While the sale is supposed to be done by helicopter, McCarthy said some roads will be constructed and there is a real danger of silt pouring into the stream.

Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association replied a Forest Service study showed the rehabilitation work will reduce the amount of sediment pouring into the river in the Ice Hole section by 18 tons per year.

Kohl also said only a fraction of the burned acreage will be harvested, but that will pay for felling trees and building check dams to stabilize the banks and catch the silt.

“We’re talking about a tiny fraction of the timber. We can take the revenue and spend it wisely to improve the environment,” he said. “If we can’t do it, I think federal land agencies have reached gridlock.”

Pending a judicial decision on the court challenge, the sale contract could be awarded in mid-December, the forest said.