Salvage Logging Ahead Of Target, Congress Told Clinton Administration Criticized By Timber Companies

Clinton administration officials told Congress Tuesday they are ahead of schedule on this year’s salvage logging operations and should come close to meeting next year’s targets on national forests.

But Rep. Wes Cooley, R-Ore., expressed his disbelief and several Northwest timber company officials accused the administration of rigging the salvage sales with unnecessary environmental requirements that make the logging economically prohibitive.

“It just isn’t working. They are not doing anything,” said Cooley, chairman of a House task force on salvage timber and forest health.

“The administration has absolutely circumvented the legislation,” which Congress approved and President Clinton signed this summer, mandating expedited salvage operations exempt from environmental laws, Cooley said.

Environmentalists boycotted the task force hearing Tuesday, saying it was “an appalling sideshow” to an “anti-environmental circus.”

Jay Lee of the Western Ancient Forest Campaign said in a statement the result of the salvage law has been “to release ancient forest sales ruled by the courts to be illegal, punch roads into roadless areas and allow logging by the timber industry, often in habitat of endangered salmon and birds.”

Mark Gaede, the Agriculture Department’s acting deputy undersecretary for forestry, said the Forest Service should end up offering 1.7 billion board feet of salvage timber for sale by the end of 1995.

That’s 200 million board feet more than it had anticipated, he said.

It puts the agency on track to meet the goal of 4.5 billion board feet - plus or minus 500 million board feet - by the end of 1996, Gaede said.

In addition, the Bureau of Land Management has met its 1995 target of 77 million board feet and has a goal of offering another 115 million board feet next year, he said.

“It may not seem like a lot this summer, but we are building. The bulk of the volume is coming in the fourth quarter (September-December). That’s historically how it has been,” Gaede said.

“The agencies understand that timber killed by fire or insects decreases the volume and value over time,” he said.

“We share the conviction of this Congress that, where appropriate, dead timber should be harvested before it deteriorates to the point that it is not economically feasible to harvest,” he said.

But D.R. Johnson of the D.R. Johnson Lumber Co. in Riddle, Ore., said, “What they say and what they do are entirely different.

“The complex system the administration has set up and is trying to implement does nothing but produce more paperwork, more studies and more confusion,” said Johnson, representing timber operators in the Malheur National Forest.

“In an effort to keep preservationists off their backs, they will go to any extreme to come up with a reason not to sell trees,” he said.

Reps. Jack Metcalf, R-Wash., Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, said they all have received complaints from timber companies about the program. “They think the Forest Service is purposefully screwing it up,” Metcalf said.

Many of the sales offered have received no bids, Gaede said. But timber officials said that’s because the costs of retrieving the wood are too high.

In many cases, it’s because the Forest Service wants the work done with costly helicopters so as to limit soil erosion associated with tractors and other heavy equipment, they said.

“This is environmental overkill,” said David Bowden, of Longview Fibre Co. of Longview, Wash., “We in Oregon and Washington have the most stringent forest practices laws in this country.”