Salvage Harvests Cut Sharply By New Rules Forest Service Sales Reduced To Delight Of Environmentalists

New restrictions on use of the so-called “salvage rider” law will keep the Boise National Forest from logging 60 million of the 100 million board feet of timber it planned to harvest this year.

Payette National Forest officials say they will only be able to log about 5 million of the 60 million board feet of diseased or insect-infested timber they planned to harvest.

The salvage rider exempts the Forest Service from environmental laws when the timber sale includes dead or dying trees. But Clinton administration changes announced last week bar use of the law when forests are in roadless areas or where more than 25 percent of the trees are healthy.

Forest Service officials say they still plan to offer salvage sales. But because the salvage rider cannot be invoked, the sales must go through the normal approval process, which requires environmental analysis and allows appeal by opponents.

Conservationists are thrilled.

“This year, hikers are not going to be dodging falling logs and logging trucks,” said John McCarthy, conservation director for the Idaho Conservation League. “Next year they should have the assurance that any logging will be done under full consideration of the law.”

But the Forest Service and timber industry contend slowing salvage sales will slow efforts to thin Idaho’s badly diseased and overgrown forests.

The result, Boise National Forest spokesman Frank Carroll said, will be more of the raging fires that have burned 600,000 acres of Boise National Forest over the past decade.

“People like hiking in green, parklike forests,” Carroll said. “They don’t like to hike in dead, black forests.”

The timber industry is angry, said Dave Van De Graaff, regional timber lands manager for Boise Cascade Corp., because delayed salvage sales mean trees that could have fed mills could instead be lost to wildfires.

“The administration is going to spend millions of dollars to put the fires out once they start, yet they won’t do what is necessary to improve forest health so we won’t have fires in the first place,” Van De Graaff said.

Forest managers said environmental studies and appeals will delay salvage sales and could lead to more disease outbreaks in the Payette National Forest. Stopping the spread of disease could require more logging in the future, which could drive out hikers for years to come.

“As we lose more trees we have to use more extreme treatments,” said Ron Hamilton, resources branch chief for Payette National Forest. “Clearcutting is the last resort for us, but may be the alternative we’re left with.”

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