Group Loses Effort To Buy Timber Stand

An environmental group’s effort to buy a stand of timber in order to save it was rejected Thursday by the U.S. Forest Service, even though the group had outbid two timber companies for the rights to the trees.

Only logging the trees would “fulfill the contractual obligation,” said Sam Gehr, supervisor of the Okanogan National Forest in Eastern Washington.

The timber rights for the trees now will be awarded to the second-highest bidder, Double A Logging, Gehr said.

The Forest Service is “hiding behind some obscure and absurd regulation” in order to continue its emphasis on logging instead of other values, such as recreation or wildlife protection, said Mitch Friedman, head of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, an environmental group based in Bellingham, Wash.

“Their decision makes terrible business sense,” Friedman said. “We offered them more money and also said we would preserve the public’s resource.”

This winter the group bid $28,875 for the timber rights on 275 acres of fire-scarred trees near the Methow Valley, and immediately announced it had no intention of cutting down the trees. An estimated 750 semitrailer-loads of mostly dead and dying wood could be harvested.

The second-highest bid was $28,000.

The environmental group says the stretch of forest is prime habitat for lynx and is in an area of exceptional beauty.

But it’s the free-market part of the story that has captured the attention of people around the nation, including several influential members of Congress.

The chairman of the U.S. House Budget Committee, Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, wrote a blistering letter to the head of the Forest Service in February demanding to know the government’s rationale for turning away the high bidder.

Kasich said he was particularly disturbed to hear the Forest Service spent $300,000 studying the area, and preparing the sale, only to generate a bid of $28,875.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Jack Metcalf, R-Wash., says the House Resources Committee has discussed changing Forest Service rules to allow any party to buy timber rights for the amount of time it might take the forest to regrow if it were logged, said his press secretary, Chris Strow.

Friedman said his group would appeal today’s decision to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.