Crown Pacific Could Lose Federal Timber Settlement Forces Forest Service To Reconsider Agreements With Timber Companies That Export Logs For Milling

Crown Pacific’s supply of federal timber for its three North Idaho mills will be scrutinized by the U.S. Forest Service.

The review stems from a lawsuit that questioned whether the timber company was breaking federal law to get the timber.

A settlement in that suit, signed this week in Boise, requires the Forest Service to reconsider sourcing agreements reached with Crown and two other timber companies. The Forest Service could prevent Crown from getting access to federal logs.

The issue centers around log exports. Crown Pacific exports logs from tree farms it owns in western Washington. Under a 1990 law, timber companies that export raw logs can not bid for federal timber.

The loophole in that law that the settlement tries to close is this: log exporting companies could get federal timber for their domestic sawmills if they could prove the area from where it exported logs was “geographically and economically” different from where it wanted to cut trees for its mills here.

The parties behind the lawsuit are curious bedfellows: the Montana Wilderness Association, the Sierra Club, Boise Cascade Corp., Bennett Lumber Products and the Small Business Timber Council, parties that have found themselves at odds with each other in the past.

Crown Pacific supplies its Oregon and North Idaho mills with some federal timber. It convinced the forest service that its sourcing areas were distinct, said Fletcher Chamberlin, spokesman for the Portland-based company.

The lawsuit’s contention, according to Mark Lawler of the Sierra Club in Seattle, is that the entire Pacific Northwest is “one big timber basket.” Timber companies should not be allowed to distinguish western Washington from any part of Montana or even Wyoming.

That’s because, Lawler said, a timber shortage in 1994 sent timber companies scouring the West looking for merchantable timber. Some Oregon mills are still cutting logs in Montana and shipping them on rails to be milled on the coast, Lawler said.

Chamberlin said that Crown briefly ran some logs to its Oregon operations on trains, but no longer does.

“We think it’s somewhat of a victory for us,” Lawler said. “The Forest Service admits that they screwed up and are guilty of gerrymandering the forests for the benefit of the timber industry.”

Crown Pacific will be glad to cooperate with the Forest Service in any review, Chamberlin said. “We believe the original decision was the right decision.”

Forest Service spokesman David Spores in Missoula said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the settlement. Calls to a Washington, D.C.-based attorney for the Forest Service were not returned Friday.

While the settlement requires the Forest Service to act, nothing will happen for at least a year, Lawler and Chamberlin said.

Washington Republican Sen. Slade Gorton attached a rider to a spending bill in September to limit the scope of the settlement, in effect, preventing the Forest Service from conducting the review for a year.

Crown Pacific will not reveal how much federal timber it uses to source its Coeur d’Alene, Bonners Ferry and Colburn mills, Chamberlin said.

, DataTimes