Draft Plan To Ease Logging Restrictions Postponed

Agriculture Undersecretary James Lyons said Thursday he postponed release of a draft plan to ease logging restrictions in California because it didn’t reflect new information and would have been vulnerable to court challenge.

“This is too volatile an issue to rush to get something out without sufficient time and full consideration of the science,” Lyons said in an interview.

Under attack from Western Republicans accusing President Clinton of courting the environmental vote, Lyons also defended the administration’s reluctance to use logging as a way to ease wildfire threats.

In some cases, salvage operations actually make national forests more susceptible to fire, he told the House Resources subcommittee on national parks and forests Thursday.

Thinning smaller trees from overly dense forests can help ease fire danger, he said.

But so can allowing more time between logging of timber stands “to promote a more fire-tolerant stand structure” and intentionally setting small, low-intensity fires.

“In this case, we have to fight fire with fire,” Lyons said.

Clinton administration logging policy was blasted earlier in the day by Republican California Reps. Wally Herger, John Doolittle, Frank Riggs and George Radanovich at a news conference.

They said partisan politics was behind the decision to delay release of the Forest Service’s draft environmental impact statement on logging in the Sierra Nevadas and potential effects on the California spotted owl - a cousin of the threatened northern spotted owl.

The plan, which had been scheduled for release Aug. 20, would have allowed 50 percent more logging in the Sierra Nevadas’ 10 national forests than is allowed under interim protections that have been in place since 1992.

Lyons has directed an independent team to review new information and report back Feb. 1.

“With an election just weeks away, the Clinton administration has something other than sound science and the health of California’s forests on its mind,” Doolittle said.

“It’s clear that this president is being guided by politics.”

Herger summed up Clinton’s policy for California forests as “suppress the science, gag the public and let the forests burn.”

Lyons denied that politics played a role in the decision or that any scientific information was being suppressed.

“Nothing is being hidden. Nothing is being buried. I think there are a few members of Congress who want to bury their heads in the sand,” he said.

The draft statement was pulled back because there had not been time to do a thorough review of the newly completed Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, known as SNEP.

Among other things, the project raised concerns that a protection plan for the owl would not necessarily provide long-term protection for old-growth forests, Lyons said.

It also raised concerns “about the role of timber harvesting in reducing fire risk,’ he said. “Actually, the SNEP scientists say it may have played a role in increasing fire risks in some places.”

The department is required under the National Environmental Policy Act to consider new information in the review, Lyons said.