Conservation Group Can Live With Timber Sale Forest Service Praised For Listening, Protecting Grandmother Mountain

These are words supposedly never heard in the polarized 1990s: An environmental group says it generally approves of a Forest Service timber sale.

The praise is even more astonishing considering some of the logging will occur in the 40,000-acre Grandmother Mountain Roadless Area, one of the largest roadless areas in North Idaho.

Welcome to a project named Hobo-Cornwall, which calls for logging nearly 7 million board feet of timber east of St. Maries.

Logging there is dicey because of the attention Grandmother Mountain draws. The area is popular with backcountry equestrians, huckleberry pickers, hunters, fishermen and backpackers.

It has been featured in the national publication Backpacker Magazine. It was adopted by the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, a graying group of hikers who want to see Grandmother Mountain in a fully protected wilderness area.

That may not happen any time soon, but the latest logging proposal is not the invasion conservationists feared.

“It protects what’s left of Grandmother Mountain,” said Larry McLaud of the Idaho Conservation League. The Forest Service people involved “are listening to the people and incorporating what they hear into a timber sale, and that is a novel concept with the Forest Service in Idaho.

“We’re not endorsing the whole thing, but this is progress,” McLaud said.

The timber industry is surprised and pleased at the environmentalists’ response. It also generally likes the final Hobo-Cornwall package.

“If we can get agreement on what to do in the woods, that’s always a success,” said Jim Riley, executive vice president of Intermountain Forest Industry Association.

Most people who contacted the Forest Service about Hobo-Cornwall opposed logging in the roadless area. That prompted the Forest Service to drop two of the three logging areas that were planned in the roadless area near Marble Creek.

That was easier to do because helicopter logging was required for the roadless area. The timber industry officials told the Forest Service the timber probably wasn’t worth the cost of the helicopter time, said Bradley Gilbert, St. Joe District ranger.

While leaving that portion of the roadless country alone, the agency is selling 30,000 more board feet than under the agency’s original preferred logging plan.

The project also is more palatable to environmentalists because most of the logging roads will be temporary and will be obliterated after the trees have been removed.

That alleviates concerns about more roads intensifying the motorized invasion of the area after logging. It also eases worries that some fairly pristine streams will become loaded with sediment, often a byproduct of logging roads.

The Forest Service decided not to use clearcuts and elected to keep most of the logging away from Marble Creek, a key cutthroat and bull trout drainage, McLaud said.

Gilbert is happy to hear environmentalists will accept Hobo-Cornwall. The new plan “protects the recreational uses of the area, sustains the visual beauty of the area, avoids old growth stands and corridors, leaves most of the roadless area ‘unentered’ and provides commercial timber volume for the local economy,” Gilbert said.

While industry believes this may be the appropriate compromise, it, like the environmental community, isn’t granting a blanket endorsement. “Somewhere along the line we need to come to grips with what to do about the forest health issues throughout the Grandmother Mountain Roadless area,” Riley said.

The Conservation League isn’t going to take consensus that far.

“That’s clearly a forest hoax in my opinion,” McLaud said. “I have not heard a professional forester say there is a forest health problem in Grandmother Mountain. “We don’t see a lot of fuel for fires, I don’t see any massive bug infestations or disease problems. So what’s the problem?”

, DataTimes