Clearwater Logging Prompts Suit Groups Say Timber Sales Will Threaten Waterways

Seven environmental groups on Monday sued the U.S. Forest Service, saying mismanagement of the Clearwater National Forest threatens waterways.

Calling itself the Wild Clearwater Coalition, the consortium is reopening a dispute that seemingly was settled in 1993. Key elements of the suit pit environmental groups against each other, raising the possibility that some will end up defending the Forest Service for two controversial roadless area timber sales.

The Idaho Conservation League, the Wilderness Society and the Ecology Center are among those joining forces to file the suit in U.S. District Court in Missoula. They claim that two successive winters of landslides, a pattern of worsening water quality and Forest Service plans for four more timber sales made the suit necessary.

The timber sales include White Sands, White Pine, Fish Bate and North Lochsa Face, said Larry McLaud of the Idaho Conservation League. Together the sales call for logging 118 million board feet of timber, some of it from roadless areas.

“The four sales indicated the Forest Service is going full steam ahead with projects that further degrade water quality and that indicates a violation of the settlement agreement,” McLaud said.

In the 1993 settlement, the Forest Service agreed not to log or build roads in any proposed wilderness areas, he said. Yet the Forest Service plans to go into North Lochsa Face and take 63 million board feet of timber.

Recent history makes that incredibly bad news, he added.

“The Clearwater country had thousands of landslides in the last two winters, triggered by logging roads and clearcuts, but the Forest Service wants business as usual, with more roads and more logging in fragile watersheds,” McLaud said.

The stakes are high, considering the Clearwater Forest is home to bull trout, cutthroat trout, salmon and steelhead, and is a haven for sport fishing, he said.

Bill Haskins, of the Ecology Center, is calling the Clearwater a clear example of “why President Clinton plans to issue a new policy to protect our recreation lands, our water and our wildlife, by stopping logging and road building in the last wild places.”

The Forest Service isn’t commenting on the suit.

But the lawsuit is in contrast to positions taken earlier by environmental groups. Last summer, for example, the National Wildlife Federation cited White Sands and North Lochsa Face as examples of timber sales made palatable by collaboration between industry and environmental groups.

Monday, Tom France of the National Wildlife Federation downplayed that endorsement.

“Our support of both of those sales is pretty narrow,” France said. “We said that the temporary road network on White Sands was appropriate.

“We thought the temporary roads, helicopter logging and road reclamation on North Lochsa Face were appropriate,” France said.

, DataTimes