Southeastern Idaho Timber Sale Withdrawn Forest Service Plans More Study After Environmental Opposition

The U.S. Forest Service has withdrawn a proposed eastern Idaho timber sale following two years of opposition by environmentalists and sportsmen.

And while Caribou National Forest officials administering the Cache National Forest sale say they believe the Bailey Creek sale of 3 million board feet eventually will occur, they still plan to study its potential effects further.

“Some public concerns still exist on issues such as harvest in the Soda Point Roadless Area and cumulative effects on Bonneville cutthroat trout and water quality,” Caribou supervisor Paul Nordwall said Monday.

Angler Marv Hoyt, of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, said the group will scrutinize the project to ensure it adequately addresses logging and additional road-building in the Bear River Range. The coalition has argued the sale would release silt into the rare trout’s habitat, which has been compressed into 7 percent of its historic range.

Hoyt and others predict that if the sale were analyzed adequately, foresters would have to kill it because they would find too many environmental perils to proceed legally.

Montpelier district ranger John Newcom and Nordwall said the decision to conduct a study of the larger area is part of the Forest Service’s increasing emphasis nationwide on managing entire ecosystems rather than smaller pieces of land.

Newcom said the Forest Service will look for other projects that could run concurrently with timber harvesting, such as developing recreation or improving wildlife habitat.