Old-Growth, Roadless Logging Plans Killed Soft Timber Market, Challenges To Bark Beetle Logging Plan Among Reasons Timber Sale Scaled Back, Foresters Say

The Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District is canceling controversial plans to log old-growth forests and in roadless areas.

The district last Friday released the final plan for a Small Sales project, part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to battle the Douglas-fir bark beetle.

A lawsuit prompted officials to scale back Small Sales, they say.

Four environmental groups sued the Idaho Panhandle and Colville national forests last May, contending the Forest Service’s original beetle plans exaggerated insect damage to justify logging.

“We didn’t want to confuse the issue while the suit was pending,” said Steve Bateman, acting district ranger. “We didn’t want to make any decisions that added anything to the suit.”

Officials last April announced plans to log scattered parcels across roughly 1,400 acres from Hayden Lake to the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, including about 160 acres of old growth and another 52 acres in a roadless area.

The old-growth logging was proposed to fight fire danger on adjacent private lands, officials said. Helicopters would ferry logs out of the roadless area. Now the project involves logging across 1,160 acres, with 225 acres of prescribed fire within the Skitwish Ridge roadless area above Fernan Lake.

Officials say Small Sales provides the chance to clean up beetle-killed areas too scattered and time-consuming or too controversial to wrap into a massive 25,000-acre beetle logging project started in 1999.

Beyond the controversy, the project still faces other hurdles.

Foresters were eager to salvage and sell beetle-killed trees. They still expect to log 4.7 million board feet, down from 6.3 million in the earlier proposal.

But now it looks like selling logs in today’s fickle timber markets could be tricky - if not impossible. “We fully expect the market is so soft right now that things might not even sell,” Bateman said. “We don’t know how to proceed from there.”

A 45-day appeal period on the project ends next month.

Environmental groups say the Small Sales project continues to violate various environmental laws.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Idaho Department of Fish and Game also opposed plans to log in old-growth and roadless areas.

The state expressed “serious reservations” about plans to drop the amount of older forests within the district below the requisite 5 percent of the forest.

“Given the paucity of old growth in the Coeur d’Alene River Ranger District, we find it difficult to understand why oldgrowth stands are being targeted,” wrote Greg Tourtlotte, IDFG’s regional supervisor.

The EPA faulted the plan for not fully explaining the extent of fire risk for adjacent landowners.

Even some landowners worried the Forest Service plans would actually boost fire danger.

Sarah Gates and her husband, Charles, live on Canfield Mountain, one of the sites proposed for old-growth logging. A previous Forest Service helicopter sale left branches and other logging slash on the ground, Gates said.

“We’re relieved,” she said. “I think the risk of fire is worse where they logged.”

But landowner John Neirinckx, who lives on a ridge above Fernan Lake, voiced strong support for old-growth logging.

“(T)here are certain circumstances where human intervention is necessary to ensure the forest and any nearby homes will not be decimated,” Neirinckx wrote in April.

The Forest Service will deal with fire danger on adjacent private lands through a separate process, according to Bateman.