Federal Suit Targets Colville Timber Sales Groups Challenge Forest Service’S Plan To Log Beetle-Killed Trees

Two environmental groups have gone to federal court to block Douglas fir beetle timber sales in the Colville National Forest.

The groups charge that the U.S. Forest Service violated numerous federal logging guidelines while planning the sales, aimed at controlling an infestation of Douglas fir bark beetles.

The Kettle Range Conservation Group and Leavenworth Audubon Adopt-A-Forest filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington. No hearing date has been set.

The Forest Service wants to log 25 million board feet of timber on roughly 4,500 acres within the Newport District to clear out beetle-killed trees.

The Colville and Panhandle national forests are logging a total of 25,000 acres to salvage timber and reduce fire hazard, officials say.

The groups charge that the Forest Service wrongly justifies the logging by citing poor forest health.

The suit challenges the government’s assertion that the logging will reduce forest fires fueled by beetle-killed trees.

To reduce risk, the agency should log smaller trees that create fuel for fires, said Marlene Renwyck of the Kettle Range Conservation Group, which is based in Republic. “We’re concerned that this project is targeting larger, older trees, both dead and alive,” Renwyck said. “We fail to understand how that’s going to reduce fire danger.”

The logging could actually increase the risk of small fires in the near term, according to Forest Service documents.

About half of the trees marked for cutting measure 21 inches in diameter or more, Newport District Ranger Dan Dallas said.

That’s because beetles are found in bigger trees, Dallas said, adding that the increase in small fires should limit potentially catastrophic blazes.

Dallas declined to comment on the lawsuit because he has not seen it.

But he bristled at statements in a press release from the conservationists accusing the Forest Service of “misleading the public as to the extent of the beetle infestation to fulfill a timber industry agenda.”

Dallas said the Colville’s plan includes restoration projects - such as removing erosion-prone roads - that would otherwise have no funding.

“We have always been clear that the beetle infestation is going to run its course no matter what we do,” he said. “Our intent was to react to it and use it as an opportunity to get some much-needed work done instead of standing idly by.”

The Forest Service also failed to evaluate the effects of the combined public and private logging on fish and wildlife, such as endangered bull trout, the lawsuit charges.

Logging on nearby private forests could nearly double the total amount of timber cut east of the Pend Oreille River, according to the groups.

Forest Service officials could not confirm those estimates Tuesday.

Conservationists last year lost a federal court bid to halt an emergency beetle-kill logging project on the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

Forest Service officials say the logging is necessary to fend off forest fires fueled by beetle-killed trees and to finance the planting of fire- and disease-resistant trees. Inland Northwest timber companies also applaud the regional beetle timber sales for supplying sawmills with logs.

Colville plans no new roads to go with beetle-associated logging, and 162 acres of the logging will come in the form of a clearcut.

The Newport District likely will release plans for additional logging soon, officials said.

Conservationists argue that the beetle outbreak is a natural phenomenon that doesn’t require treatment by logging.

“We’re challenging the ruse of forest health,” said Tim Coleman, executive director of the Kettle Range group.