U.S. opens bids on timber sale despite lawsuit

LEWISTON – Despite a lawsuit filed by four environmental groups, the U.S. Forest Service on Tuesday opened bids for three timber sales for an area that burned in last summer’s School fire in the Umatilla National Forest in Eastern Washington state.

In the first phase of the project, nearly 30 million board feet could be logged, and officials with the Pomeroy District of the forest want to log up to 85 million board feet. Four environmental groups – Lands Council and Sierra Club of Spokane; the La Grand, Ore.-based Hells Canyon Preservation Council; and the Portland-based Oregon Natural Resource Council – last week filed a lawsuit to stop the logging.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane. Judge Lonny Suko is scheduled to hear the environmental groups’ request for a restraining order Aug. 30.

Dale Bosworth, chief of the Forest Service, last month determined that an emergency situation exists and that loggers could begin cutting trees even if the timber sales are appealed by environmental groups. Bosworth said that dead and dying trees are losing value and more delays would reduce the value of the timber further.