Gov. Risch pushes for salvage logging
BOISE – Gov. Jim Risch is pressing the U.S. Forest Service to clear bureaucratic hurdles as quickly as possible so salvage logging can begin on thousands of trees uprooted earlier this month by a rare tornado in central Idaho.
In a letter sent Monday to Chief Dale Bosworth, the primary caretaker of the nation’s 192 million acres of national forest, Risch urged the agency to hasten bidding on a salvage sale of the estimated $9 million in downed timber.
Otherwise, the trees will lose value and raise the threat of wildfires in the Payette National Forest, Risch wrote. The GOP governor stressed his decades-long friendship with Bosworth, a University of Idaho alumnus.
“I know I don’t need to remind you about the summer we spent in McCall at the University of Idaho College of Forestry, using the Payette National Forest as our lab,” Risch wrote in the letter released Tuesday. “As we learned in our entomology and timber utilization classes, the value of that downed timber will decrease very rapidly.”
On June 4, a fierce twister tore through a 13-mile swath of the Payette National Forest near the remote town of Bear, population 14, uprooting or destroying 26.8 million board feet of ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and white pine trees. A board foot is the equivalent of a piece of lumber measuring 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 inch.
On June 14, Risch declared a state of disaster emergency for the tornado area in Adams County.
Last week, the Payette National Forest released a damage assessment that reported fire danger had increased on 2,700 acres of national forest. Luckily, the survey says, the areas of highest fire risk are in a checkerboard pattern, spread among less damaged pockets of forest.
Most of the downed timber will be cleared through salvage logging, the report pledged.
Boyd Hartwig, spokesman for the Payette National Forest, said the agency has already promised to draft an environmental assessment on an accelerated schedule – by August.
If the assessment clears a 30-day public comment period, the agency’s goal of opening bidding on a timber sale by early fall is essentially as soon as federal law will allow, he said.