GRANTS PASS, Ore. Jan 29, 2005
— A
timber company plans to start logging next week in
a burned area that had been reserved as old growth
forest, setting up a confrontation with
environmentalists who believe leaving the dead
trees standing is better for fish, wildlife and
the forest.
John West, president of Silver Creek Timber
Co., said Friday he was just waiting for formal
imposition of an appeals court order issued
earlier this month that had cleared the way for
logging some old growth reserve burned in the
500,000-acre Biscuit fire, which threatened 17,000
people in Oregon's Illinois Valley in 2002.
Under pressure from the timber industry, the
Forest Service expanded its original plans to
harvest only in areas designated for logging under
the Northwest Forest Plan, which settled lawsuits
over the northern spotted owl by dividing federal
forest land into areas for logging, and fish and
wildlife habitat.
The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals lifted an injunction that had barred
logging on two timber sales in an old growth
reserve until a lawsuit brought by
environmentalists is resolved.
Silver Creek Timber, based outside Grants Pass,
bid $1.1 million for one sale totaling 14.5
million board feet. CLR Timber Holding Co. Inc.,
affiliated with South Coast Lumber in Brookings,
bid $545,408 for 12.8 million board feet in the
other old growth timber sale.
West said he plans to dispatch the first of up
to 85 loggers to begin cutting what's known as the
Fiddler sale once the 9th Circuit's order is
filed, which could happen any day.
"We really don't want to have a big fight over
this," said West. "It's dead, burned timber. It's
going to create jobs. We are hiring, hopefully, as
many local people as we can. It will add to the
truck and fuel business, be good for mills."
Don Smith of the Siskiyou Regional Education
Project, an environmental group based in Cave
Junction, said his group was planning peaceful,
lawful protests, and was not in touch with anyone
planning to block logging by putting up barricades
or camping out in trees.
"We have accepted some level of logging, but
when it comes to Fiddler, that's where we draw the
line in the sand," said Smith. "That is due to its
ecological value and its economic importance to
the Illinois Valley."
The appeals court is scheduled to hear
environmentalists' lawsuit challenging the logging
in old growth reserves on March 22.
Smith said timber companies want to log before
the hearing "so that it's moot, so the damage is
over with." West, however, said he didn't expect
logging to be finished until June.
Smith said activists have seen no signs of
anyone preparing to log the other old growth sale,
known as the Berry sale.
The current plan for the Biscuit fire area
calls for logging 370 million board feet of dead
timber from 19,465 acres, less than 5 percent of
the area burned by the fire. More than half of it
comes from roadless areas, which the Bush
administration hopes to open to timber harvest
after changing a Clinton administration policy
that had barred logging there.
