Old Growth Logging in Biscuit Fire Area Denounced

GRANT'S PASS, Oregon, October 5, 2004 (ENS) - Logging of large trees has begun in the backcountry of the Siskiyou National Forest, the first official logging to take place as part of the Bush administration's plan for the area burned in the Biscuit Fire of 2002.

Hundreds of people gathered Monday at Grant's Pass office of the U.S. Forest Service for a peaceful protest rally to stop the Biscuit Logging Project. The protesters represent many other people. Over 23,000 public comments were received on the Biscuit plan, with 95 percent opposed to the Forest Service's logging proposal.

The Biscuit Fire, located in southern Oregon and northern California, began on July 13, 2002 and burned 499,965 acres encompassing most of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.

The Biscuit Fire Recovery Plan is one of the largest logging projects in U.S. Forest Service history. Under the plan, 19,000 acres of old growth forests and roadless wildlands would be logged, but the environmentalists say the plan is not about forest recovery but about enriching logging companies.

Helicopter hovers over a forest in the Horse Creek area (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

Citizen monitors have confirmed and documented the fact that large trees are being cut down on the Horse timber sale. The 2.5 million board foot timber sale on 125 acres is located near the northwestern border of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.

The trees are being taken off by helicopter, which avoids the need for roadbuilding, but the environmentalists say the removal of old growth in this isolated forest does nothing to restore the forest or protect forest communities from wildfires.

"After spending an entire day watching logging contractors with Columbia Helicopters cut down large trees in this incredibly remote section of the Siskiyou National Forest we can safely say that this Biscuit Logging Plan has absolutely nothing to do with forest restoration or community protection," said Tim Ream, part of a team of citizens monitoring the contentious logging.

"We would encourage the public to visit the Horse timber sale and see for themselves. Logging is not restoration and cutting down large trees is not fuel reduction," Ream said.

Hills in the Fiddler area burned in the Biscuit Fire (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

The group alleges that a report by Professor John Sessions of the Oregon State University (OSU) School of Forestry "calling for up to 2 billion board feet of logging in the Biscuit fire area," written in return for a $1 million donation to the school by Columbia Helicopters, was used to justify the logging increase.

Professor Sessions told ENS that his report, "does not recommend any specific level of salvage."

The report, "The Biscuit Fire: Management Options for Forest Regeneration, Fire and Insect Risk Reduction and Timber Salvage," does say, "as much as two billion board feet may be economically accessible depending upon an array of policy decisions and funding."

"Those policy decisions," explains Sessions, "depend on goals for reforestation, fish and wildlife, watershed recovery, recreation, future fire protection, employment, and the speed at which agency plans could be implemented."

By now, two years after the fire, he says, "More than 40 percent of the economic value of the fire-killed trees has already been lost due to deterioration and this closes options for restoration."

Sessions said his report did not recommend any specific level of reforestation. "We estimated that the upper limit for accelerated forest restoration was about 130,000 acres of the 350,000 acres that burned. The Forest Service has chosen to actively reforest about one-third of that amount," he said.

Oregon State University Professor John Sessions on campus (Photo courtesy OSU)

Many individuals and companies support higher education in a state where the universities have become "state-assisted rather than state-supported," Sessions said.

Columbia's support is appreciated, said Sessions, but the College of Forestry has received many larger gifts, "the largest, $24 million, from a small woodland owner in western Oregon."

Sessions, who holds the positions of University Distinguished Professor of Forestry and Stewart Professor of Forest Engineering, said that his professorship is "supported by the generous gift from an alumnus whose family paid for one-half of our Forestry building, Peavy Hall, built our university conference center, the Lasells Stewart Center, and continues to support graduate fellowships for students who cannot finance their graduate education." The family is that of LaSells and Jessie Hills Stewart and their sons and daughter.

The three main messages in the Sessions report are, first that it is possible to restore conifer dominated forests that have intensely burned in less than half the time as compared to walking away - 80 years rather than 160 years or more.

The Biscuit Fire began on July 12, 2002 and was finally contained on August 31. (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

But Biscuit Fire Recovery Plan not only is one of the largest logging projects on record, it is the first major logging project within national forest inventoried roadless areas since the Roadless Area Conservation Rule was promulgated nearly three years ago, in the last days of the Clinton administration.

The environmental groups say the planned logging would "irreparably damage one of America's premier natural landscapes" and would contravene the Northwest Forest Plan, established in 1994 during the Clinton administration to protect both old growth forests, known as late-successional reserves and the wildlife and fish that depend upon them.

More than two-thirds of the forest land targeted for logging after the Biscuit fire is located in late-successional reserves, commonly known as old growth.

A federal appeals court in September blocked logging of old growth forest reserves burned in the Biscuit fire until a lawsuit brought by environmental groups is decided. Seven post-fire timber sales on 6,600 acres in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers Area are at issue.

A three judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency injunction sought by environmentalists. The groups want the late-successional reserves to be left to recover from the fire on their own.

Biscuit fire area hillside covered with bear grass in bloom (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

"These ancient forest reserves were designed for forest protection, not forest destruction," said Marc Fink, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center. “The Forest Service is using the Biscuit fire as an excuse to log large old trees that would otherwise be off limits."

But on the Horse timber sale, logging is proceeding. The Horse sale was sold to the Silver Creek Timber Co. of Merlin, Oregon for $313,950 at the end of July, but the entire Horse timber sale has been subcontracted to Columbia Helicopters.

The logging crews cutting down trees in the Horse timber sale told the citizen monitors that Silver Creek would have nothing to do with the cutting, processing or transporting of trees.

Ninety percent of all acres proposed for logging are within the watershed of the National Wild and Scenic Illinois River, a source of clean water for wild salmon and tourism dollars for local businesses.

The National Forest Protection Alliance says the area was not as badly burned as the forest industry and the Bush administration claims, and it should be left alone to restore itself naturally. "While repeatedly referred to as catastrophic, devastating and unnatural, the fact is that 84 percent of the Biscuit fire area was either unburned or burned at low to moderate intensity," the group said.

While this week's logging in the Horse timber sale is the first official logging to take place under the post-fire plan, nearly 29 million board feet of large trees have already been cut down and hauled away from the Biscuit fire area as a result of what the Forest Service calls "hazard" tree logging.

Things have started going wrong already. Silver Creek Lumber had their Biscuit "hazard" tree logging operations in the Flat Top area suspended this summer for illegally logging trees in the Kalmiopsis Wildnerness. Silver Creek is also under a federal investigation by the Forest Service for illegally logging more than 100 trees in the Flat Top area.

A warning from the U.S. Forest Service to people who intend to travel into the area. About 318 miles of the Siskiyou National Forest Trails, both wilderness and non-wilderness, have been affected by the Biscuit Fire. The Forest Service says travel and camping on these trails will be more difficult and potentially dangerous due to the effects of the fire.