White House Shelves salvage logging program
12/14/96
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c The Chronicle Publishing Company
Saturday, December 14, 1996
c 1996 San Francisco Chronicle
White House Shelves Salvage Logging Program
Bowing to conservationists, the Clinton administration ordered an
early halt yesterday to ``salvage'' logging that was to continue in
national forests through December 31 under a controversial waiver of
laws protecting fish and wildlife. Agriculture Undersecretary James
Lyons signed a directive prohibiting the Forest Service from
advertising any additional timber sales the rest of the year under
the ``salvage timber rider.'' The directive brings to an end one
of the Clinton administration's most contentious environmental
battles. The industry-backed waiver approved by Congress and signed
into law by President Clinton in July 1995 was intended to expedite
logging of dead and dying trees to reduce fire risks.
Environmentalists had accused the Agriculture Department's Forest
Service of abusing the program -- cutting live trees and rushing to
complete last-minute salvage logging in sensitive areas before the
temporary suspension of environmental safeguards expires December 31.
``Effective at the close of business Friday, December 13, 1996, the
Forest Service should not advertise any further'' timber sales under
the salvage provision, Lyons wrote in the directive to acting Forest
Service Chief Dave Unger.
`EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES'
Lyons said in the memorandum that salvage sales already being
advertised for bid could continue and that he would consider any
additional ``extraordinary circumstances'' that would warrant
allowing additional logging. The premature end to the salvage
operation caught timber industry leaders by surprise. ``It's an
egregious disregard for the law,'' said Donn Zea, spokesman for the
California Forestry Association. ``It shows a lack of sensitivity to
the businesses and communities that are depending on these sales.''
Several conservation groups had organized a mass telephone campaign
for Monday to try to persuade President Clinton to cancel all
remaining salvage sales. ``Our national forests have been spared an
end-of-the-year logging assault by the timber industry,'' said Jay
Watson, regional director of the Wilderness Society. ``The
administration put to an end one of the worst environmental policies
ever passed by Congress,'' he said. ``The timber industry will once
again have to obey the environmental laws that protect our forests.''
EFFECT ON CALIFORNIA
In California, Watson said the directive means that between two and
three dozen timber sales that would have been offered under the
salvage law will have to be offered with the usual environmental
reviews and citizen appeals. As recently as Wednesday, Forest Service
officials had said that hundreds of millions of board feet of timber
across thousands of acres might still be sold before the end of the
year under the waiver, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and northern
Rocky Mountains. The biggest complaint from environmentalists was
that the rider temporarily ended the right of citizens to challenge
the logging through administrative appeals and limited their ability
to block the harvests in court. A recent federal interagency report
found some live green trees were being cut under the salvage program.