Judge releases timber sales in spotted owl habitat ending the gridlock
— Mar 25th, 1994
SEATTLE — Clinton administration officials say a judge's approval of 24 federal timber sales in northern spotted owl habitat raises hopes for ending a deadlock over logging in the Pacific Northwest's old-growth forests.
The affected timber amounts to toothpicks compared with the total at stake, but administration officials were cheered by acceptance of the logging by environmental groups.
"While the sales are small in volume, they are enormous in the message they send," said James R. Lyons, an assistant agriculture secretary with jurisdiction over the U.S. Forest Service.
"By bringing in the parties and engaging in a serious, good-faith dialogue, we have shown that we can achieve consensus. This kind of inclusive process is clearly the key to ending the gridlock we have experienced for so long," Lyons said in a prepared statement.
"We cannot say that the millennium is here ... or that the president's forest plan has been enacted," said Peter Coppelman, deputy assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources, who argued the government's case for approving the sales Thursday in U.S. District Court.
"It's a small opening. I hope that this ruling is a ray of hope, a ray of hope that the gridlock on the forests in the Pacific Northwest can come to an end," Coppelman said.
The decision by Judge William L. Dwyer covered about 2,000 acres with 31 million board feet of timber, more than half of it in the Rogue River and Umpqua national forests of southwestern Oregon.
That amount is inadequate to keep even one sawmill open a year, Mark Rey, vice president of the American Forest & Paper Association, has estimated.
Barring hitches, the timber sales will be advertised from Monday to April 14 and bids will be opened April 7-29, said Sandy Berger, a spokeswoman in the Forest Service's regional office in Portland, Ore.
In May 1991, at the urging of 12 environmental groups, Dwyer barred timber sales on more than 60,000 acres in the national forests of Washington, Oregon and northern California until the government developed a 10-year logging plan to meet environmental requirements.
The latest deadline to submit that plan is April 14. President Clinton has projected it would allow the logging of about 1.2 billion board feet of timber annually.
Millions of additional acres in Pacific Northwest federal forests have been closed to logging by administrative and other judicial actions, some for reasons other than owl protection.
In his ruling Thursday, Dwyer noted that all remaining timber sales covered by his previous injunction would remain on hold until "the legality of the forthcoming (10-year plan) is decided."
All 12 environmental groups agreed in October to refrain from opposing the release of as many as 54 timber sales if specified wildlife protections were assured.
The U.S. Forest Service subsequently proposed the 24 sales in the Klamath National Forest in California; Willamette, Umpqua, Rogue River, Mount Hood and Winema forests in Oregon, and the Wenatchee National Forest in Washington.
Three covering 4.3 million board feet are California, two with 1.3 million board feet are in in Washington and the rest, with more than 80 percent of the timber, are in Oregon.
The lone objection was filed last month by the Forest Conservation Council of Eugene, Ore., and four other groups that were not parties to the original case: the Kalmiopsis Audubon Society, Native Forest Council, Friends of Breitenbush Cascades and Save the West.
None of the other 11 groups in the original case objected to the 24 sales.
Peggy Hennessy of Portland, a lawyer for the Forest Conservation Council, told Dwyer on Wednesday the government failed to modify the timber sales as promised to meet tougher environmental restrictions.
She said Thursday a decision would be made soon on whether to appeal Dwyer's ruling or to challenge the sales individually on grounds other than any raised previously in court.
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