It Has Its Humor

Lois M. Scheel

1994

Published in:

Northwest Area News, June 1994, No. 125

The Oregon Natural Resources Council has appealed the Siskiyou National Forest's plan to log off an old-growth area, habitat of the northern spotted owl, but it turns out that this project is just a meadow restoration one.

"They're going to clearcut 75 acres of forest and get 2 million board feet (of timber). That is plain and simple a timber sale," said an ONRC staff attorney.

Not so, says the Chetco Ranger District's assistant timber manager. "The motivation for the Upper Chetco Meadow Restoration Project is simply to rejuvenate a meadow that has become overgrown with trees."

And then there is the Forest Service 's unproven argument that logging will save eagles. It is asking a federal judge to allow salvage logging where the owls live in Oregon's Winema National Forest. "Some cutting is needed to keep bugs and disease from killing trees with nests of bald eagles."

Government lawyers want U.S. District Judge William Dwyer in Seattle to grant an exception to his logging injunction.. Dwyer ordered the logging ban across millions of acres of national forests in Oregon, Washington and northern California in May 1991, claiming that government logging plans were violating U.S. environmental laws protecting the owls and other wildlife.

The Forest Service has attempted to persuade the judge to lift the ban in the past and failed. Their request was to be allowed to log more than 6 million board feet of timber, mostly white fir, over about 500 acres in the Winema National Forest east of Crater Lake., one of Oregon's most treasured environmental wonders. "We are asking to protect the valuable habitat of the threatened northern bald eagle that likely will be destroyed unless swift management action is taken," said a Forest Service spokeswoman. Environmentalists say it may be a ploy to free up some timber for harvest without protecting either bird.

One can't help but wonder how the forests and their flora and fauna managed to survive before institutions such as the Forest Service were invented to protect them.