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May 14 , 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels February 23, 2004 Send the Biscuit back to the drawing board By Dominick DellaSala Ashland The Forest Service's draft plan for the Biscuit burn area has many scientists, including myself, scratching our heads. Some of the numbers paint too rosy a picture for salvage logging while downplaying environmental damages. And at least now we know why. A preliminary report by the Forest Service's own researchers says that the agency overestimated the volume of trees for salvage logging by a whopping 30 percent. Alarmed by this news, Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden requested that the Forest Service come clean with how it arrived at the numbers. But mistakes like this are common in the Forest Service's plan, known as the Biscuit Draft Environmental Impact Statement or DEIS. It's important that we get this project right because what happens on the Biscuit will influence how other burned areas are treated as well. As it stands, the plan outlined in the DEIS would be one of the largest timber sales in U.S. history with more than half a billion board feet of timber coming largely from roadless areas, old growth reserves, and sensitive watersheds. That amounts to 100,000 log trucks of timber - enough trucks to stretch in a line along from the Mexican to Canadian borders. A better approach is to stay out of those sensitive areas. Fire has repeatedly shaped the magnificent diversity of this landscape for centuries and natural recovery combined with prudent restoration in places is the best remedy. That includes thinning trees near homes to help make communities "fire-safe," thinning overly stocked and flammable tree plantations, and logging only in the places already designated under the Northwest Forest Plan. Relying on the DEIS is a recipe for disaster. Many scientists concluded that it was poorly written and appeared to have been rushed - even "fudged" - in places to achieve unrealistic timber targets. Scientists with backgrounds in satellite mapping, soils, forest ecology, fisheries management, and restoration pointed to numerous flaws, including: o Restorative benefits of post-fire salvage logging were grossly exaggerated and environmental impacts understated. o Fire risks and flammable fuels may actually increase due to the accumulations of twigs and branches left behind as logging slash - the Forest Service can only treat about a third of the slash because of access problems and budgetary concerns. o Erosion estimates from salvage logging included a "fudge factor" with an accuracy rate of plus or minus 50 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency also raised concerns about excessive sediment flowing into streams from roads and firelines that could choke fish spawning areas. o A separate mapping analysis indicated that the Forest Service underestimated by 21 percent the amount of roadless areas to be logged. In fact, as much as 40 percent of the units mapped for salvage logging mistakenly have live trees even though the agency denies live trees will be logged. A principal architect's of the Northwest Forest Plan, Dr. Jerry Franklin, had this to say: "salvage logging of large snags and down boles does not contribute to recovery of late-successional (older forests) forest habitat; in fact, the only activity more antithetical to the recovery process would be removal of surviving green trees from burned sites." Apparently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service agreed noting that salvage logging could harm roadless areas that serve as "strongholds" for salmon and important habitat for the threatened spotted owl. The magnitude of logging on the Biscuit is unprecedented and therefore of great concern to scientists. Scientific interest in the Siskiyous dates back to the late 1800s when pioneering botanists explored its rugged terrain to catalogue numerous plants previously unknown to science. And more recently the area received praise from Pulitzer Prize winner, Dr. Edward O. Wilson, as a proposed Siskiyou Wild Rivers National Monument. Certainly an area as important as the Siskiyou Wild Rivers deserves a process built on trust and sound science. Real solutions are within reach if the agency chooses instead to use the best available science to achieve fire-safe communities and ecosystem recovery rather than inflating the numbers. Dominick A. DellaSala, Ph.D is a forest ecologist and the director of the World Wildlife Fund's Klamath-Siskiyou Program www.worldwildlife.org/klamathsiskiyou DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams