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SUNNY Temp: 56 °F Wind: W at 7 mph Sunday, March 2, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend November 13, 2002 Headwaters sues to save big trees By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune An environmental group suing the U.S. Forest Service over a so-called replacement volume timber sale in the Rogue River National Forest says it would ax the suit if the agency removes the big trees from the sale. The Ashland-based Headwaters and Oregon Natural Resources Council in Portland filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland on Friday to block the Silver Sturgis timber sale in the Carberry Creek drainage, which flows into the Applegate River. The objection is over the planned cutting of the large trees in the unit, said Derek Volkart, Headwaters’ conservation coordinator. The plaintiffs say current cutting plans violate both the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act. "We have said that if they put a diameter limit and then make up the volume they would lose (elsewhere), that we would drop the lawsuit," he said, although acknowledging that the sale does focus on some smaller diameter trees. He suggests cutting trees no larger than 20 inches in diameter. But agency officials counter that they already are cutting mainly smaller trees, and that the replacement program was mandated by a previous lawsuit brought by the timber industry. The timber sale meets all environmental laws, they say. Approved by Congress in 1995, the replacement program exchanges logging sales on coastal federal forestland inhabited by the marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird, for sales of similar value and volume on national forests inland. A successful lawsuit by the timber industry required that the agency replace the volumes it had taken away because of concern over the marbled murrelet. The Dillard-based Scott Timber Co., a subsidiary of Roseburg Forest Products, received the Silver Sturgis sale as part of that replacement. Although the entire Silver Sturgis includes some 8 million board feet of timber, only about 1.3 million board feet is replacement volume. One of the goals of the sale is to improve stands of old pine trees which have withstood wildfires but are now dying from competition with young trees, officials said. Just how the lawsuit will impact awarding the contract to Scott Timber is unknown, said John Fertig, acting timber staff officer for the Rogue River and Siskiyou forests. "We were just getting ready to send that to them," he said. "Typically, we don’t enter into contract if litigation is pending. But the program is court-mandated." Noting that combined sales in the Silver Sturgis unit had earlier drawn litigation, Fertig said that "someone up the line" will make a decision on whether to award the contract to Scott Timber. A spokesman for the firm said last month that the company was satisfied with the planned sale and did not want any changes. Early last month, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Department of Agriculture to find alternative timber sales for two controversial replacement volume sales not yet awarded, including the Silver Sturgis. In a letter sent to Mark Rey, the department’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment, Wyden stressed that any replacement volume not include old-growth timber. A member of the subcommittee on forests and public land management, Wyden said the Silver Sturgis could be exchanged for sales like the 30 million-board-foot Five Rivers thinning sale in the Siuslaw forest. Rey visited Southern Oregon over the weekend but was unable to go out to the field, including to the Silver-Sturgis sale, because of bad weather that included heavy snow in the mountains. Meanwhile, Volkart, who supports Wyden’s suggestion, hopes the philosophical logjam can be settled out of court. "I’m optimistic we can come to an agreement on the alternatives," he said. "The Siuslaw has given us this burden. It would be nice to send it back home." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy Website Feedback A D V E R T I S E R S