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Logger, environmentalist find common ground By PAUL FATTIG YREKA -- Environmentalist Kyle Haines and logger Bill Turner didn't stand toe-to-toe with clinched fists when they met, loudly assailing each other's parentage. Instead, they listened quietly to each other's concerns as they walked a timber sale unit last week. In the end, the environmentalist representing the Klamath Forest Alliance and the logger representing Timber Products Co., each from historically disagreeing factions, walked away in agreement. While both caution that the agreement pertains only to one small issue in the wide array of disagreement between the two groups, they each say it's a start. At issue was hauling out some 870,000 board feet of timber already on the ground on the Jack Heli timber sale west of Weed in the Klamath National Forest. Cutting at the sale, which included 8.5 million board feet of timber, had been halted by a federal judge's decision last month. The agreement calls for hauling the logs out by helicopter during the wet season. "I'm encouraged by it," said Turner, timber procurement manager for the Oregon-based firm. "It was the right thing for this volume. It's a step in the right direction." Haines, forest protection coordinator for the group, agreed. "If we are really going to have progress, there needs to be these kinds of meetings between environmental groups and timber companies," Haines said. "There are ways to log environmentally, but you have to go out on the land and talk together. "This was pretty limited in scope -- we're talking about downed trees," he added. "But we were able to work it out." The meeting was set up when U.S. District Judge William Dwyer in Seattle temporarily placed timber sales totaling 220 million board feet on hold after he determined the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management had failed to conduct adequate surveys for 77 rare species as required by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. The law requires that the agencies conduct individual surveys for each sensitive species. The August decision affected timber sales in the Pacific Northwest, including some on the Rogue River National Forest as well as the BLM's Medford District. It was the result of a 1998 lawsuit brought by 13 environmental groups, the Klamath Forest Alliance and the Ashland-based Headwaters coalition among them. As part of his decision, Dwyer asked that the environmental groups and the timber industry try to work out a compromise on affected timber sales where trees had been felled but not hauled before he made his ruling. That included the Jack Heli timber sale a few miles west of Weed and the Happy Thin timber sale near Happy Camp. The latter was purchased by Blue Lake Forest Products near Arcata, which worked out an agreement with the alliance to haul some 750,000 board feet of timber already cut. The agreement was worked out because the firm was able to use helicopters to remove the downed trees without having to haul them on logging roads, Haines said. Said Haines, "I hope there are more opportunities for things like this to happen. But it takes a sincere effort by both parties.'' Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA