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50 °F 5 Day Forecast Friday, December 5, 2003 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | eSouthernOregon | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find a Rental Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Email Story to a Friend November 18, 2003 Biscuit fire salvage plan called apolitical By PAUL FATTIG Mail Tribune Salvaging half a billion board feet of fire-killed timber from the 2002 Biscuit fire in the Siskiyou National Forest is the recommendation of local professionals, not outside influences, says Scott Conroy. The supervisor for the Siskiyou and Rogue River national forests stressed that point during a news conference Monday morning releasing the draft environmental impact statement for the Biscuit fire recovery project. "There has not been an outside influence to push us one direction or the other," Conroy said of the preferred plan, responding to a question of whether the Bush administration had requested increased salvage. "Our preferred alternative is our proposal to best meet the objectives out here," he added. Advertisement That alternative would harvest 518 million board feet on 29,000 acres, representing 5.8 percent of the roughly half-million acres burned. The salvage would provide enough material to build 25,900 moderate-sized, three-bedroom, two-bath homes. The 600-page statement contains seven alternatives, from no action to salvaging 1.02 billion board feet. While the timber industry has applauded the preferred alternative, members of the environmental community have balked. An earlier Forest Service salvage called for harvesting only about 100 million board feet of burned timber but was dropped after a controversial study by Oregon State University professor John Sessions indicated as much as 2 billion board feet could be salvaged, putting political pressure on the agency, they said. "We really believe this is politically driven," said Romain Cooper, conservation coordinator for the Siskiyou Regional Education Project in the Illinois Valley. If the preferred alternative is selected, an administrative appeal or legal challenge will result, he warned. "The preferred alternative is extreme — it has no scientific validity and enters the largest block of inventoried roadless area" in the contiguous United States, added Dominick DellaSala, forest ecologist who directs the World Wildlife Fund’s Klamath-Siskiyou program. "This proposal is heading for a national trainwreck," he said, noting concern expressed by environmental activists nationwide. Of the 29,000 acres to be salvaged in the preferred alternative, 12,000 acres are in inventoried roadless areas. "But it does not go into any of the back country recreation areas or the higher quality roadless areas," Conroy said, although noting he expects the roadless area issue to be one of the most contentious in the project. "I anticipate the decision could be appealed because of the inventoried roadless areas," he said, later adding, "We’d like to keep it out of the courts but we don’t have any control over that." In the preferred alternative, the roadless area to be salvaged includes about 200 million board feet of fire-killed timber, said Tom Link, Biscuit fire recovery program manager. Some of the other alternatives don’t enter into inventoried roadless areas. The project’s long-range objectives include restoring wildlife and fish habitat, improving firefighter and urban-interface safety and recovering economic value by logging burned trees, Conroy said. "The salvage aspect is the short-term activity," he said. In addition to the salvage, the preferred alternative would: Replant 50,000 acres of burned trees. Construct 309 miles of fuels management zones, creating 400-foot-wide fuel breaks with brush and small trees removed. Implement 91,000 acres of prescribed fire treatments. Restore 6,750 acres of meadows. Decommission 15 miles of existing roads. Following a 45-day comment period that begins Saturday and ends Jan. 5, the goal is to have a final environmental impact statement completed by the end of March 2004, officials said. Loggers could be salvaging the timber by June of next year, Conroy said. "One of the missions of the Forest Service is to provide wood fiber from national forests in an environmentally sound manner," he said. "Salvage of this magnitude would provide a tremendous benefit to local communities." The salvage proposal could generate up to $250 million, paying for a significant portion of the restoration bill, he said. The project could create 3,000 direct jobs in timber-related industries and 8,000 total jobs, both direct and indirect, he said. There is concern that by the third year after the burn, about 40 percent of the fire-killed trees would no longer be worth salvaging because of rot and insect infestation, officials said. "This (project) is the forest’s highest priority — there is a time element in both salvaging material before it decays and in reforestation before the brush takes over," Conroy said. As a spin-off of the recovery project, the agency will study the fire’s impact on late successional reserves, Link said. Those areas were established in the Northwest Forest Plan to manage for old-growth habitat. About 95,000 acres of spotted owl habitat, which includes late successional reserves, was burned by the fire. "We hope we can look at this over time, monitor results and learn a lot more that will be beneficial not just here locally but in other fire areas," Link said. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] 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 | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback 3 WEEKS FREE! ADVERTISERS SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Real Estate Showcase Food for Thought Hike of the Week Wellness Connection Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Openings Prime Times