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Logs may rot on ground Harvested timber can�t be moved because of court order By Paul Fattig Some 2.5 million board feet of timber, felled and bucked, is lying on the ground in the Bureau of Land Management�s Medford District. But not a stick can be harvested. The agency says the downed trees on the Isabella and Poor Bishop timber sales in the Forest Creek drainage near Ruch cannot be removed because they are part of the nearly 180 Pacific Northwest timber sales temporarily halted by a federal court judge�s ruling in Seattle last week. The ruling cited the need to protect salmon habitat. The problem, said Steve Armitage, forest manager for the BLM�s Ashland Resource Area, is that they are small logs whose value deteriorates rapidly if left on the ground. The average diameter of the logs is 13 inches. "Given it�s winter, they�ll probably be good for a couple of months," he said. "But then they�ll dry out and start cracking. Once they start cracking, they lose their value," he added. "Most of the volume is on the outside of small diameter logs." Meanwhile, the timber industry questions whether the BLM or the Forest Service is required to suspend the timber sales as a result of the ruling. Citing the need to protect salmon habitat, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to follow proper regulations when it released 20 biological opinions that cleared the way for the federal timber sales in Oregon, Washington and northern California. NMFS officially withdrew its biological opinions on Tuesday. The ruling resulted from a lawsuit filed by Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund on behalf of several environmental groups as well as the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen�s Association. The goal of the lawsuit isn�t to stop logging but to protect the fishery, said Glen Spain, spokesman for the PCFFA.The ruling prevents NMFS from permitting the sales to proceed in areas that affect salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act. The Isabella and Poor Bishop sales are among five active timber sales that have been suspended in the Medford District. Some 45 sales in the district representing more than 30 million board feet of timber have been affected by the ruling. Some of the sales have yet to be awarded or were already completed. About the same number of sales have been affected by the lawsuit in the Rogue River and Siskiyou national forests. However, there are no active sales affected on the two forests, according to forest officials. The Forest Service probably won�t know until next week exactly how the ruling will affect the 45 timber sales on the two forests, said spokeswoman Mary Marrs. It�s unknown how many board feet of timber in total has been affected by the judge�s ruling. The BLM suspended logging on the Isabella and Poor Bishop sales Wednesday. About 2 million board feet already have been removed from the sales, which originally contained about 15 million board feet of timber. However, the agency is allowing purchaser Superior Lumber Co. of Glendale to remove a half-million board feet of logs that have already been yarded to a landing site. Removal of those logs was for safety and erosion concerns, Armitage said. The agencies shouldn�t be suspending any of the NMFS-approved timber sales already awarded, said Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "Based on a legal analysis done by an industry attorney, we think the agencies are overreacting by halting ongoing timber sales," he said. He was referring to an opinion by Portland attorney Mark Rutzick, who represents the American Forest Resource Council. "It appears to us that it only applies to the outcome of pending cases now at the appeals court in San Francisco," Hill said. In fall 1999, Rothstein ruled that the NMFS was breaking environmental law by approving 27 timber sales in the Umpqua Basin. NMFS has appealed the 1999 ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Rothstein�s ruling halting the nearly 180 federal timber sales last week is expected to remain in effect pending 9th Circuit resolution of the earlier appeal, according to BLM and Forest Service officials. "We think the agencies are leaving themselves open to lawsuits from timber purchasers who aren�t allowed to harvest that timber," Hill said. "Those Douglas fir on the ground can lose their full value by next spring." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.