Oregon: The last of Bush’s illegal old growth timber sales
The BLM’s Coos Bay District is proposing 1,400 acres of clearcuts and
200 acres of thinning on more than 50 scattered parcels in the Coast
Range near the small towns of Langlois and Sixes.
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Though the thinning projects would cut trees in buffer zones along
streams intended to protect salmon under the 1994 Northwest Forest
Plan that Whopper replaces, the clearcuts stay out of former reserves
for northern spotted owls and other old growth forest species. The
Edson Regen project would not be ready for logging until 2010, by
which time BLM hopes the housing bust and dismal timber market will
have improved, said spokeswoman Megan Harper. Last month a thinning
project in the same area failed for the second time to get any takers.
Minimum bids called for a total of $217,596 for 6 million board feet
of various species, BLM records show. Edson Regen would produce 40
million board feet of timber, nearly half the 100 million board feet
BLM sold last year. In all, Whopper calls for 510 million board feet a
year.
Whopper was the Bush administration’s last big effort to boost
logging in the Northwest to increase timber supplies for mills and
federal payments for timber-dependent counties, which get a 50-percent
share of revenues from what are known as O&C Lands managed by BLM. The
Whopper has been sharply criticized by conservation groups for
jettisoning the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging by about 90
percent on federal lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California
in 1994 to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl, salmon and
other species that depend on old growth forests. Whopper faces legal
challenges from both the timber industry and conservation groups for
its failure to consult federal scientists over the potential harm to
salmon, spotted owls and marbled murrelets. “This plan that was come
up with under the Bush administration is really out of step with where
everyone else is moving in terms of forest management,” said Sean
Stevens of Oregon Wild, noting that Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has
proposed a bill to put trees more than 120 years old off-limits to
logging on federal lands.
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