Oregon: Boy Scouts back in the news, this time making state regulators look bad

This Scout Camp’s forest destruction previously posted here:

“We made mistakes there, and we’re the first to say, ‘Hey, we need to
fix that,’ ” said Chris Havel, a spokesman for the Oregon Department
of Parks and Recreation. Rick Burr, executive for the Crater Lake Boy
Scouts Council, did not return a telephone call or e-mail seeking
comment Monday for this story. The planned corrective measures at the
McCaleb Ranch, which have yet to be scheduled, come in response to the
multipart investigative series published in five Hearst newspapers in
January.
Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/402914_McCaleb10.html

Among other findings, the report determined Boy Scouts councils
nationwide have conducted high-impact commercial logging and land
sales of tens of thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive
timberlands. Among its examples, the investigation cited deviations
from a state approved logging plan at the McCaleb Ranch, a private
Scout camp within the Siskiyou National Forest where the Crater Lake
Council pursued a salvage timber harvest in 2002 and 2003, after the
massive wildfire, known as the Biscuit Burn, burned across the
property.

The park department was one of two state agencies to approve
permits for the logging, which harvested all merchantable fire-killed
trees on the 106-acre ranch. The logging later drew criticism from
environmentalists, who say it should never have been allowed. The
Scouts’ logging occurred next to the Illinois River, a wild salmon
stream protected by state “Scenic Waterway” rules and federal “Wild
and Scenic” river designations.

A state conservation easement signed by the Scouting council and the woman who donated the land also spells out further protections from logging and other activities for the property. Under the terms of the logging permit, the Scouts’ logger was supposed to dispose of all logging debris, avoid logging on steep areas, not take equipment across a small salmon-bearing creek and not log next to that creek.

But a reporter’s site visit in October revealed a massive mound of logging debris, supposed to be burned years ago, remained piled on a ravine’s edge above the protected salmon stream. The investigation also found the logger did not get required approval before taking equipment across, and logging near, the creek. A number of replanted seedlings on the property also have
since withered and died.

Get full text; support writer, producer of the words:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/402914_McCaleb10.html