Forest Service Triples Timber Sale

"How many trees was that?". Forest Service Triples Timber Sale Volume after the Sale is Approved.

Serious problems have been discovered in the "Waters Thin Salvage Timber Sale," advertised to be auctioned on April 30th at the Siskiyou National Forest headquarters. Since the volume of timber to be cut has been recently tripled (from 4.0 to 11.7 million board feet), impacts on Coho Salmon, Chinook Salmon, and Steelhead in Waters Creek (near Grants Pass) could be nearly three times greater than what was approved in the official Decision Notice and Environmental Assessment last November.

"It looks like the Forest Service is taking unfair advantage of the ban on citizen's rights imposed by the 'Logging without Laws' rider on the 1995 Rescissions Act," stated Headwaters' President Julie Norman. "Now the timber corporations are being paid back for their campaign contributions by cutting forests above prime salmon habitat with no environmental analysis. Shielded from citizen appeals and court review, the Forest Service is doing things that they could not have gotten away with before. Headwaters is calling upon top Clinton Administration officials to stop the auction next Tuesday, before irretrievable harm is done."

By increasing the amount of forest to be cut from 4 million board feet to 11.7 million board feet without further public input or analysis, the Siskiyou National Forest is risking damage to two species that are already in such serious trouble that they have been proposed for listing as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act: the Coastal Coho Salmon and the Klamath Mountain Province Steelhead Trout.

Water quality and fisheries values will also be put at risk by the cutting of large trees on steep slopes close to the creeks, in violation of the President's Forest Plan. Surveys by Richard Hart of Headwaters, and by Richard Brock, found that Riparian Reserves in one area had been reduced to half the required minimum width of 150 feet on each side of one stream, and that the amount marked for cutting was double the amount approved by the official Decision Notice.

"This is not a light touch thinning-from-below next to the streams, as we had been told by Forest Service documents. Instead it's a simple high-grading of some of the best and biggest overstory trees," stated Richard Hart, Headwaters Research & Monitoring Coordinator. "Many of these trees are all that's holding the steep slopes and unstable soils in place. If they go, fisheries habitat and water quality will follow."

The Waters Thin Timber Sale was re-named as "Salvage" after the Logging without Laws Rider was signed into law last July. Salvage sales under the Rider are required to be added on as extra impacts, over and above the impacts from the normal allowable cut. Headwaters asserts that there is no justification for calling Waters Thin a salvage sale.

After writing the Siskiyou National Forest in support of the design of this timber sale last May, Headwaters is especially disappointed with how things have turned out. "It's as if the Galice Ranger District just shut down it's public input department," stated Julie Norman. "The District Ranger has refused to answer simple questions over the phone, turned down our Freedom of Information Act Request, and failed to invite us on an early April public tour. The President has assured the public that normal process will be followed as much as possible, despite the Rider. But the Siskiyou National Forest just isn't listening."

PRESS RELEASE April 26, 1996.