Deal legalizes tree-cutting event

Otero County Commissioners and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce will be allowed to legally conduct their emergency tree cutting ceremony Saturday in the Lincoln National Forest. It puts to rest any fears that commissioners or Pearce may be arrested for illegal logging on federal lands. Commissioners have been negotiating with federal attorneys in Albuquerque about cutting down trees on the Lincoln National Forest since Monday morning. Commissioners and the U.S. Forest Service, through the U.S. Attorney's office, have signed an agreement that allows logging on one parcel of land in the forest. The agreement also allows the tree cutting to be done on a parcel of land in Sleepy Grass, located within the forest, at noon Saturday. The event will begin at Zenith Park in Cloudcroft. Commissioners are working on making arrangements for participants and observers to travel by bus to Sleepy Grass for the ceremonial tree cutting because of safety conditions. County Commission chairman Ronnie Rardin said he is pleased that commissioners and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque reached an agreement. "Working with the U.S. Attorney's Office has been a privilege and a pleasure," Rardin said. "I am pleasantly surprised. They're really professional at what they do. Michael Hoses, Elizabeth Martinez and U.S. Attorney Ken Gonzales handled it with professionalism. This agreement is good for both sides -- the county and the Forest Service. In the end, the Forest Service and the county will work together for one goal."...more

The Albuquerque Journal also reported:

As recently as Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque threatened to seek an injunction in federal court to halt the tree-thinning event that Otero County officials have billed as the start of a campaign to restore the Lincoln National Forest to healthy and safe conditions. Ronny Rardin, chairman of the Otero County Commission, said he was pleased that the county and Forest Service are working together, rather than fighting. “This is a milestone in American history – the Forest Service and the county trying to work together, finally, to get our forest back in control to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people up there,” Rardin said during the commission meeting in Boles Acres south of Alamogordo...Otero County officials have contended that, under a state law passed in 2001 in the aftermath of the Cerro Grande Fire that devastated Los Alamos, they did not need Forest Service approval to thin the forest and reduce extreme fire hazards around Cloudcroft...“The work that will take place on Sept. 17 is consistent with the mutually shared goal of reducing the risk of wildfire affecting local communities,” Justin DeJong, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service, said in a prepared statement late Wednesday. County attorney Dan Bryant said county and federal officials have agreed to continue talking about the county’s broader plans to thin 69,000 acres of forest around Cloudcroft...