Environmental groups in May hailed the Obama administration's decision to effectively pause development in about 58 million acres of road-free federal forests. Any logging in those forests, about 2 million acres of which are in Oregon, would have to be approved by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the administration said. Now it appears the administration is backing away from that directive, if only a little. This month, the Agriculture Department returned to the Forest Service the authority to undertake certain projects in roadless forests without the secretary's approval. Specifically, local land managers are now free to approve the "cutting, sale, or removal of generally small diameter timber when needed for one of the following purposes: * To improve threatened, endangered, proposed, or sensitive species habitat; or * To maintain or restore the characteristics of ecosystem composition and structure, such as to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire effects within the range of variability that would be expected to occur under natural disturbance regimes of the current climatic period; or * For administrative and personal use, as provided for in Title 36, Code of Federal Regulations 223, where personal use includes activities such as Christmas trees and firewood cutting and where administrative use includes providing materials for activities such as construction of trails, footbridges, and fences."...read more
The memo referred to can be seen here.
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