Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Surprise, Surprise - Environmental group opposes timber sale

A 2,000-acre thinning project in Oregon’s Mount Hood National Forest has come under fire from environmentalists who argue it will destabilize erosion-prone soils. Bark, an environmental group, asked a federal judge in Portland on March 7 to overturn the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of the Jazz timber sale. “This land is inherently unstable,” said Brenna Bell, attorney for Bark, during the oral argument. The commercial thinning of trees isn’t the focus of the lawsuit, she said. Rather, it’s the rebuilding of 12 miles of roads that has drawn the ire of the plaintiffs, who argue the 2,000 acres have been set aside for conservation. The Forest Service is “trying to ram the square peg of a timber sale into the round hole of a restoration project,” said Bell. Bark’s allegations were countered by attorneys for the Forest Service and Interfor, a wood products company that seeks to process logs from the Jazz timber sale at its sawmill in Molalla, Ore. “The project is going to improve the health of these trees as well as provide wood products for the local economy,” said Beverly Li, attorney for the Forest Service. Roads will only be rebuilt in areas where experts have determined the slopes to be stable, Li said. Increased sediment from rebuilding will be minimal — a change of about 0.1 percent — and Interfor will “obliterate” the roads when the project is finished, she said. If the Forest Service reduced the scope of the project to eliminate all of Bark’s concerns, only 100 acres would be available for thinning, Li said...more

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