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More
than 100 timber sales on the West Coast have been put on
hold by the courts because the Forest Service didn't meet
the requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan.
On Monday,
environmentalists turned in 700,000 comments
supporting the Clinton roadless area plan.
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It's about 60 miles from the Donald Duncan building in
downtown Portland to a 500-year-old Douglas fir called Sunset
in the Mount Hood National Forest. But for the past 16 months,
two to five people have been living on platforms in that
and another nearby tree to protest the same timber sales
that transformed Tre Arrow from an obscure rock climber
into an environmental rock star.
With Arrow (a.k.a. Michael J. Scarpitti) voluntarily grounded,
the action is headed back to the forest. This Sunday, Cascadia
Forest Alliance is holding a "Closure Crossing" at noon--a
planned violation of the July 7 Forest Service order barring
public access to portions of the Eagle Creek timber sales.
"The reason we're forced to used nonviolent, civil-disobedience
direct action is because all other legal avenues have been
eliminated," says Donald Fontenot of CFA. "This is the last
thing
we can do."
Ever since the sales, which comprise 1,030 acres, were
proposed, environmentalists have called them illegal, claiming
the scope and methods violate environmental laws. But the
Forest Service has deemed them perfect examples of the Northwest
Forest Plan at work. It's difficult to know who is correct:
There are no outside audits of timber sales, and the traditional
check on the agency--a lawsuit--is not available at Eagle,
because the sale is part of the 1995 Salvage Rider, which
makes it immune from a legal challenge. The result--according
to Cascadia Forest Alliance, the Oregon Natural Resource
Council, the Sierra Club and other green groups--is a sale
that breaks the rules. Even the logging company, Vanport
Manufacturing, has criticized the Forest Service for scheduling
heavy logging in some of the areas, pointing out that a
cut done two years ago caused a massive blowdown in surrounding
trees, which increased the fire and insect infestation risk.
Other environmental concerns include:
1. Water: Eagle Creek originates in the Salmon Huckleberry
Wilderness area, and the south fork passes through the Eagle
sale area before hooking up with the Clackamas River, which
sends water to the taps of the 185,000 people in West Linn,
Lake Oswego and Oregon City. All three cities have asked
the Forest Service to be careful with their watershed. The
Forest Service claims it has been, and the tests done after
the winter of 1999 on Eagle Creek found that the water quality
was the highest of any watershed in the Clackamas Basin.
Environmentalists say that's not relevant because there
were no tests done before the logging started. Besides,
says Jeremy Hall of the Oregon Natural Resource Council,
before the 1996 flood that sent sediment rushing downhill
into the drinking water for the city of Salem, the Forest
Service said logging in the Santiam River watershed would
not threaten water quality either.
2. Roads: About 600 acres of the Eagle site was
inventoried as roadless national forest. Still, while Bill
Clinton tries to get his green card stamped by cutting back
on road building, the larger debate is whether logging should
be allowed in those pristine areas at all. Either way, Eagle
will not qualify for protection because the timber has already
been sold. Still, according to the sales plan, the Forest
Service will not be building roads there. The 14 million
board feet in the roadless area, or approximately 2,800
logging trucks' worth, will be taken out by helicopter.
"I think we're already meeting the spirit of the roadless
area," says Glen Satchet, spokesman for the Forest Service.
3. Critters: In 1996, when the Eagle sales were
approved, the Forest Service's environmental-impact statement
included surveys for the red tree vole, spotted owls, bats,
and some mushrooms and fungi. Environmentalists say that
since then, the scope of the surveys has been expanded to
include more species and there should be a supplemental
environmental impact statement done. Also, Hall says, the
Forest Service has done such a sketchy job on the Eagle
surveying that if it weren't for the salvage rider, they
say, logging would have been halted along with the rest
of the western sales.
The Forest Service denies that. "These sales were planned
through an environmental-impact statement with full public
disclosure and involvement," says Satchet. "They were planned
to meet all the standards and laws of the Northwest Forest
Plan."
4. Trees: Eagle Creek is not technically an old-growth
forest because a forest fire swept through the area about
120 years ago. But pockets of the woods were not wiped out
by the flames, and those groves have trees up to 500 years
old. The Forest Service says it will not be cutting anything
older than 200 years old, but environmentalists say that
isn't true. Fontenot claims what happens on the ground doesn't
match the Forest Service statements, and he's seen old-growth
trees get wiped out at Eagle. The best solution, he says,
is for Eagle to be folded into the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness
Area, which it buttresses, so it would have a chance to
become old-growth on its own.
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