Lassen timber harvest may soar, Record Searchlight


U.S. official backs plan for 11 forests along the Sierra range

By Alex Breitler, Record Searchlight
November 20, 2004

A top U.S. Forest Service official has approved a regional plan that would nearly quadruple timber harvesting on the Lassen National Forest.
The Sierra Nevada Forest Plan would boost logging in 11 forests along the Sierra Nevada range, where the government says skinny, overcrowded trees could fuel intense wildfires.
Logging on the Lassen forest would jump from 21 million board feet of timber per year to about 81 million board feet, officials said. That's enough wood to build more than 8,000 homes, but not nearly as much as the forest once yielded -- roughly 200 million board feet in 1987, for example.
The overall plan calls for cutting medium-sized trees less than 30 inches in diameter to pay for the removal of more small trees.
Conservationists say the logging will curtail habitat for sensitive species like the California spotted owl. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer on Friday called the plan an "assault" on the forests and threatened a lawsuit.
The Bay Area-based conservation group Earthjustice said Anderson-based Sierra Pacific Industries is "the only winner" under the plan.
Although the company owns vast timberlands in the north state and down the west side of the Sierra, it still depends on trees harvested from Forest Service lands, Sierra Pacific spokesman Ed Bond said Friday.
A mill in Susanville closed earlier this year because of a lack of public timber, Bond said.
"The (Bush) administration feels they have to do more in the Sierra Nevada in order to minimize catastrophic wildfires," Bond said. "If it results in more smaller trees being taken out and purchased by sawmills, that's a good thing."
The new numbers are approximate, Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said Friday. "It's impossible to say that's exactly what's going to happen in a certain year," he said.
But the extra thinning should be noticeable as soon as next summer. A Lassen spokeswoman said the work wouldn't be concentrated, butwould take place in widespread areas across the forest, which includes eastern Shasta and Tehama counties.
The new plan is a revision of a 2001 proposal by the Clinton administration to help old-growth forests recover in the Sierra. But recent severe fire seasons and a need for more aggressive management of forest fuels led to a yearlong review of the original proposal.
Officials have said the new plan would provide about 2,000 new jobs throughout the Sierra. It would yield $22 million more in timber revenue than the original plan, and would cost about $5 million less.
Although 6,241 appeals were filed in protest of the revised plan, only 26 were "unique or otherwise individual" appeals, the Forest Service said. The remaining 6,215 were "nearly identical letters or petitions."
In an 87-page document released Thursday, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth affirmed most of the plan, although he admitted there was "inherent uncertainty" as to how the spotted owl would fare.
About 6 percent of the owl's habitat would be destroyed. However, by reducing catastrophic fire the owls of the next century would have more habitat than today, the Forest Service says.
Conservationists dispute that, saying owls live less than two decades and would face imminent threat before conditions improve.
Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said in a prepared statement that the plan marks a return to the "old days of 'get out the cut.'"
"Thankfully, we still have the courts to ensure that our forests are managed responsibly," he said.
Reporter Alex Breitler can be reached at 225-8344 or at abreitler@redding.com