Forest Service admits "serious" mistake in logging reserve (Babyfoot)

[struggle4progress]

By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The U.S. Forest Service admitted today to making a "serious" mistake that allowed 17 acres to be logged inside a rare tree reserve as part of the salvage harvest of timber burned by the 2003 Biscuit fire.

The logging inside the 350-acre Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, created in 1966 to protect Brewer spruce and other rare plant species on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, was discovered last week by the Siskiyou Project, a local environmental group, after the Fiddler timber sale was harvested and a forest closure intended to keep out protesters was lifted.

Forest Service personnel mismarked the border of a unit of the Fiddler timber sale next to the botanical area — though just who did it or how it happened was not immediately clear, said Illinois Valley District Ranger Pam Bode. Normally trees are marked with stapled tags and paint to show the boundaries of timber sales and reserves within them. <snip>

Siskiyou Project counted 290 stumps inside the botanical area, including one that measured three feet in diameter that was 234 years old, said Ullian. <snip>

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002450859_webbiscuit24.html

[Erika]

1. W at work

They won't be happy until we have no wooded areas to leave our descendants. They will show our children films of trees and wild flower meadows as in Soylent Green.

[Canuckistanian]

2. "Healthy Forests" at work, Ladies and Gentlemen.

This is the true face of Shrub-style "ecological preservation".

Let's preserve the old-growth forest for the logging industry.

[Erika]

3. This literally sickens me

and I hope the W administration is held responsible.

[jeffreyi]

4. In this day of GIS and

GPS, that's pretty damned difficult to pull off. What an Infuriating, Stupid, and Incompetent thing to do.