Politics hold sway in Biscuit logging, wilderness plan

[nosmokes]

truthout Editor's Note: Never has there been a more politicized timber sale than the plan to log the biggest roadless area on the West Coast - the Biscuit "fire recovery" area in the Siskiyou National Forest of Oregon. This project has inspired the Bush administration to new heights of creative shell-gaming in their campaign to win Oregon's swing voters. As you read the article below, you will see how pleased they are with their ploy of offering the carrot of new wilderness protection along with the stick of the largest federal timber sale in U.S. history. What is not revealed is that the wilderness proposal is mostly for areas that would never be logged anyway, either because of poor soils that don't grow big trees or because they are too steep and remote. What is also not public knowledge is the fact that a wilderness proposal as part of a timber sale plan is utterly meaningless: only Congress can designate wilderness areas. But it makes for a nice spin. - K.W.

additional information at www.biscuitfire.com

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Politics hold sway in Biscuit logging, wilderness plan
A careful strategy in an election year leads to a protection effort while cutting into roadless forests
Tuesday, June 08, 2004

MICHELLE COLE and MICHAEL MILSTEIN


Nine days before the U.S. Forest Service announced an unprecedented blueprint for restoring slopes burned by the Biscuit fire, the president's point man on national forests slipped into Portland to share sushi with a political adversary.

Inside a private tatami room at the Sinju Restaurant in the Pearl District, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey told Josh Kardon, chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, of the government's decision to take truckloads of blackened trees from the Siskiyou National Forest. The plan for the first time would allow loggers into roadless forests in the Lower 48 states set aside by President Clinton.

That is just the sort of approach that earned President Bush low marks from environmental groups and Democrats such as Wyden. But Rey had brought a sweetener, something that Wyden and Gov. Ted Kulongoski had been pushing for: more protected wilderness.
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"The Forest Service had an opportunity to demonstrate tremendous leadership, get a slew of sticks out, and they would have satisfied their critics and would still have had one of the biggest timber sales in years," said Wood, now vice president for conservation at Trout Unlimited. "Instead, it's going to be tons of litigation."
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Michael Milstein: 503-294-7689; [e-mail] Michelle Cole: 503-294-5143; [e-mail]
© 2004 The Oregonian