Biscuit Fire Old Growth Reserves Face Imminent Logging

January 29, 2005

Burned old growth reserve may soon be scene of logging

By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press


GRANTS PASS - A timber company plans to start logging next week in an old growth forest reserve burned by the 2002 Biscuit Fire, setting up a confrontation with environmentalists who believe leaving the dead trees standing is better for fish, wildlife and the forest.

John West, president of Silver Creek Timber Co., said Friday he was just waiting for formal imposition of an appeals court order issued earlier this month.

That order lifted an injunction that had barred logging on two timber sales in an old growth reserve until the resolution of a lawsuit brought by environmentalists.

West said he plans to dispatch the first of up to 85 loggers to begin cutting the 14.5 million board foot Fiddler timber sale once permission is given by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which could happen any day.

``We really don't want to have a big fight over this,'' said West. ``It's dead, burned timber. It's going to create jobs. We are hiring, hopefully, as many local people as we can. It will add to the truck and fuel business, be good for mills.''

West said he did not expect logging to be finished until June, well after the March 22 date for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the lawsuit challenging the logging in old growth reserves.

``We expect protests at the highest level,'' said West. ``We'll have security and law enforcement. The Forest Service will have law enforcement there. We're there to do a job. We expect the law to be enforced on those who don't want to abide by it.''

Don Smith of the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, an environmental group based in Cave Junction, said he was hoping for snow that began falling Friday to continue so that loggers will not be able to get to the Fiddler sale.

``We have accepted some level of logging, but when it comes to Fiddler, that's where we draw the line in the sand,'' said Smith. ``That is due to its ecological value and its economic importance to the Illinois Valley.''

Smith said his group was planning only peaceful, lawful protests, and was not in touch with anyone planning to block logging by putting up barricades or camping out in trees.

``They want to get this logged before this goes back before a judge in March so that it's moot, so the damage is over with,'' said Smith. ``Our option as far as getting a court to determine whether it's legal or not is being undercut.''

Barbara Ullian of the Siskiyou Project said she was also calling on the Forest Service to follow its policy of not allowing logging during the rainy season in areas such as the Fiddler sale to prevent the spread of deadly Port Orford cedar root rot.



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dead trees = organic carbon future topsoil, removing these trees would prevent formation of topsoil in the future..

When a tree dies in a fire or from old age, disease, etc. that doesn't mean the tree is useless to the forest ecosystem. To the contrary, it provides shelter, food and fuel to a diverse range of organisms from woodpeckers to fungi. When the tree is decomposing, it gradually releases minerals (Mg, Fe, etc)and nutrients locked inside hardwood cellulose. These eventually become the topsoil (organic humus) substrate and over time these nutrients and minerals percolate down into the lower soil horizons where they are taken up by growing roots or fungal mychorrhiza and used to make new tissue or cellulose for growing trees. Some minerals may be absorbed from the surrounding mother material, but the minerals in the original foundation are usually locked in crystalline formation and don't make themselves available to the extent that the perculating minerals from decomposition above seep down with rainwater. The more minerals and humus available in topsoil from tree decomposition, the faster and larger living trees can grow. By removing the source of topsoil, salvage logging, like clearcuts, takes from the future forest health for a short term profit..

GW Bush, Cheney, Hurwitz, other timber barons and their political allies don't care much 4 long term sustainability. The ruling corporate class wants the quick fast money in the form of stealing petroleum from Iraq or stealing from the forests to show some short term solutions to a more complex problem. One seasons worth of jobs in salvage logging isn't worth the price of future generation being left with spindly plantation forests of slow growing clearcut/salvage scars that resemble clay hardpan ovens..

Using locally grown/harvested hemp for our paper needs and limited selective logging (never tried by corporate timber) in locally cared for community forests would give people self employed jobs without corporate dependency. Pulping hemp into paper would use less energy, less chlorine bleach pollution since hemp has less lignin that makes wood hard..

The need for forest harvesting is overstated, houses can be built smaller and more compact and/or with recycled materials instead of destroying forest ecosystems. Developers are equally responsible for this corporate timber grab by building huge McMansions 4 yuppies while low income housing (more efficient use of wood, shared walls) never gets built because it isn't profitable..

While Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier sit in jail accused of crimes they didn't commit, the world's greatest criminals occupy the Presidency and the boardrooms of multinational timber, petroleum and chemical corporations, poisoning the air, land and sea while they mercilessly extract natural resources in the pursuit of short term profit..

The people of Earth are coming together in opposition to the corporate imperialist government headed by GW Bush. Where there is tyranny, there is equal resistance!!