Logging company backs out of sale

Swanson Group Inc. has chosen to withdraw from the Scattered Apples sale near Williams that it purchased in a BLM auction in 2002. Federal court-ordered mediation by the agency and conservation plaintiffs resulted in changes that dropped old-growth logging and protected water quality. The company claims these changes make it no longer economically viable.

A Southern Oregon logging company that was the high bidder on a controversial U.S. Bureau of Land Management timber sale is throwing in the towel on the project.

The Glendale-based Swanson Group Inc. has chosen to withdraw from the Scattered Apples sale near Williams that it purchased in a BLM auction in 2002. Federal court-ordered mediation by the agency and plaintiffs resulted in changes that made it no longer economically viable, said Steve Swanson, president of the family-owned firm.

"As a result of this, the counties lose valuable timber receipts, the acres that were part of the forest health project remain unhealthy and we don't have wood to run our mills," a frustrated Swanson concluded.

"And what you end up with is a small group of people running our forests," he added of the plaintiffs.

But Joseph Vaile, campaign coordinator for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, a conservation group based in Ashland that was among those taking the BLM to court over the sale, rejects that characterization.

Following the court order in 2004, the BLM, residents of Williams and KSWC spent months hammering out a solution to the overgrown forest because of wildfire suppression over the decades, he said.

"We came up with what we thought was the most acceptable way to thin Scattered Apples," he said. "It wasn't something everyone was happy with but it was a good-faith effort to come up with a reasonable solution. We put a lot of effort into it.

"We weren't saying 'no' to the project or to logging, just to all the old-growth logging that was included in the original sale," he added.

The mediation chopped 1 million board feet out of the original 3.7 million-board-foot sale, increased the use of helicopters in the harvest and protected much of the old-growth.

The firm's withdrawal from the project means the BLM probably won't return to that specific area until 2009, said Jim Whittington, spokesman for the BLM's Medford District.

"We understand their frustration," he said of Swanson's decision. "They were not a party to the negotiations. We did that with the plaintiffs. A lot of the responsibility for the outcome belongs to us."

But he noted that since the mediation over the project was completed, timber prices have gone down and fuel prices have increased. Much of the harvest would have relied heavily on helicopters to move the logs to a landing where they could be loaded onto trucks.

"When we did the negotiations, we didn't redo the economic analysis," he said. "Now that we have done that, we see it would be tough to make it economical for Swanson."

Yet the firm's decision won't stop the district from planning complex projects like Scattered Apples, whose goal was to improve forest health, reduce the potential for a catastrophic wildfire near a rural community and produce timber for the local economy, Whittington said.

"Every sale is different with different issues," he said. "But we would try to get the purchaser involved in the negotiations in the future. And we will probably spend more time looking at the economic viability."

At the outset, the firm had been enthusiastic about the Scattered Apples project, Swanson said.

"The original project, we were willing to do," he said. "It was really a forest health project from the beginning with a little bit of timber attached to pay for forest health part of it."

The timber company, which Swanson's father and an uncle started in 1951 in Glendale, has modernized its mills and invested in helicopter logging equipment to ensure "that future generations have healthy forests, sustainable wood products and prosperous local governments," he said.

The Swanson Group employs 400 people at its facilities in Glendale, with another 800 working at its plants in Eugene and Springfield.

While the firm supports sustainable logging projects that are both healthy for the land and the industry, those projects must also be financially sustainable for the firm, Swanson said.

"The deal wasn't economical," he said. "They removed units that were more valuable, replacing them with less valuable ones. They relocated roads, requiring longer helicopter trips.

"It would have been funded because we would have paid for the forest health part of it with the timber," he added. "When they reduced the commercial logging side of it, it was no longer viable for us."

The project would have benefited both the environment and the rural community, he reiterated.

"We can no longer afford a process that allows a radical fringe to obstruct environmentally and socially responsible projects and management plans," he concluded.

Vaile, who rejects accusations that his organization represents a fringe group, said polls have indicated most Oregonians want to protect old-growth trees.

The original Scattered Apples plan focused too much on cutting old-growth timber, he said.

"We felt cutting old-growth in the Williams area was not in the best interest of clean drinking water," he said. "Many of the (original) units contained some of the last old-growth in the area.

"The vast majority of people want to see the BLM protect what's left of old-growth," he added. "They want to move forward with projects that thin forests around a community while producing timber in areas that have already been logged."

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.