Timber lawsuit settled

Oregon Wild settles Bald Angel timber sale lawsuit in northeast Oregon. Forest Service agrees to limit harvest of old-growth trees.

Two environmental groups that sued the Forest Service in August to stop a trio of timber sales near Baker City have dropped the suit in exchange for the Forest Service canceling plans to cut trees on 651 acres of old-growth forest.

The two sides forged the deal during a day-long meeting Dec. 4 with U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin at the federal courthouse in Eugene.

The settlement between the Forest Service and the two groups — Hells Canyon Preservation Council of La Grande and Oregon Wild of Portland — allows Dodge Logging of Maupin to cut about 9.6 million board-feet of timber in two sales which the company bought earlier this year.

Those two sales include 564 acres of old-growth forest.

The plaintiffs will not contest logging on those acres, said Greg Dyson, executive director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council.

"For us this is strictly a compromise," Dyson said.

As part of that compromise, the plaintiffs have also withdrawn their objection to a third timber sale that the Forest Service intends to offer to bidders before Oct. 1, 2008.

But that third sale, unlike the two Dodge Logging bought, has been pared of its old-growth acres as part of the lawsuit settlement.

The original version of that sale included 152 acres of old-growth forest and totaled 2.8 million board-feed of timber.

The new version, minus the old-growth acres, will total about 2.3 million board-feet.

The Forest Service's other timber concession was to cancel plans for logging on another 499 acres. Those acres would have been part of a future timber sale that has not been designed, said Kurt Wiedenmann, ranger of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest's La Grande District. Logging those acres would have produced about 1.5 million board-feet of timber, Wiedenmann said.

The 499 acres, along with the three current timber sales, are part of the Bald Angel project, on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest between Medical Springs and Eagle Creek.

"We are pleased we were able to come to agreement on the Bald Angel project and that the two awarded sales will go forward," Steve Ellis, Wallowa-Whitman supervisor, said in a press release.

Greg Dyson, executive director of the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, said the plaintiffs were glad to avoid "a protracted legal battle."

"We all, including the Forest Service, made a good-faith effort to come to the table and reach an agreement we could all live with," Dyson said.

One of the plaintiffs' main concerns with the Bald Angel project is the Forest Service's initial proposal to cut trees on 1,215 acres of what the agency deems "late successional" and "old structure" forest.

Although those acres have the attributes of old-growth forests, including bigger, older ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir trees, the 1990 management plan for the Wallowa-Whitman did not designate any of those acres as official old-growth, Wiedenmann said.

Wallowa-Whitman officials believe the forests on those 1,251 acres are vulnerable to tree-killing insects and to wildfire because thickets of trees have encroached on areas where, agency workers contend, widely spaced ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs predominated in centuries past, Wiedenmann said.

The biggest culprit in creating this fire-prone condition, he said, is the Forest Service itself. For the past century or so the agency's firefighters have quickly doused most of the lightning-caused blazes that used to kill the fledgling trees before they could get a roothold.

The Forest Service's goal with the Bald Angel project is to cut some of those trees but leave the older ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs, Weidenmann said.

The basic idea, he said, is to change the current "multi-layer" forests to "single-layer" ones. Even after logging, the single-layer forests would retain their old-growth characteristics, Wiedenmann said.

But Dyson said he's not convinced that's always the case.

Although the Forest Service has not proposed to cut any trees larger than 21 inches in diameter in any part of the Bald Angel project, Dyson said removing even smaller trees from a multi-layer old-growth forest could harm species, such as goshawks and pine martens, that depend on such forests.

Dyson also points out that the Wallowa-Whitman, due to extensive logging of old-growth forests in the 1970s and 1980s, is lacking in both multi- and single-layer old-growth forests.

He said the plaintiffs disagree with the Forest Service's contention that converting multi-layer forests to single-layer in the Bald Angel project to reduce the fire risk is necessary.

Dyson said that contrary to the Forest Service's conclusion that single-layer old-growth forests were the predominant type in the past in Northeastern Oregon, some researchers believe multi-layer stands were common.

In any case, Dyson said he's excited that, as part of the settlement, the plaintiffs and Forest Service officials agreed to walk through some of the 564 acres of multi-layer old-growth, after Dodge Logging has cut trees, to see how the harvest affects wildlife habitat.

The Forest Service also agreed not to build any permanent roads in the Bald Angel area. A 1.6-mile road that was part of the original plan will be a temporary road instead.