Reject salvage bill
A Register-Guard Editorial
Published: Friday, March 17, 2006

The one-size-fits-all approach may work for tasseled ski caps and odor-eating shoe insoles, but it doesn't work for salvage logging in federal forests.

As Jerry Franklin, the principal architect of the Northwest Forest Plan and a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington, recently warned federal lawmakers, Congress shouldn't prescribe salvage logging as the proper approach to every damaged forest - from matrixed lands already targeted for logging to old growth reserves where chain saws are normally off limits.

Yet that is precisely what a bill sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., would do. House Resolution 4200 would fast-track logging in national forests hit by fires, droughts and other natural disturbances. It would enable federal forest managers to vastly accelerate the environmental and public review process in order to expedite logging and reforestation projects.

Walden insists the bill is necessary to reduce delays in getting the approval of federal agencies to cut trees killed by fires and other disturbances. "It can take 3 1/2 years for the Forest Service to finally get the OK from a federal court to cut a burned dead tree in Oregon, and by then many of the trees have lost their value," he groused this week to the House Resources Committee.

True enough, although Walden's reference to the delay in salvage logging after Southwest Oregon's 2002 Biscuit fire neglected to mention that it was due as much to the government's midstream decision to dramatically expand the scope of logging as it was to current legal requirements for environmental and public review.

Even though Walden insists his bill relies on science, it withers under scientific scrutiny. So do its assumptions that salvage logging should proceed swiftly in most cases to allow the government and local businesses to profit by selling dead timber before it rots; that logging and replanting produces healthy and fire-resistant forests; and that allowing scorched landscapes to regenerate on their own increases fire danger and inhibits recovery.

Earlier this year, supporters of Walden's bill denounced a new Oregon State University study that found that logging after the Biscuit fire has harmed forest recovery and increased fire risk. While they de- picted the study as isolated, incomplete and skewed by an environmental agenda, it was, in fact, consistent with research findings from around the world. Those findings have documented how salvage logging and reforestation can destroy biological diversity that fire and natural recovery can nurture and protect.

If lawmakers harbor doubts, they should read the letter sent to Congress this week by 169 forest scientists, including some of the nation's premier fire ecologists. They called on lawmakers to reject Walden's bill, citing a profound disconnect between science and policy, and warning that the policy change could profoundly damage sensitive post-fire ecosystems.

The scientists cited more than two dozen studies, including government reports, that have shown that salvage logging can significantly harm forest recovery. "Although logging and replanting may seem like a reasonable way to clean up and restore forests after disturbances like wildland fires, such activity would actually slow the natural recovery of forests and of streams and creatures within them," they wrote.

Contrary to long-standing belief and practice, scientists have learned that cutting standing dead trees can disturb soils, remove wildlife nesting and feeding sites, and reduce nutrients and shade needed to help new trees to grow. They also have documented an array of species, from black-backed woodpeckers to morel mushrooms, that thrive in naturally recovering burns.

It's far from clear if there is any need to speed up salvage logging sales. Current law already provides for expedited salvage efforts, if warranted, after fires and other disasters. Before supporting HR 4200, lawmakers should consider how swiftly forest managers have moved to approve salvage logging projects across the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

If committee members insist on moving Walden's bill forward for a vote of the full House, they should include an amendment proposed by Rep. Tom Udall, D-Colo., which would restore full environmental review of all salvage projects, and another by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., that would limit expedited salvage logging to areas already earmarked for timber production.

Better yet, lawmakers should let Walden's one-size-fits-all bill simply perish in committee.

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