June 1, 2004

For Immediate Release

Forest Service Begins to Approve Controversial Logging Projects

Conservation Group Says Breakup of 6,000-acre Logging Project is Illegal

Clarion, PA – Three logging projects were approved yesterday as part of a large 6,000-acre salvage logging project in the Allegheny National Forest that has brought two top Bush Administration officials to Pennsylvania and has drawn repeated criticism from conservation groups.

The Forest Road 191 Salvage was approved on May 21, 2004, but was not announced by the Forest Service until today. The Forest Road 395 and Forest Road 468 Salvage Logging Projects were approved by US Forest Service officials on May 27 and 28, 2004.

US Forest Service Chief Bosworth toured the Allegheny National Forest to promote these controversial logging projects on May 10th after having an exclusive breakfast with the local timber industry. These projects were highlighted during a controversial Earth Day visit by Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman who used the day traditionally meant to celebrate the environment to support these commercial logging projects in the Allegheny National Forest.

"We presented Chief Bosworth with irrefutable scientific evidence that trees downed by last summer's storm are a benefit to the Allegheny National Forest but the Forest Service appears to be more interested in political handouts for the timber industry instead of scientific forest management,” explained Ryan Talbott, Forest Watch Coordinator for the Allegheny Defense Project.

"These Pennsylvania logging projects demonstrate what’s wrong with the Bush Administration's 'Healthy Forest' logging initiative because it focuses on commercial logging and ignores wildfire threats to communities in the West, by excluding public oversight, and by further undermining our public lands for the sake of private logging corporations," said Andrew George, campaign coordinator for the National Forest Protection Alliance. "Commercial logging in our national forests is the problem, not the solution."

"Windstorm events are a vital part of a healthy Allegheny National Forest as they provide downed woody debris otherwise missing throughout much of the forest," said Rachel Martin, an ecologist with the Allegheny Defense Project. "Dead and downed trees provide important habitat for birds, salamanders, and small mammals, and are a vital source of nutrients for tree seedlings. Ecologically, dead and downed wood is as important to a healthy forest as live trees.”

Conservation groups pointed out that "salvage logging" is an economic, not an ecological term. Salvage logging is performed to "salvage" the economic value of trees before it is lost. The term salvage logging has no direct relationship to forest health. The Forest Service claims no such “forest health” benefit in its documentation of the proposed logging projects.

Allegheny National Forest projects that are being used to "Categorically Exclude" salvage logging from more detailed public involvement and environmental analysis include 20 projects covering 1,000 acres. The Categorical Exclusion allows the Forest Service to hold shorter public comment periods, limit comment opportunities to a single timeframe, and to sidestep the normally required environmental assessments of the impacts that logging projects will have. In this case, the law explicitly prohibits the Forest Service from breaking up the “salvage” logging response to a July 2003 windstorm into numerous projects to avoid the more detailed environmental analysis normally required.

"Chief Bosworth and Secretary Veneman have now both toured a series of salvage logging projects proposed for the Allegheny National Forest without addressing the fact that these projects are illegal,” explained Jim Bensman from Heartwood, a national forest conservation organization that has successfully challenged the use of Categorical Exclusions such as those being promoted to push logging in the Allegheny. "The Forest Service is trying to break down timber sales into several small projects instead of doing the detailed analysis that is normally required for a logging project of this size."

Conservationists also challenged the accuracy of original documentation on the project. They pointed to areas approved for logging outside of the “project area” identified in the original public notice.

"When we tried to compare the proposed logging areas in the public notice with the on the ground survey work they didn’t appear to match,” explained Jim Kleissler, Forest Watch Director with the Allegheny Defense Project. “It appears that the public notices for these logging projects were out of date before they were ever released to the public. Public participation and forest conservation are being undermined by government officials who believe that national forests should be logged at any cost.”

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