Environmentalists complain wildlife protections will be lost
Stockton Record
October 20, 2005
SAN ANDREAS -- Stanislaus National Forest officials this week said they will triple logging by 2011 in an effort they say will reduce the fire danger around burgeoning Sierra towns.
Environmentalists decried the increase, saying it erodes protections for wildlife in a 4-year-old Sierrawide habitat protection plan. Logging advocates said the latest plan may not go far enough to keep mill workers on the job.
The move comes after the Bush administration and members of Congress in June ordered Stanislaus officials to explain why the forest wasn't sending more logs to mills. Sierra Pacific Industries mills in Chinese Camp and Standard laid off employees earlier this year.
Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, in particular, said he wanted to see about 40 million board feet of lumber coming out of the Stanislaus each year, or about four times as much as the approximately 10 million board feet produced annually in the past three years. A board foot is a cubic measure of timber, 1 square foot by 1 inch thick.
Forest officials said the five-year plan was hammered out in consultation with loggers, environmentalists and others.
Stanislaus National Forest Deputy Supervisor Jerry Perez said the plan will clear fields of manzanita and other brush that pose a fire danger to homes as well as sending more large logs to mills.
"It is an important relationship we have with the mills. We need them to get the work done," Perez said.
Environmentalists are frustrated by that reasoning, saying that they believe the plan is using fire-hazard control as an excuse to get around the Forest Service's Sierra Nevada Framework, which placed strict limits on logging of large trees for the sake of wildlife.
"It is true that fuels treatments can reduce the risk of fire. But removing large-log timber does nothing to reduce fire risk," said John Buckley, executive director off the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center.
Warren Alford, a fire and fuel expert for the Sierra Forest Legacy, said anyone confused about whether the plan is intended for fire protection or to increase logging should look at the plan, which is available online.
"The truth of what they are doing is in the numbers they are projecting, and that is less manzanita and a lot more saw logs," Alford said.
Even when logging levels hit 38 million board feet a year by 2011, they will still be far below the 100 million, 150 million or more taken from the Stanislaus each year through most of the 20th century.
As recently as 1990, Stanislaus officials were still projecting a harvest of 88 million board feet a year for the foreseeable future.
In 2001, however, National Forest officials signed off on the Sierra Nevada Framework, a plan to protect wildlife that set strict limits on harvesting large trees in Sierra forests.
The California spotted owl, in particular, was supposed to get protection for the old-growth forests it inhabits. The Sierra Nevada Framework also called for programs to chip, burn or otherwise remove logging slash, brush and other small vegetation that contributed to fire risks in the region's forests.
This week's plan by Stanislaus forest officials is just one of several changes that have effectively modified the Sierra Nevada Framework at both the regional and local levels.
The Stanislaus plan, for example, will allow logging in 17,627 acres of spotted owl home range areas, or about 13 percent of the total home range for the owl in the forest.
Still, the logging levels in the plan may not ultimately be enough to keep mills busy or satisfy logging advocates.
"It is certainly a step in the right direction from his perspective," said Tricia Geringer, legislative director for Radanovich.
But that doesn't mean that Radanovich won't come back later and ask for more logging, Geringer said. "He wants to give it a chance to be implemented to see how it works."
Officials with Anderson-based Sierra Pacific Industries referred questions to local logging advocates and a mill union representative.
"We are a little concerned about the plan over all," said Steven Sias, a member of Local 2652 of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union. "Although those levels came up, they weren't quite at the levels we had hoped for."
At the moment, logs salvaged from the Power Fire area along Highway 88 are keeping the union's 250 members busy at the Chinese Camp and Standard mills, Sias said. But weather that limits cutting over the winter could mean layoffs by spring, he said.
Meanwhile, Sias said, the low log production in recent years has meant that some of the people who know the most about how to process wood have left the region for good.
"Attrition has been a problem with these layoffs," Sias said. "We've lost some very senior workers at the Chinese Camp mill."