A clear-cut solution? (Logging plans)

[nosmokes]

Unreal. The BLM and the industry act as if clearcutting is the only way to fell timber. Here we go again- I can already see the loggers are an endangered species too bumperstickers coming out and Save a logger, Eat an Owl crapola.
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original-registerguard

A clear-cut solution?
A BLM plan to nearly triple logging rekindles the debate over revenue vs. wildlife

By Susan PalmerThe Register-GuardSunday: Once again, Oregon’s federal forests and the northern spotted owl are front and center in a battle over natural resources. The Northwest Forest Plan was supposed to have settled all this 13 years ago. To read the story, visit www.register guard.com. ToDAY: A detailed look at the Bureau of Land Management’s new logging proposal.

Published: Monday, October 29, 2007

They’re not much, as Douglas firs go. This little patch on U.S. Bureau of Land Management forest in the Coast Range west of Lorane is young — 10-year-old trees in a section that was logged from 1996 to 1998 and then replanted.

But this is no standard clear-cut. Interspersed among the saplings are bigger, older trees, eight to 12 per acre, that were left behind to create a more structurally complex stand than the dense single-age trees on nearby privately owned timberlands.

Because of the older trees, this neck of BLM woods has the potential to become suitable habitat for old-growth-loving northern spotted owls more quickly than if all the trees had been cut, said Richard Hardt, a BLM forest ecologist.

Yet the BLM soon may move away from this type of compromise between logging and wildlife habitat. In its new Western Oregon forest management strategy, in draft form and expected to be finalized by December 2008, the BLM calls for clear-cutting — leaving no live trees behind in areas designated for timber harvest.

Hardt was on the team that developed the Western Oregon Plan Revision that could almost triple logging in coming years on the BLM’s 2.2 million acres. The forests can handle that increase, Hardt said.

“We’re not mortgaging the future at all by doing this,” he said. “We’ve modeled it out for 400 years.”

That prediction is music to the ears of those who work in the old-growth timber industry, and to county governments eager for timber sale revenue that would replace declining federal aid. But environmentalists see it as a giant step backward.

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complete article here