The State - News from Sept. 24, 1987

With California’s national forest lands still smoldering from wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service announced plans to sell up to 1.6 billion board-feet of scorched timber, while environmental groups are warned about the impact of new logging roads. Representatives of the Western Timber Assn. and lumber companies met with Forest Service officials in San Francisco last week to discuss the proposed “fire sale” of damaged wood, and Forest Service spokesman Ray Weinmann said he hopes to have it all on the market in the next year. He said that as much as 1.6 million board-feet (a board-foot is one foot square and one inch thick) will be available for conversion to lumber or wood products. But Patricia Schifferle of the Wilderness Society said that logging trucks operating in areas with sensitive drainage systems were “like we have an open, gaping wound out there on our national forests.”