Bush Eases Rules for ‘Salvage’ Logging

Reacting to timber industry pressure and a spate of forest fires, President Bush called on federal agencies Wednesday to speed up the harvesting of dead and dying trees by scaling back the required environmental review of “salvage” logging operations.

The President’s action, announced during a campaign swing to Middletown, N.J., will allow loggers to take up to 1 million board feet in a single harvest after conducting only the simplest of environmental assessments.

The Administration said the new policy will reduce the forest fire danger in the West and increase the amount of timber that can be logged on federal lands in the coming year by as much as 450 million board feet--enough to build 45,000 houses.

However, the move was immediately attacked by environmentalists, who charged that it was an election-year ploy that will aid the timber industry but do little to lessen the fire danger in the nation’s forests.

“It’s pure political grandstanding for his friends in the timber industry,” said Louis Blumberg, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society. “Logging that amount is going to have an insignificant effect on reducing the threat of fire. This is about timber, not about fire. It’s about money, not about safety.”

Bush’s announcement was welcomed by the timber industry, which has suffered a marked reduction in the amount of timber it can harvest on public lands as a result of growing environmental restrictions, including protection of the endangered northern spotted owl.

In recent months, industry representatives had pressured the Administration and members of Congress for greater leeway in the approval of timber salvage operations.

“The President’s action is a strong, positive gesture that not only helps relieve the threat of disastrous forest fires throughout the West, but will keep people working in a region hard hit by timber harvest restrictions,” said Mark Rey, executive director of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Alliance.

Both the industry and the Bush Administration contend that speeding the environmental review process for salvage harvests will allow more logging before winter and reduce the danger of fire. In issuing the order, Bush noted that nearly 70,000 forest fires this summer have burned about 1.5 million acres of forest.

Under current regulations, extensive environmental review is required for logging operations that harvest more than 100,000 board feet. Smaller harvests can proceed with a “categorical exclusion”--a brief environmental review without extensive documentation.

Bush’s order increases the size of the harvest permitted under categorical exclusions to 1 million board feet, but it does not apply to areas where logging is currently off limits.

By allowing larger harvests with only modest environmental review, environmentalists charged, Bush is opening public lands to the danger of greater soil erosion and the loss of wildlife habitat.