U.S. OKs Massive Timber Harvest in Pacific Northwest

The Clinton Administration, conceding that it had run out of legal remedies, directed federal land management agencies Thursday to release for harvest thousands of acres of trees in the Pacific Northwest that it had sought to leave uncut to protect wildlife.

The directive followed a decision late Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denying the Administration a stay of a federal District Court ruling. That ruling, issued last month, upheld the timber industry’s contention that the sale is required under a law approved by Congress and signed by President Clinton last summer.

At stake in the court decision is about 230 million board feet of timber--enough to build 23,000 average-size homes--that had been kept from sawmills during the early 1990s to protect threatened wildlife, primarily the marbled murrelet, a sea bird that nests in old growth trees.