Fight Over Forests Shifts to the Conference Room

With a debate over clear-cutting vast sections of the nation’s forests reaching chain-saw intensity, advocates on all sides of the issue began a difficult attempt Tuesday to find common ground.

A diverse collection of environmental activists, logging interests and academics gathered here for the Seventh American Forest Congress, the first such meeting in more than 20 years.

The conference is unusual in that it is open to anyone with the means to reach the nation’s capital and the patience to sit through dozens of sessions over four days to hash out the issues facing the broad forest community.

The 1,400 participants include preservation groups, timber companies and representatives of communities that depend not only on harvesting trees but on preserving the 700 million acres, roughly one-third of the nation’s landmass, that conference officials say are still covered by forest.

The conference’s goal is to seek a consensus on issues affecting forest management, among them how forests can be sustained or even expanded while their economic potential is tapped through logging, how urban woodlands can be enhanced and how the biological diversity of forests can be maintained.

It is a difficult assignment for a group whose perspectives range from that of Brock Evans, of the generally moderate Audubon Society, to logger Bill Pickell of Hoquiam, Wash. Evans has been arrested for civil disobedience as he tried to block logging operations in the Pacific Northwest. Pickell has asked: “What’s wrong with cutting live trees?”

Although the conference is tackling a wide range of issues, logging is the one that has galvanized debate in recent years. Controversy has flared recently over the wisdom of cutting dead and dying trees--often those damaged by insects, disease and fire.

Environmentalists also are questioning whether logging companies should be allowed to continue harvesting trees, clear-cutting forests and creating what critics say are acres and acres of wasteland where runoff silt is ruining once-pristine streams.