Court Backs Timber Industry’s Claim in Old-Growth Forests

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld the timber industry’s claim that a new law allows logging of thousands of acres of old-growth timber in the Pacific Northwest without environmental restrictions.

The law, signed by President Clinton last July, is known as the “salvage rider,” but all the trees affected by the ruling are healthy. They had been sold to timber companies from 1989 through 1995, but logging was held up by the U.S. Forest Service because of environmental concerns.

The law requires the government to allow logging of the previously sold timber without further review under environmental laws, such as those protecting endangered species, and without allowing suits under those laws.

The Clinton administration acknowledged that the new law covered 410 million board-feet of green timber in Oregon and Washington state but disputed the industry’s claim to more than 60 sales containing another 246 million board-feet on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in those states.

The disputed timber is enough to fill 49,000 logging trucks, according to the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan agreed with the industry’s view of the law and allowed logging to begin last October. Hogan’s ruling was upheld Wednesday in a 3-0 decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

This was “litigation we had to bring because the Clinton administration failed to follow the law,” said Chris West, vice president of the industry-sponsored Northwest Forestry Assn.