May 10, 2004

For Immediate Release

Conservation Group Say Science Contradicts Salvage Logging in Allegheny National Forest

Bosworth Visit Marks Second Bush Administration Visit to Pennsylvania Forest in Three Weeks

Ludlow, PA – The Bush Administration’s Chief of the US Forest Service Dale Bosworth today toured logging projects that conservationists contend are illegal in the Allegheny National Forest. This follows a controversial Earth Day visit by Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman who used the day traditionally meant to celebrate the environment to support commercial logging in the Allegheny National Forest. Both tours were geared toward promoting the Bush Administration’s “Healthy Forests Initiative”, which revokes citizen rights to participate in government decisions and weakens environmental impact considerations in commercial logging projects in our national forests.

Controversy erupted on Earth Day when a local conservationist from Forest County was threatened with arrest as he tried to join the tour even though information about joining the tour was faxed to the media and publicized on Peterson’s website. Despite controversy over the previous tour the Forest Service made no attempt to make today’s tour more accessible to the public and did not offer an invitation to conservationists even though the timber industry has been invited to previous tours.

"Once again the Forest Service is providing special access to the timber industry and refusing to hear from the rest of the public,” explained Ryan Talbott, Forest Watch Coordinator for the Allegheny Defense Project. “The Bush Administration continues to peddle these timber sales as a ‘forest health’ proposal even though Forest Service documents for the timber sales make no such claim.”

The conservation group Allegheny Defense Project vowed to try and join today’s tour bringing along scientific research demonstrating the value of downed trees to the forest. The library included dozens of research papers documenting how extensive salvage logging creates unhealthy forests while forest trees downed by last summer’s storm are essential to maintaining a healthy Allegheny National Forest.

"Windstorm events are a vital part of a healthy Allegheny National Forest as they provide downed woody debris otherwise missing throughout much of the forest," said Rachel Martin, an ecologist with the Allegheny Defense Project. " Dead and downed trees provide important habitat for birds, salamanders, and small mammals, and are a vital source of nutrients for tree seedlings. Ecologically, dead and downed wood is as important to a healthy forest as live trees.”

Conservation groups pointed out that "salvage logging" is an economic, not an ecological term. Salvage logging is performed to "salvage" the economic value of trees before it is lost. The term salvage logging has no direct relationship to forest health. The Forest Service claims no such “forest health” benefit in its documentation of the proposed logging projects.

Allegheny National Forest projects that are being used to "Categorically Exclude" salvage logging from more detailed public involvement and environmental analysis include 20 projects covering 1,000 acres. The Categorical Exclusion allows the Forest Service to hold shorter public comment periods, limit comment opportunities to a single timeframe, and to sidestep the normally required environmental assessments of the impacts that logging projects will have. In this case, the law explicitly prohibits the Forest Service from breaking up the “salvage” logging response to a July 2003 windstorm into numerous projects to avoid the more detailed environmental analysis normally required.

"Chief Bosworth and Secretary Veneman have now both toured a series of salvage logging projects proposed for the Allegheny National Forest without addressing the fact that these projects are illegal,” explained Jim Bensman from Heartwood, a national forest conservation organization that has successfully challenged the use of Categorical Exclusions such as those being promoted to push logging in the Allegheny. "The Forest Service is trying to break down timber sales into several small projects instead of doing the detailed analysis that is normally required for a logging project of this size."

Fact Sheet: Scientific Research on the Importance of Downed Woody Debris in Forest Ecosystems (pdf, 164kb)

Fact Sheet: Forest Service Management Creates Forest Health Problems (pdf, 85kb)

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