May 10, 2004

For Immediate Release - revised

Controversial Visit by US Forest Service Chief Provokes Citizen Protest

Conservation Group Say Science Contradicts Salvage Logging in Allegheny National Forest

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.

Despite controversy over a previous tour with Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman the Forest Service offered no invitation to conservationists but did acquiesce and allow the concerned citizens on the tour. Conservationists confronted the Forest Service Chief with science that calls into question the merits of a massive 6,000-acre logging proposal in the Allegheny.

“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,” explained Ryan Talbott, Forest Watch Coordinator for the Allegheny Defense Project. “Today we presented Chief Bosworth with incontrovertible scientific evidence that trees downed by last summer's storm are a benefit to the Allegheny National Forest while ongoing preferential management for black cherry over other native species, including this new 6,000-acre salvage logging project, is creating documented forest health problems.”

"Today's visit by the Chief underscores everything wrong with the Bush Administration's 'Healthy Forest' logging bill because it focuses on commercial logging and ignores wildfire threats to communities in the West, by excluding public oversight, and by further undermining our public lands for the sake of private logging corporations," said Andrew George, campaign coordinator for the National Forest Protection Alliance. "Commercial logging in our national forests is the problem, not the solution."

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.

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 research included numerous 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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