🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <31F1978D.4EBF@earthlink.net>,
Daniel Langdon  <dlangdon@earthlink.net> wrote:

>What exactly is this rider and what are the reasons for its passage and 
>requested repeal?

The so-called Salvage Rider was touted as a way of restoring forest
health by expediting the harvest of trees which have died in recent
years due to bug infestations and fire.  There are many problems
with it:

1. It was unneeded.  The Forest Service already conducts salvage
   sales where appropriate - US 97 between Bend and Klamath Falls
   (Oregon) provides ample evidence of this.

   These sales are unpopular with the timber industry, though,
   because the trees are of litle value.   The rider expanded
   the definition of "salvage" to allow the inclusion of green
   trees, which are more valuable.

2. It suspended environmental law.  This has led to strange
   scenarios where the Service has harvested salvage in watersheds
   where their own studies, the EPA, and US Fish and Wildlife
   Service have made it apparent that any benefit of removing the
   dead trees is outweighed by the harm done to fish and other
   resources by the logging.

3. It suspended citizen involvement.   When the US Forest Service
   breaks the law by harvesting in conflict with the Endangered
   Species Act, National Environmental Protection Act, or the
   National Forest Management Act, citizens have the right to
   sue them in court to force them to follow the law.

   The Salvage Rider insulates these sales from legal challenge.
  
4. The worst thing about this "Salvage Rider" is that it freed
   a bunch of old-growth sales in western Oregon and Washington
   and a few in northwestern California.  The bill was touted as
   being a tool for improving tracts of eastside pine forests
   which have many dead trees.  Buried in it was a provision to
   free these healthy, westside sales in spotted owl forests.

   These sales are also insulated from court challenge, and
   the ESA and other environmental law.  These are old sales
   which in some cases date back over twenty years, which were
   withdrawn by the Forest Service on its own initiative due
   to their harm to water quality, etc.  

   One example lies in the watershed of Oregon's Tenmile Creek,
   in the Coast Range.  The USFS has spend over a million bucks
   improving stream habitat for coho salmon and had intended
   to stop logging the watershed.  Now, old sales let loose
   by this rider threatens increase erosion upstream, silting
   up some of the enhancement work.  This is not a suspicious
   claim by environmentalists - the USFS itself made the claim,
   on Portland TV complete with tours-for-the-newscam.

   Not only is the USFS forced to log these sale units, but they
   must be logged under the conditions prevailing at the time they
   were first worked up.  In other words, changes made by the USFS
   in the past several years to increase riparian buffers, reduce
   clearcut sizes, won't apply to these sales.

   
--

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb@rational.com>
  Nature photos, site guides, and other goodies at:
          http://www.xxxpdx.com/~dhogaza