Rules bring worries on southwest logging

Rules bring worries on southwest logging

	Published : Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:55 By : Agencies Print this Story

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Changes in Forest Service rules designed to protect an endangered bird and its prey have brought objections from conservationists worried they may lead to increased logging, but federal officials say the concerns are overblown.

Critics of the new regional rules say more aggressive thinning in the southwest's national forests could result, leaving more open ground and fewer shaded areas needed for the northern goshawk and its prey to nest. The complaints have delayed one forest-thinning project.

Such logging projects are common across the West, aimed at lessening the risks of devastating wildfires by cutting small trees to reduce dense stands. But the new guidelines have wildlife advocates worried that larger stands may be targeted.

'Our concern is that the new regionwide guidelines are going to result in a sharp increase in mature and old growth forest logging,' said Taylor McKinnon, a Center for Biological Diversity spokesman in Flagstaff.

And Ron Seig, the Arizona Game and Fish Department's regional supervisor for north-central Arizona, said his agency is concerned that the guidelines were issued without any opportunity for public comment and more broadly, 'that this would set a precedent for everything else.'

He said there are fears the first timber-thinning project planned on the 1.8-million acre Coconino National Forest under the new rules 'could reduce the canopy to 10 percent across the project,' providing too little cover and not enough dense forest for the goshawk or its 14 prey species.

But the U.S. Forest Service -- which agreed to postpone the thinning project planned on the Coconino near Flagstaff after the center and Arizona Game and Fish objected -- says the concerns are misguided and without foundation.

The service merely developed a 'set of implementation guides' for its 1996 northern goshawk guidelines, said Pat Jackson, the Forest Service's southwest regional appeals and litigation director in Albuquerque, N.M.

'They carry no official weight with the agency... This implementation guide does not have official sanction of the agency.'

Critics, he said, have 'assumed something that's not true. They assume we have modified our forest plans. We have not.'

And Ed Martin, vice president of forestry for Southwest Forest Products, said he thinks the concerns raised are needless. Southwest currently has four contracts to cut 8,850 acres on the Coconino. Five other contracts held by others will thin another 5,000 acres.

'I think there is a lot of good research and study that went into the guidelines,' Martin said. 'I think they have done their homework. I think it's a good balance for all the stakeholders.'

Although the forest has moved to 'a slightly different prescription,' Martin said the change in guidelines won't have an operational impact on loggers.

Nor does he believe changes in canopy cover will harm the goshawk and its prey.

'There were goshawks before historical times, and it was much more open canopy than today,' he said.

The thinning put on hold -- the Jack Smith/Schultz project -- calls for cutting about 7,000 acres in an 11,000-plus acre section of ponderosa pine trees.

It would be the first on the Coconino under the 2003 act done with the new goshawk directives, Coconino spokeswoman Karen Malis-Clark said.

Thinning projects have been ongoing since the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act was enacted, aimed at helping safeguard communities from devastating wildfires.

The 1996 northern goshawk guidelines govern Arizona and New Mexico forests and are designed to protect the goshawk and its food from the effects of overlogging. They set minimum requirements for canopy cover and required a percentage of the forest to remain in a mature and old-growth condition, McKinnon said.

He said the new guidelines radically reduce canopy cover requirements and the amount of forest that would be left in a mature, old-growth condition.

Jackson said Forest Service officials wrote the new guide because the rules needed to be consistently applied in each of the region's 11 forests.

The goshawk guidelines affect most of the ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests in the southwest. Arizona and New Mexico have the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in North America -- with an estimated 3 million acres in Arizona and 2.8 million in New Mexico.

Martin said the existing projects would not be impacted by the new guidelines.

Roughly 50 percent of the wood for his company's two Arizona sawmills, which cannot accommodate trees more than 18 inches in diameter, comes from the Coconino.

'If future projects don't get approved or are stalled by litigation, it would greatly impact us by about a year's time,' Martin said.