Environmentalists, Boise Cascade Clash Over 'Old Growth'

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Old growth logging opponents are once again protesting against Boise Cascade, only two years after the company reached a landmark pact over logging.

Old growth logging opponents are once again protesting against Boise Cascade, only two years after the company reached a landmark pact over logging.


Boise officials say they are keeping their commitment not to cut old growth trees in the United States. But the Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups say two timber sales on national forests in Washington and Oregon would violate the terms of their Sept. 3, 2003 agreement with Boise.


At issue is the definition of old growth forest. Boise officials say the two timber sales are second growth forests that were harvested previously, as late as the 1950s. Environmentalists say Boise's loggers would be cutting big trees -- ponderosa pines larger than 21 inches -- environmentalists define as old growth.


"Our CEO Tom Stevens went up there and walked the site with the Forest Service and our own people," said Mike Moser, a Boise Cascade spokesman. "Everyone agrees it meets our commitment."


Environmentalists disagree.


"If Boise proceeds to log in areas designated as 'late successional' by the U.S. Forest Service, Rainforest Action Network, our allies will consider it a direct violation of its public promise not to log old growth," said Brant Olson, director of the Old Growth Campaign at Rainforest Action Network, which seeks to protect old growth forests worldwide.


The two sales are in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in Washington and the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon. They are salvage sales, timber sales designed to salvage valuable timber from areas burned by forest fires in 2003.


Boise Cascade, based in Boise, has already started logging 10 million board feet of timber in the Deschutes National Forest. It is scheduled to begin harvesting 6.5 million board feet from the most contentious sale in the Eagle Managed Late Successional Area in Washington. The forest was set aside in the early 1990s because it held a nesting pair of northern spotted owls. Eighty other old growth animals benefit from the dense forest that has grown back since previous logging, said Pat Rasmussen of Leavenworth, Wash., Audubon Adopt-a-Forest.


"We counted the rings of some of the trees and they are 175 years old," Rassmussen said.


There are no spotted owls in the area since a fire burned through and cleared out the dense forest structure that made it habitat for old growth species, said U.S. Forest Service District Ranger Vaughan Marable.


Those dense conditions only occurred in the dry forest because of a century of fire suppression, he said. Restoring the forest to its regular fire frequency after the latest fire will keep it from achieving the unique characteristics normally only found on wetter forests.


"We're not calling it old growth," Marable said.


Environmental groups have challenged the Forest Service sale in court but don't have a court date until November. They want Boise to delay logging until then.


Boise officials are working with scientists and environmentalists to try to reach an agreement on the definition of old growth. But there are no plans to delay logging until they're done.


In 2004, Boise Cascade's timber and paper operations were sold to Madison Dearborn Partners, a private company. It chose to continue its agreement with the Rainforest Action Network.


"We've taken the initiative to talk to a variety of environmental organizations, including RAN," Moser said.


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Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News