6/8/06

ACTION ALERT

FIRST FOREST SERVICE TIMBER SALE IN ROADLESS AREA THIS FRIDAY

The first timber sale that would cut into a roadless area since the Bush administration killed the original roadless rule last year is set to go to auction this Friday.

The 350-acre Mike’s Gulch timber sale lies within the South Kalmiopsis Roadless Area in Oregon’s Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. Another planned project going into a roadless area, the 1,000-acre Blackberry timber sale, is scheduled to be opened to bids this summer. Both roadless areas border on the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.

The two sales are in the part of the forest burned in the immense Biscuit fire in 2002. Local activists have pointed out that the only trees in the burned area that are still commercially valuable would inevitably be old-growth trees.

The auction is going forward despite requests from Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski to stop the sales. The governor, a Democrat, has begun the laborious process of petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect the roadless areas in his state.

Oregon is one of four states (the others are California, Washington, and New Mexico) suing the Forest Service to reinstate the original roadless rule, which protected 58.5 million acres of roadless forest across the country from logging, roadbuilding, mining, oil drilling and other development.

The Bush administration repealed the original roadless rule in May 2005, replacing it with a regulation that requires governors to petition the department of agriculture in order to protect roadless areas in their states.

After the new rule repealing the original roadless rule was put in place, the administration promised to stay out of roadless areas until the states went through the petition process.
But in spite of this promise, and in spite of the governor’s protestations, the auction of roadless-area timber sales in southwest Oregon is going forward.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Call Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth at 202-205-1661 and tell him to withdraw all timber sales in Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, including the Mike’s Gulch and Blackberry sales.

Remind him of the administration’s promise not to enter roadless areas while the state petition process to protect roadless areas is still under way.

Chief Bosworth can also be emailed at: dbosworth@fs.fed.us