By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Court avoided with agreement between environmental
groups and Forest Service
Environmentalists have dropped their appeal of a salvage sale northwest of Canyon Ferry Reservoir, after the Helena National Forest reduced the volume of burned timber to be logged from 13 million board feet to 5 million.
The negotiated settlement prohibits the filing of a standard lawsuit by the Ecology Center, American Wildlands, Alliance for the Wild Rockies and the Native Ecosystems Council.
In return, the U.S. Forest Service agreed to salvage timber from just 900 acres of the 27,000 acres of national forest land burned by the Cave Gulch Fire during the 2000 wildfire season.
"Everybody gave up something, everybody got something," said Jerry Meyer, the Helena forest's team leader on the salvage sale.
"None of us really wanted to be in court," Meyer said Tuesday. "This all but eliminates that threat. And that's good not only for the forest, but for taxpayers too. And it's important for a potential purchaser to know he will be able to proceed without the threat of an injunction delaying or derailing the entire project."
Some of the same groups have filed suit to stop five post-fire salvage sales in the Kootenai National Forest, saying the logging should not include any old-growth timber because the forest already is violating its own self-imposed standard of 10 percent old growth.
That lawsuit still stands, said Jeff Juel, the Ecology Center's ecosystem defense director and one of the environmentalists who negotiated the Cave Gulch settlement.
"Too often, lawsuits are characterized as environmentalists wanting everything," he said. "But filing a lawsuit means that you are advocating for the public. If you don't file a lawsuit or an appeal, you don't have any power."
"Obviously, we have some issues with post-fire logging," Juel said. "Our contention is it's the worst place to look for timber because of the sensitized nature of the ecosystem after a wildfire. A burned forest is not going to function as an old-growth forest for a long time, and logging puts that off even further."
As is its policy, the Helena National Forest called the environmentalists after receiving their administrative appeal and invited them to come talk about their concerns.
"We expected the call," Juel said. "That's the normal process. Sometimes, we just say no thank you. Sometimes, we meet and don't get anywhere. In this case, I think we worked out some understandings that we didn't have before."
First thing, Juel said, he learned that Helena forest supervisor Tom Clifford "really does prefer to sit down and talk about things before they ever reach the appeals stage."
The Ecology Center is "comfortable" commenting on a proposed project, then filing an appeal if the decision "doesn't agree with us," Juel said. Clifford, however, considers an appeal as a breakdown - a failure.
As part of the settlement, the Helena forest drastically scaled back the salvage sale, eliminating 8 million board feet of helicopter logging on about 2,500 acres. But that part of the project was always considered "optional," because of the rapidly deteriorating condition of the burned timber, the high cost of helicopter logging and the steepness of the terrain, Meyer said.
"The supervisor (Clifford) was willing to get that off the table, to see where that took us," Meyer said. "Tom did what he thought was in everybody's best interest, including those people whose only interest in the project is as taxpayers."
"It's not likely that anyone would have proposed harvesting very much of that area," he said. "We had talked with the timber industry; most of that helicopter logging wasn't even feasible economically."
Foresters also agreed to take a closer look at the condition of forest soils after logging, and to monitor the effect on westslope cutthroat trout. Logging near a goshawk nesting stand was dropped from the project, as was a sale area along Magpie Gulch. And there will be no use of herbicides to kill noxious weeds in streamside buffer zones.
"We felt like these changes would suffice for us to drop the appeal," said Juel. "There's more room for the Forest Service and the Ecology Center to agree with what's going to happen with post-fire logging - if the Forest Service will take a closer look at these things."
Said Stu Levit of American Wildlands: "The Cave Gulch sale is a good example of how well the process works when citizens can get involved. By working together, we were able to craft a sale that works out better for all sides."
Clifford, the forest supervisor, was out of Montana at a meeting Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. In a written statement, though, he endorsed the settlement.
"This is where we want to be, sitting at the table working to resolve resource concerns outside of the court system," he said.
Meyers said the Cave Gulch sale will be advertised and a contract will be awarded by the end of February, "and work could begin almost immediately."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268
or at sdevlin@missoulian.com.