Controversial logging plan for Sierra is official

Scott Sonner

Friday, Jan. 12, 2001 | 11:19 a.m.

RENO -- The Forest Service is ready to adopt a plan that dramatically changes the way it logs forests to better protect fish, wildlife and drinking water across 11 million acres of the Sierra Nevada stretching nearly the length of California.

But the ambitious effort that began before President Clinton took office and was set to be adopted today may have a short lifespan, given strong opposition from some Western Republicans and a Bush administration suspect of such sweeping environmental protections.

Critics say it fails to do enough thinning of overstocked forests ripe for catastrophic fires.

"It will affect the entire Sierra in a way that leaves permanent damage to forests, with more fires burning hotter and more destruction than we've seen in a lifetime," said Chris Nance, spokesman for the logging industry's California Forestry Association.

Eight years in the making, the so-called "Sierra Nevada Framework" comes a month after the agency -- faced with a lawsuit from conservationists -- agreed to suspend all logging in the Sierra from north of Los Angeles past Yosemite National Park and Lake Tahoe to near the Oregon border until the overdue environmental document could be completed.

The plan is unrelated to the Clinton administration's roadless initiative and Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck's call this week to end all logging of old-growth forests. But it is equally controversial because it implements a broad regional management plan that would limit logging to primarily small operations, mostly where communities are threatened by wildfires.

It is expected to further reduce the amount of timber the Forest Service offers for sale in 11 Sierra forests in California and Nevada, where annual averages have dipped to 314 million board feet.