Volume 5, No. 2
February 16, 2001

When someone in the U.S. Forest Service plays fast and loose with the rulebook, it gives the entire agency a black eye. That's the case with the North Winberry timber sale.

In its final chapter, the infamous salvage rider instructed the Forest Service to offer purchasers of several dozen timber sales (off-limits because of habitat for the threatened marbled murrelet) replacement sales of "like kind and volume."

The original sales with murrelet habitat were mostly mature second growth from Oregon's Siuslaw National Forest. But in seeking replacement timber, forest managers on the nearby Willamette National Forest decided the salvage rider offered a good opportunity to log 500-year-old trees. That was fine with the original sale's purchaser, Scott Timber Company, which would profit by exchanging its Siuslaw second growth for some of the biggest and most valuable old-growth trees in the world. By any measure, though, it would count as a loss for the American public.

The Willamette's chutzpah earned the Oregon congressional delegation's wrath in a letter from Senator Ron Wyden and four of Oregon's five House members. They insisted that "suitable second growth should be the primary target" for replacing the Siuslaw sales and that old growth should only be used as a "last resort."

Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Furnish (formerly the Siuslaw forest supervisor) said, "I agree that unless no other option exists, the Forest Service should not offer old-growth trees from the Willamette National Forest as replacement volume for second-growth trees from the Siuslaw National Forest." He instructed officials to substitute "timber that is most similar in kind and type" for the original Siuslaw trees.

But the Willamette's timber managers chose not to get the message. In an in-your-face internal memo, they claimed that no alternatives to North Winberry exist because Scott Timber Company "will not agree to other options or areas." So who's in charge of our national forests anyway: Scott Timber or the Forest Service?

Want to help save the 500-year-old trees at North Winberry? Call the Forest Service's Regional Forester Harv Forsgren at (503) 808-2200 or email him at hforsgren@fs.fed.us. Tell him to insist that the Willamette play by the rules, save the old growth, and save North Winberry.

To help you compose your own personal letter, we've provided a sample letter below:

Harv Forsgren, Regional Forester U.S. Forest Service P.O. Box 3623 Portland, OR 97208-3623

Dear Mr. Forsgren:

It is outrageous that magnificent old growth on the Willamette National Forest may be logged as a replacement for second-growth sales offered under the salvage rider. Please withdraw the North Winberry timber sale and request that your forest managers find timber of similar kind and type to substitute for the sales originally offered on the Siuslaw National Forest.

Sincerely,
YOUR NAME
YOUR ADDRESS

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