"Dave & Marcia" wrote in message ...

My hubby worked in a mill in down in Riddle for nearly 15 years. They did
nothing but special cuts. That included metric cuts. Shipped many loads over
seas. That wasn't their reason for problems. Your more extreme
environmentalists (like Andy Kerr) made the diameter of harvestable timber
resemble the size of a toothpick (used to call them poles). Can't go in and
salvage good timbers in burned areas anymore either.


And, don't forget THE latest trend in burn salvage. The USFS has
started what maybe a new policy. You can't cut ANY tree with ANY green
still left on it! Yep, throw the science out the window and "hope"
that those trees don't die (the ones you would've judged to be "brain
dead": dead cambium).

Actually, it wasn't too long ago that the USFS COULD put together a
burn salvage plan that would stand up in court AND was put together in
less than one year. Amazing but true! The Rabbit Creek Fire on the
Boise National Forest burned until the fall snows came and it ran into
the Sawtooths. The USFS didn't put it out. It just burned for weeks
and weeks. From October '94 to May '95 was all it took to put up
80,000 acres of fire salvage together (out of a total of 200,000
burned acres and several "roadless areas". The Idaho City Ranger
District put all that together and it DID hold up in court when it was
appealed. Logging began in June and went on into the winter. One sale
didn't sell because of scattered volume on helicopter ground. Another
appeal was filed by one of the logging outfits, contesting the lack of
any "conventional" sales that didn't require a helicopter (he sure had
ALL the other equipment though, and did finally buy a helicopter with
partners G ). So, we "magically" took the only helicopter unit in a
sale and made it a cable unit. No one knew HOW we were going to get
the logs out of the bottom, where cable yarders couldn't reach.
Anyway, that's another story. The sales were a great success and
everyone on the RD got a "Group Honor Award" from the then Secretary
of Agriculture, Dan Glickman. (It sure does look good in my resume G
)

Now, it's rare when an Environmental Assessment can be done in two
full years, right about when the timber's no good anymore.

Larry