Agency to delay salvage logging

RUCH - Salvage logging on Forest Service land scorched by the Quartz Fire last summer will have to wait.

The Forest Service - which lost 3,466 acres to the blaze last August - had originally planned to salvage some of the burned trees to help the local economy while at the same time helping Mother Nature heal with restoration work.

But that changed when the Forest Service received more than $1 million in federal funds earmarked specifically for restoration that must be spent by Sept. 30.

Because of the looming deadline, the agency will focus exclusively on restoration this summer, delaying any logging of charred trees, said Applegate District Ranger Erin Connelly.

Timber groups grumbled that the wood could lose its value before they are allowed to pull it out of the forest.

But Connelly said salvage logging will not be delayed to the point that the value of the lumber is lost to rot.

The Quartz Fire was one of the fiercer burns in last summer's tinder-dry fire season in Oregon. The blaze burned through 6,160 acres in the Little Applegate River drainage, including federal, state and private lands, and for a time threatened the watershed around Ashland. The fire burned several remote dwellings to the ground.

Some short-term restoration activities already have taken place to stabilize the soil and roads in the burned area, including felling burned trees across slopes to slow erosion, planting trees and reseeding areas hardest hit.

``They need to move on that restoration work as soon as possible,'' said Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association.

The commercial value of the burned timber decreases with the passing of time, he said, and it would be better to salvage it now.

Plans to salvage log the Quartz Fire have drawn formal protests from both the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Sierra Club, said Spencer Lennard, director of the Wildlands Center.

``The salvage is not helping the place or the taxpayers,'' he said. ``This is just another example of taxpayers footing the bill so timber companies can yet again be subsidized.''

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Plans to salvage log the Quartz Fire have drawn formal protests from both the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center and the Sierra Club, said Spencer Lennard, director of the Wildlands Center.
``The salvage is not helping the place or the taxpayers,'' he said. ``This is just another example of taxpayers footing the bill so timber companies can yet again be subsidized.''

I will believe what this Club Sierra, Bravo Sierra Spin Master has to say, when he opens up the donation records and funds of Club Sierra for the past two decades.

Club Sierra receives a lot more of our tax money in various laundered forms to keep going than the timber companies do. The timber companies have a product with a market and provide that needed product. Club Sierra just provides misery for those who live in Oregon and have to work for a living.

People in Oregone, wake up. Try to buy lumber for a new home or a rebuild project from Club Sierra instead of lumber harvested by a legit company trying to make a legit profit. That is the reality that Club Sierra wants: no timber/lumber; no gasoline; no electricity; no irrigational water for food or grazing. Humans have zero value to the enviral whackos. When most of the vile humans have left Oregon or died from starvation or being too cold or wet without adequate shelter, the enviral whackos will be overjoyed. Their mission will have been accomplished. No humans just owls, sucker fish and a lot of holy salmon dying in the rivers as they overpopulate the rivers.

This very action is typical of why Oregone is in a tail dive recession, is going in debt and will need to raise taxes. The enviral whackos want no one to make a living from farming, ranching and evil lumber.

Dear, I know the rant is not aimed at me.

I just sent Blackie a reply on another thread about how the three left coast enviral governors, (Kali, Oregone and Washington) have destroyed the thriving economies that they inherited.

These three Enviral Poster Boys for Governors have used stealth anti business schemes/tactics to run farmers, ranchers, loggers and other businesses out of business or out their states.

Can you find that site you posted months ago where Andy Kerr said that too many people lived in Oregone and had too many bad jobs, and Katznrobber agreed with him at some enviral meeting. That needs to be re posted. The Oregone economy is heading exactly where Kerr et al wanted it to head. Katznrobber has used stealth methods to speed it along its down hill side. Kerr and the other envirals must be in Druid heaven with all of the lost jobs in Oregone.

No they weren't. But thanks trotting out these two examples of the arrogance of Kerr. Just buyout the farmers so that he and his enviro buds can grow hemp! Of course the buyout would have been financed by the American taxpayers. I had forgot about his incredible arrogance re these two articles and his dark side re the Rural Cleansing attempt of Klamath Basin Farmers, ranchers and their families.

What I'm looking for is an article in some Oregon magazine where Kerr lead a enviral workshop on how to $crew Oregonians out of jobs and homes in the name of enviralism.

He was quoted in the article basically saying that too many people had moved to Oregon. That, there were too many people working in jobs that he as an enviralist SS overseer did not approve of. Amazing the Katzenrobber agreed with him. Shortly after that logging jobs and lumber jobs stopped.

During Kazenrobber term, the Alf/Elf eco terrorism in Oregon picked up to the rate that Oregon had 60% of the ALF/ELF eco terrorism acts. Most of which were aimed at logging and the timber business. Trucks and plants were burnt down. The message to those wanting to log or have a business with lumber in Oregon, you had better not!

The ALF/ELFS thanks to Jake Reno and Katzenrobber had a free reign in the US and in Oregon. This has driven a lot of their targeted businesses out of Oregon.

The estimate loss gross income in the Klamath Basin last year thanks to Kerr et all has been quoted at over $300 million. That does not include the loss of seed sales and other providers to the farmers and ranchers last year and the business who provide services to those farmers and ranchers.

Oregone's economy is a textbook example of what happens when the enviral nazis with the governor of a state decide too many people are working and too many jobs are not what they feel people should have.

Thanks this is the magazine, and they have the worse search mechanism in the free world. I have not found the article that I quoted. However this editorial is very timely:

Editorial, Editorial Wobbly Pillars, December, 2001 : www.brainstormnw.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last month Gov. Kitzhaber announced that, in response to our deepening economic crisis, efforts would be directed at increasing Oregon tourism. Given the state of Oregon?s economy, far be it from us to throw cold water on any idea. But surely the governor has noticed that of all the industries hardest hit and undermined by terrorist activity, tourism probably tops the list. The airlines are in trouble and associated travel industries--restaurants, hotels, convention centers--are all feeling the pinch (make that a python squeeze).

If we're going to reinvigorate the economy, we might want to choose a less wobbly pillar upon which to rebuild.

Maybe we should even go back to comments from a former governor (Running on Empty, by Vic Atiyeh, Brainstorm, November 1999) who said, "if Oregon were to avoid such dramatic unemployment rates in the future, we would need to do more than just tighten the budget. We would have to have an economy with more than just two and a half pillars?the good news today is that Oregon has a diversified economy, an economy built around five solid pillars: high-tech, international trade, tourism, timber and agriculture.'

Atiyeh's successful plans to reshape and strengthen Oregon's economy have been virtually undone by the years of the Clinton/Kitzhaber administrations and the subsequent reliance on high-tech and the forced slowdowns in agriculture and timber.

About the same time that Kitzhaber was making his case last month for tourism to save Oregon from recession, the Sierra Club and 12 other preservationist groups announced an ill-timed campaign to halt logging of mature and old-growth trees in Oregon's federal forests.

The preservationists' campaigns are especially ill-timed because in Oregon's current economic crisis it will be absolutely necessary to carefully inventory and examine all of Oregon's resources for their most productive use and best practices.

According to Joe Keating of the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, "all forests older than 80 years should be protected so that younger forests can develop into old growth."

Let's get this straight: we should protect existing old growth with the goal of all young trees turning into old growth. Sounds like the end game is to stop the cutting of all trees everywhere.

And Keating confirms the Sierra Club goal: the national position is the end of all commercial logging on federal lands. Just about half of Oregon is federally owned. Wobbly Pillars December, 2001 ------------------------------------------------------------

Katzenrobber = the one man wrecking crew of the Oregone economy! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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