Free Republic

Schulmeyer Gulch residents get inside look at Roseburg logging plan By JAMIE GENTNER Daily News Staff Writer Published: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 10:42 AM CDT YREKA – Staff members of Roseburg Resources Co. gathered with residents of Schulmeyer Gulch and members of the Chamber of Commerce on Sunday morning for a tour of the Schulmeyer Gulch woods where logging operations will begin in the next few years. “We want to show everyone what we’re doing and explain why we do what we do,” Mike Duguay, a professional forester with Roseburg said at the beginning of the tour. According to a...

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

Logging trucks are again rumbling through town after a nearly 15-year hiatus. The Forest Service has reopened - or has plans to reopen - numerous drainages south of Eagle Ranch to logging... There are currently two active sales south of Eagle, with another in the works, said Cary Green, the White River National Forest's timber management assistant for the Eagle area. The 60-acre Beecher Gulch salvage timber sale, on Hardscrabble Mountain, sold in 2005, and about 500,000 board feet of timber is currently being harvested... A typical 2,000-square foot, single-family home requires about 27,000 board feet of framing lumber, paneling...

Federal officials on Friday were tracking 60 large, active fires that were burning more than 1 million acres, or more than 1,500 square miles, across the West. The states in the region with the most number of fires included Idaho, Nevada, and Montana, according to the Web site of the Boise-based National Interagency Fire Center, composed of various federal agencies that coordinate to battle wildfires. In Idaho, fires had burned more than 231,000 acres, or 360 square miles, the center reported. State officials toured fire camps to survey the damage -- as well as to tell federal firefighting crews here,...

PORTLAND - A final Bush administration plan that paves the way for quicker approval of logging and other commercial projects with less environmental review received predictably mixed reactions from Oregon forest groups. The plan, which goes into effect this fall, overhauls the 1976 National Forest Management Act. The new rules give forest managers more discretion to approve logging, mining and other projects without completing lengthy environmental reviews. Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the formal scientific studies - known as environmental impact statements - waste time and money. Forest plans need to be made on...

AZ: Rural People to Protest Environmental Disaster and Forest Policies Paragon Foundation Organizers predict that between Five and fifty thousand people will attend the rally. Heber/Overgaard, AZ are planning to bring rural people together to protest national forest policies, and the disastrous effect those laws have had on our country¹s natural resources, endangered species habitat and the economy. They will meet at the Wesley Bolin Plaza in Phoenix on Monday, March 24, 2003. The event will start with a rally at 9 through 11a.m. While people fill the plaza, there will be a band and leaders of many communities...

REEDSPORT - It's not a pretty sight, unless you're a cormorant. Dead and dying trees mar a huge hunk of wooded hillside on the Umpqua River estuary that's visible downstream to northbound traffic from the Highway 101 bridge. What used to be a scenic piece of forest in the little-used Tideways State Park began changing in the late '80s when cormorants started building nests in the trees. Locals say the number of long-necked, gangly black birds has increased in recent years, with cormorant-caused devastation becoming much more noticeable. During cormorant nesting season, which runs from March through August, the hillside...

Speech before U.S. Senate by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Az, Sept. 17 2002 Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I would like to speak directly to the issues raised both by the majority leader and the Senator from Montana; specifically, with respect to how we are going to resolve issues related to the health of our forests. I know the discussion has greatly focused on fires and the catastrophic results of fires this year. I am going to talk about that to a great extent. But I would like to make a point at the very beginning which I hope we don't...

WASHINGTON DC -- Around midday Friday, Senator Harry Reid (D NV), as Senate Majority Whip, announced the Senate schedule for Monday, September 23. The late afternoon's events, he said, are to include a vote on a motion to invoke cloture on the Byrd Amendment to the Interior Department funding bill. The very same motion, actually aimed not against the Byrd Amendment but the Bush Healthy Forests Initiative, was voted down September 17. But Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD)then saved his vote until last, and when it was clear the Democrat-favored motion would not attract the necessary 60 votes,...

WASHINGTON — Senators threw their hands up yesterday, unable to reach consensus on how to implement even pieces of President Bush's strategy to clean out forests and reduce wildfire risks. It appears the task could fall to the administration to change its regulations and implement what it can from President Bush's "Healthy Forests Initiative," announced last month in a charred corner of the Pacific Northwest. The Democratic-controlled Senate is deadlocked over how far Congress should go to exempt the most fire-prone forests from environmental and judicial reviews, as Bush requested. "I am not here to blame anybody," said Sen....

POLE POSITION: Gary Hererra, a "pond jumper" at Pacific Lumber Co.'s mill in Scotia, pushes logs through a water canal in this photo from 1999. A judge has ordered the company to temporarily halt its logging operation. Without a court-ordered stay, Judge John Golden said logging that could hurt timberlands and wildlife would continue. August 31, 2002 — 2:13 a.m. SACRAMENTO (AP) — Environmental groups on Friday hailed a Humboldt County Superior Court judge's unexpected ruling ordering a temporary halt to logging by Pacific Lumber Co. The company, however, believes the order will have no immediate impact, particularly if...

Last Update:8:30 a.m. (MDT); August 27, 2002   Six fires reported for yesterday.  Three fires reported by the State of Arizona, two fires on Santa Fe NF, and one fire on Fort Apache Reservation.  One new large fire (i.e. fires >100 acres), LAKES FIRE on Santa Fe NF.   ARIZONAPACK RAT FIRE, located along the Mogollon Rim, 15 miles north of Payson, AZ, is now over 1,210 acres.  Burning in mixed conifer and chaparral on Coconino and Tonto National Forest's, the fire became very active yesterday with increased torching, spotting, and upslope runs.  A number of spot fires were found across...

Bush expected to promote new forest policy 08/21/02MICHAEL MILSTEIN and JIM BARNETT When he speaks Thursday in Medford, President Bush is expected to push for more intensive thinning of Western forests to reduce fire danger. And he will likely support legislation streamlining environmental rules that have slowed many Western logging projects. It will plainly signal the administration's approach to forest management against the backdrop of epic wildfires burning throughout Oregon and the West.It could also incite a storm of opposition from environmental groups that argue logging only will do more harm to Western forests. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said Tuesday...

'All environmental laws, standards and guidelines, regulations, conservation strategies are suspended during fire-suppression incidents.' – Tim IngalsbeeOn the afternoon of Aug. 1, Nancy Lyford and her husband, Gordon, heard on their scanner that the bulldozers were coming. The couple left their home in the southern Oregon town of O'Brien to watch the fire crews gouge out a new fire road across their neighbor's meadow and their own. The gouge was intended as a last line of defense against a growing wildfire. If the fire line at the top of the mountain didn't stop the flames, and if efforts to burn...