5 forest groups aim suit at sale of timber

By Don Hopey
Tuesday, May 22, 2001

Five forest conservation groups have filed a federal lawsuit in Pittsburgh to stop the Allegheny National Forest from proceeding with the largest timber sale in the eastern United States on public lands.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday morning, claims that the planned 8,600-acre timber sale, including 3,000 acres of clear-cutting, illegally favors commercial logging over other public forest uses, including recreation, endangered species and old growth habitat preservation, and watershed and soil conservation.

The U.S. Forest Service's East Side Timber Project, according to the lawsuit, is an effort to continue the government's profitable sales of highly prized black cherry trees and maximize their future growth by using clear-cutting, herbicide spraying, fertilizer application and hundreds of miles of fencing to exclude deer from the areas where new cherry tree growth is planned.

As such, it violates the federal Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act, which requires that public forests be managed for multiple uses, said Jim Klessler, Allegheny Defense Project Forest Watch director.

"The Forest Service is attempting to manage our public national forest as a black cherry tree farm for the benefit of private timber interests," Klessler said. Federal law prohibits clear-cutting trees if the primary goal is simply to generate timber revenue, he added.

The Allegheny, with its choice, valuable hardwoods -- especially black cherry, which can bring $5,000 a tree and is sought for veneer and export trade -- is the only national forest to regularly make money on timber sales.

Nadine Pollock, a spokeswoman for the Allegheny National Forest, declined to comment on the lawsuit's charges. She confirmed that bids for the first of the timber sales within the East Side Timber Project were opened yesterday.

The Allegheny Defense Project and Heartwood, two of the five groups involved in the lawsuit, demonstrated to protest those bid openings at the Forest Service's Marienville Ranger Station in Forest County.

As about 20 people protested outside, the Forest Service opened eight bids to cut 180 acres of timber on a 300-acre tract. The high bid for the "Sutton Salvage Sale" was $226,000 by Highland Resources Inc.

The federal lawsuit, which asks for an injunction to stop the sales of 64 million board feet of timber, is the second filed by the groups against the logging project. In 1997, U.S. District Judge William Standish ordered the Forest Service to do a better environmental analysis that considered alternatives to clear-cut logging practices and took into account impacts to watersheds, old growth trees and endangered species.

As a result of that decision, the Forest Service had to conduct environmental impact reviews. A total of 385 comments and one petition were submitted during the subsequent public comment period.

It is unclear whether the Forest Service changed its original timber cutting plans after that review, but the groups that sued claim the Forest Service failed to consider the impact on old growth trees and alternatives to clear-cutting.

Timber harvesting has been a hotly debated issue in recent years in the communities around Pennsylvania's only national forest, which was established in 1923, primarily to protect the Allegheny River watershed, and which sprawls over 513,000 acres in Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren counties.

Municipalities and school districts in those northwestern Pennsylvania counties, which get 25 percent of the money from timber sales in the national forest, say environmental restrictions are hurting the local economy.

Last year, between 15 million and 20 million board feet of timber were cut on 1,048 acres in the Allegheny National Forest, resulting in $13 million in revenue. There are currently 43 timber sales that have been bid -- exclusive of the East Side Timber Project -- and cutting is proceeding on 37 of those.

Environmental groups have questioned the need for any timbering on public lands, pointing to studies that show privately owned forests could fill commercial needs.

Tom Buchele, attorney for the conservation organizations, said the area now occupied by the Allegheny National Forest has historically been covered with a beech and hemlock forest, with black cherry making up only 1 percent of the trees.

"But black cherry is now up to 25 percent of the forest and on the increase because of the Forest Service's management practices," he said. "By clear-cutting, using herbicides and fencing and thinning competing trees like beech, the Forest Service is violating the National Forest Management Act through its emphasis on black cherry."

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed yesterday are Communities for Sustainable Forestry, the National Forest Protection Alliance, the Pennsylvania Environmental Network and nine individuals.

Bill Belitskus, a member of Communities for Sustainable Forestry and one of the nine individual plaintiffs, said that for the 3.9 million people who visit the national forest each year, the trees are more valuable being left alone than being cut.

"For its wildlife and its old growth and its recreation, the Allegheny is the second most popular national forest in the East," Belitskus said. "We're not fighting progress in bringing this lawsuit. We're making progress in protecting the forest."