Group slams agency on old growth

Managers of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests are not protecting enough old-growth timber on the public lands, a Spokane-based environmental group contended Tuesday.

The U.S. Forest Service has failed to protect the required 10 percent of the valuable old trees in the sprawling forests, located in Idaho, Montana and Washington, the Lands Council said.

“Using the Forest Service’s own maps, databases and standards for measuring old growth, I routinely found myself surveying stumps and saplings,” said Ellen Picken of the Lands Council. “Several times we found clear-cuts the Forest Service documented as old growth.”

Dave O’Brien, Forest Service spokesman, disputed the findings of the environmental group and said the report contained “large and frequent” mistakes. He complained that far less than 1 percent of the forests’ old growth was examined by the Lands Council.

“We are protecting old growth,” O’Brien said. “We don’t cut old growth. We would love to have more old growth.”

He said the forests contain 600,000 acres of trees that are more than 100 years old, but do not yet meet the definition of old-growth timber. Many of those trees will eventually be classified as old growth in the next two decades, he said.

O’Brien noted the Lands Council has numerous lawsuits filed against the Forest Service to halt logging, and pointed to a message on the group’s Web site calling for an end to commercial logging on national forests.

The forests cover about 2.3 million acres in North Idaho, and extend into Eastern Washington and western Montana. The Idaho Panhandle National Forests are an aggregation of the Coeur d’Alene and portions of the Kaniksu and St. Joe national forests.

The Forest Service’s own standards require it to keep at least 10 percent of the Panhandle’s forests as old growth. The agency contends that 13 percent of the forests are, in fact, old growth. But the Lands Council argues that its survey suggests the forests are not even meeting the 10 percent standard. The Lands Council report was based on a survey of 2,300 acres within the forests.

To qualify as old growth, the Forest Service requires that at least 10 trees per acre be of 21 inches in diameter or larger and at least 150 years old.

The Lands Council report found that 70 percent of the alleged old growth it surveyed did not meet the criteria. Details on the group’s so-called “ground-truthing” campaign were first published in The Spokesman-Review in October.

Most stands surveyed were adjacent to clear-cuts or surrounded by clear-cuts, compromising wildlife habitat range and travel corridors, the report said. Many stands had been logged or fragmented by roads, the report said.

Forest Service Ecologist Art Zack claimed the Lands Council sought out the most outdated records in preparing the investigation. The agency has spent $300,000 in the last three years trying to update its old-growth database, but the Lands Council was not interested in obtaining the freshest data, said Zack, who served on the scientific team that developed the 10 percent old-growth standard.

“They didn’t want to look at any stands with current data,” Zack said.

Last year, the Lands Council persuaded the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to block the proposed Iron Honey timber sale, which was to cover 1,400 acres in the Panhandle forests. The Forest Service planned to use the cash from the sale of 17 million board feet of timber to finance removal of 76 miles of old roads, replant traditional larch and white pine stands, and restore fish habitat.

But environmentalists contended the Iron Honey project was nothing more than a timber sale in disguise and would only aggravate the area’s deteriorated condition.

In reversing a district court ruling, the appeals court held that the Forest Service had overestimated its supply of old growth in the area.

“Here there is evidence that the Forest Service’s main tool for old-growth calculation was inaccurate … (and) the database overstates old growth by 32 percent to 56 percent,” the decision said.

The agency has asked the federal appeals court t for another hearing, O’Brien said.

Old growth is important habitat for caribou, bears, lynx and goshawks. Old growth moderates rainfall and drought and helps protect late-season stream flow. Older trees are more resistant to wildfire and keep the forest cooler during summer.