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Jane Clark
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http://www.seattletimes.com/news/local/html98/swap_19990927.html

    Posted at 01:26 p.m. PDT; Monday, September 27, 1999

National Sierra Club opposes land-swap deal

by Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

Opposition is building to the controversial Interstate 90 land exchange,
with the national board of the Sierra Club joining with local
environmental groups in the call for preservation of lands slated to be
traded to Plum Creek timber.

The resolution by board members of the Sierra Club yesterday was prompted
in part by testimony from Randle residents at the club's San Francisco
board meeting. Randle residents said they fear flooding and landslides in
their town if old-growth timber in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest is
traded to Plum Creek Timber and logged.

The local chapter of the Sierra Club originally backed the land exchange
when it was approved by Congress in 1998. Charlie Raines of the Cascade
chapter said the swap was backed in order to preserve forest land owned
by Plum Creek in the I-90 corridor.

But the Cascade Chapter is now also asking Congress to rethink the
exchange and preserve the Gifford Pinchot parcels as well as Plum Creek
lands that are home to endangered marbled-murrelet birds.

The national Sierra Club's entry into the controversy adds new clout to
the push to protect lands now slated to be traded and logged.

The environmental group also backed a temporary moratorium on support for
land swaps until it develops conservation guidelines that must be met
before the Sierra Club can back an exchange.

That's new. The Sierra Club's backing has been important to land-swap
deals in the past, including the I-90 exchange.

The exchange can be modified in several ways. Environmentalists are
seeking up to $50 million from Congress to buy the environmentally
sensitive lands back from Plum Creek after they are traded in the
exchange.

Another alternative is to shrink the exchange significantly, with the
environmentally sensitive lands dropped out of the trade altogether. A
coalition of more than 20 environmental groups in Washington state is
backing that option.

Plum Creek's land base in the trade would also shrink. Environmentalists
argue that those lands should be purchased with public funds so they are
not logged, instead of swapping away other national-forest lands to save
them.

The controversial exchange has been on hold since July, when a Plum Creek
biologist reported finding endangered marbled murrelets on lands it was
to receive in the land swap.

Congress is now revisiting the exchange to determine how to deal with the
marbled-murrelet parcels. That has also provided an opportunity for
conservationists to revise the exchange.

Plum Creek has said the whole deal will be off unless it gets land of
equal value for the land it is swapping. The timber company has also
agreed to accept cash, instead of timber, for some lands taken out of the
swap.

The land swap is the largest ever negotiated in Washington, involving
land in three national forests, from the I-90 corridor all the way south
to Mount Saint Helens.

It has been controversial from the start, with the debate heating up this
summer when environmental activists took up residence on platforms more
than 100 feet up in old-growth trees on Watch Mountain in the Gifford
Pinchot National Forest above Randle.

Negotiations on the land swap will continue in Congress during the next
several weeks.


Copyright (C) 1999 Seattle Times Company

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