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Date:         Thu, 19 Aug 1999 13:56:21 EDT
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From: David Orr <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Quincy's Broken Promise--SF Chronicle Editorial
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---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------

Quincy's Broken Promise

Editorial
San Francisco Chronicle
August 19, 1999

THE U.S. FOREST Service appears ready to make it official: The Quincy
Library Group plan could more than double logging operations on 2.4
million acres of Lassen, Plumas and Tahoe national forests. It would
carve another 100 miles of logging roads in the Sierra.

So much for Sen. Dianne Feinstein's assurance (Letters, May 8, 1998) that
the Quincy plan ``would not radically increase logging activities as
opponents claim, it would simply replace current logging with a more
intelligent, planned approach aimed at developing a more fire-resilient
landscape.''

The USFS plan expected to be released tomorrow would sanction the most
ambitious option of cutting 319 million board-feet a year -- a radical
increase from the current 125 million board-feet.

The Quincy proposal caught the imagination of Washington policymakers
because it was germinated in meetings between local environmentalists,
loggers and politicians in the only place they could meet without
screaming at each other: the town library. It has been widely hailed as a
model of collaboration, a solution to the timber wars that have caused so
much strife and so many lawsuits in so many places.

Out of those meetings, which began in late 1992, emerged a plan to
sustain logging while protecting the forest by enlisting the timber
companies to cut a series of linear ``fuel breaks'' that could slow or
stop the spread of forest fires. Feinstein and Rep. Wally Herger,
R-Chico, sponsored the measure.

There was, however, nothing balanced about the plan that reached Capitol
Hill.
It mandated the higher logging levels and set targets that would be
impossible
to meet without cutting into old-growth groves.

The measure has since been improved in several ways. Rep. George Miller,
D-Martinez, added an amendment that required an environmental impact
review
and compliance with environmental laws. Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer,
D-Calif., inserted language to protect old growth and to give the USFS
the option to scale back the targeted logging levels -- an option the
agency reportedly has
rejected. However, the USFS has agreed to delay the cutting of fuel
breaks in
spotted-owl habitat until a Sierra-wide environmental review is completed.

The theory behind the Quincy plan was worth testing, but on a smaller
scale.
Now the USFS is about to commit to five years of intensified logging.
National
environmental groups, who were shut out of the Quincy discussions, are
warning
that the USFS plan would imperil species such as the California spotted
owl,
fisher and marten -- and they are hinting of lawsuits.

Quincy did not solve the timber wars, it merely redrew the battle lines.
The
fight is not just about harvest versus preservation, but about whether the
management of a national forest is for only the locals to decide.

The logging-focused Quincy plan shows the danger of a narrow view.


c1999 San Francisco Chronicle  PageA24

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