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Greens aim to cut out logging Allegheny Forest shouldn't be used for profit, they say Monday, June 08, 1998 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Zero Cut, the national campaign to end logging in national forests, has finally taken root in the sylvan state of Penns Woods.
After almost a decade knocking around the nation from the midwest to the Pacific northwest, it pushed its way into the state and the Allegheny National Forest offices in downtown Warren, Warren County, in the form of four Earth First! activists late last month.
The activists, all residents of New York state and linked together with steel tubes and a bicycle lock, staged a peaceful sit-in to protest an Allegheny National Forest timber sale that is the biggest east of the Mississippi River.
As they were arrested and carried out by police and firefighters, a dozen protesters picketed the building and distributed leaflets denouncing the 10,000-acre East Side Project timber sale and promoting the Zero Cut Campaign.
"I love the Allegheny and want to see it remain intact," said one of the arrested protesters, Mike Kruse, 21, last week at a benefit concert at Rosebud in the Strip District.
"The Allegheny, because of its prized hardwoods, especially the black cherry, is the biggest timber moneymaker of any of our national forests. If we can stop logging there, we can stop it everywhere."
It is not a new idea, ending timbering on public lands. Heartwood, a national environmental group based in Indiana, formed around the principal of ending logging in the 155 national forests eight years ago.
In 1996, Sierra Club members voted by a 2-1 ratio for such a ban, and forest activists from many different groups called for an end to cutting in public forests at a rally in Burntside Lake, Minn., last September.
Also last year, a bipartisan bill, the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, was introduced in Congress to end timbering on public lands and provide assistance for forest communities dependent on the timber industry.
The arrests in Warren put a Pennsylvania exclamation point on the almost decade-old national campaign. Recently, the Clarion, Clarion County-based Allegheny Defense Project has filed lawsuits to block the sale of timber from national forests.
"This is an idea whose time has come, and it's already happening," said Susan Curry, a Defense Project leader, pointing to sale-stopping litigation in Allegheny National Forest, Wayne National Forest in Ohio, the Shawnee in Illinois, the Daniel Boone in Kentucky and the Hoosier in Indiana.
The efforts to stop the 40-acre-plus clearcuts planned for the Allegheny provided a rallying point for the dozen forest-oriented environmental groups that sent representatives to Clarion last week for the National Zero Cut Campaign's annual strategy meeting.
"We've had good success with direct action, and lawsuits have stopped some timber sales," said Alison Cochran, national coordinator for Zero Cut, "but we need the legislation to settle the issue."
The national forest program was established in 1881 by Congress in response to widespread environmental deterioration. It set aside vast federal land holdings in the western United States as "forest reserves," to protect watersheds, wildlife and recreation. No logging was permitted.
But by 1897, under pressure from the timber industry, Congress opened the reserves to logging. Over the years, especially after World War II, when private timber reserves in the Pacific Northwest were exhausted, the cutting increased.
Federal law passed in 1960 requires the U.S. Forest Service to manage the nation's public forests for "multiple use." That includes preserving wildlife, wildflower, old growth, migratory bird and endangered species habitat and promoting recreation, along with extracting resources such as timber, oil and natural gas.
Lately, increased cutting proposals have run into expanding recreation needs and a growing environmental ethic, producing unprecedented conflicts over timbering, especially in forest communities that have come to rely on timbering jobs and timber tax subsidies.
In those communities, there is widespread hostility, bitterness and tension about the role of "outsiders" in determining the economic future of the local economy.
However, Samuel Hays, an environmental historian and member of the state's old growth forest committee, said other outsiders, namely the national and international timber and extractive industries, have long been influential in the local economies.
"How do they think about the well-being of extractive communities as they move their investments around the globe?" Hays wrote in a recent forest essay.
Today, about 4 percent of the nation's total annual timber consumption comes from national forest trees. The federal government spent $1.3 billion on public forest logging programs, including road building, in 1996, but revenues amounted to only $535 million - a loss of $765 million.
According to the Associated Press, Republican leaders in Congress have agreed to end subsides for building logging roads in the forests. In exchange, moderate Republicans will not propose any further reductions in logging support this year.
By the year 2000, according to a 1996 Forest Service report, recreation, hunting and fishing on national forests will contribute 31 times more to the nation's economy and 38 times the number of jobs than the existing timber sale program.
According to the Forest Service, recreation is already the most significant industry in the Allegheny National Forest region, providing 1,600 jobs and creating economic benefits worth $16 million annually.
One of the only national forests to make a consistent profit because of its high-priced hardwoods, the 510,000-acre Allegheny National Forest sprawls over Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren counties.
Recent high tree mortality on more than 90,000 acres because of insect infestation and poor regeneration caused the Forest Service to increase timber sales in areas of high tree mortality.
The Forest Service increased its salvage sales in the Allegheny 68.6 percent from fiscal 1995 to fiscal 1996. Sales jumped eightfold between 1993 and 1996.
The East Side Project combines several smaller timber sale proposals, including the Mortality II project, a 5,000-acre, scattered site salvage cut valued at more than $10 million. That cut was halted in October by U.S. District Judge William Standish, who ruled that an environmental impact study had to be done before the sale proceeded.
"The East Side Project is a prime example of why logging on our eastern national forests should stop," said Devin Scherubel, Heartwood program coordinator. "Our small and scattered national forests have many greater values."
Forest activists said the proposed tree cuts bordered and would adversely affect popular recreational areas, environmentally sensitive old growth tree stands and pristine streams.
"Our position is that the public land is owned by the public and shouldn't be used for private profit," said Don Doherty, a member of the Sierra Club Allegheny Group executive committee.
"The Forest Service spends a lot of public money subsidizing the raising and cutting of trees and then runs the program at a deficit," he said. "The timber companies are making money off the sales and the taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize them."
The Sierra Club is conducting a letter writing campaign to expand the list of 30 co-sponsors supporting the legislation.
Even the most optimistic of the Zero Cut supporters agree it's going to take a while to generate action in a Republican-controlled Congress that has not distinguished itself as environmentally friendly.
Executive action by President Clinton, similar to his order stopping 80 percent of the cutting in national forests in Oregon, California and Washington, is a possibility, but activists aren't pinning their hopes on it.
"We don't expect overnight success on this, but that has been the history of major environmental initiatives in the past," Doherty said. "They often take several years or longer, plus a lot of dedication by supporters, to gain congressional approval."
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