No Funding? No Logging Rules? No Problem, Says Forest Service

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MISSOULA, Montana, February 9, 2004 (ENS) - Some $18 million in funding earmarked for restoration of the burned Bitterroot National Forest has been diverted to other uses, and forest officials are allowing large trees to be logged in contravention of a court ordered settlement agreement, conservation groups said Friday.

The 1.6 million acre forest covers two mountain ranges separated by the Bitterroot River valley in southeastern Montana and Idaho. Fires sparked by lightning consumed nearly 20 percent of the Bitterroot forest in the nation's largest wildfire of the summer of 2000, destroying more than 307,000 national forest acres. Two years ago Saturday, seven conservation groups, after a bitterly fought argument, entered into a settlement agreement with Bush administration forest officials over timber sales and restoration on the Bitterroot.

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On Friday, the groups released information showing that restoration is far behind schedule, and most of the money that was to be used to restore the burned area instead was used to pay costs associated with other wildfires. Two years into the Bitterroot Burned Area Recovery plan, only 17 percent of the total required road and watershed restoration work has been completed and, in the words of one Bitterroot National Forest official, $18 million in Bitterroot restoration funds "is just gone."

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But, the conservation groups point out, over 9,000 acres (14 square miles) of the Bitterroot National Forest have been logged as part of the plan. "Enough trees have been cut from the Bitterroot to fill over 4,300 log trucks lined up bumper to bumper for 50 miles," said Friends of the Bitterroot, the Pacific Rivers Council, the National Forest Protection Alliance in a statement Friday. John Grove, a retired Forest Service district ranger and a member of Friends of the Bitterroot, said, "The reality on the Bitterroot is that the restoration rhetoric from Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, Undersecretary Mark Rey and Bitterroot Supervisor Dave Bull has proven hollow. Actions always speak louder than words."

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http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=29202