Commissioners concerned with new timber sales
By Dan Bain KPIC NewsROSEBURG, Ore. -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has announced a crop of timber sales for Bureau of Land Management lands that will help keep Oregon mills open while the Obama administration works on a long-term forest management strategy. MultimediaSalazar said the Western Oregon Timber Sales are all passing endangered species consultations, assuring they will not be tied up in years of litigation. He also announced creation of a task force to work on a long-term timber strategy. Oregon democrats U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Rep. Peter Defazio praised the sales, saying they offered real timber, not false "Clearly what is being discussed today is less than what was being promised under WOPR, but it is a lot more than would have been received under these gridlocked policies that you would have had under years and years of litigation," said Wyden. Rep. Defazio said, "You're doing the consultation that's following the law. These aren't the volumes that some would like to see, but this is real potential volume that's not just going to be offered and perhaps bid on and litigated for years." Douglas County commissioners however, were not so sure the plan would change anything. Commissioner Doug Robertson said, "We'll see, we'll be hopeful and supportive of the effort to develop of a plan that works, but again, after 4 1/2 years of working with all the information, all of the agencies involved, every major natural resource agency in the United States, it would seem to me that to simply sweep that aside and start all over is ludicrous." Commissioner Joe Laurance said, "Whatever they come up with by this new means and protocol, we don't see it as in any way being immune from challenge by the conservation community." Laurance says the current court action where the timber industry won a lawsuit against the BLM for not managing the lands for timber, could challenge the plan set out by the interior department today. |
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February 9, 2012
- Roseburg, Oregon
