Timber Group Seeks Softer Logging Rules

SAN FRANCISCO —  A timber industry group Tuesday proposed several new regulations that would make it easier for loggers to fell trees and harder for conservationists to challenge controversial logging practices.

The proposals, which the Timber Assn. of California said would simply make clear what is and is not required by the state to approve timber harvesting, were introduced before the state Board of Forestry in Sacramento.

The eight-member board is authorized under state law to adopt the specific logging regulations needed to implement general guidelines outlined in the state Forest Practice Act. The board, which critics say is sympathetic to the logging industry, Tuesday acknowledged the industry suggestions but did not say when it would decide what to do with them.

Environmentalists were swift to criticize the industry’s proposals, arguing the recommended rules would kill the last remnants of environmental protection left in the state’s logging laws.

“Timber harvest plans as they read now are virtually worthless,” said one Sierra Club lawyer, Joseph J. Brecher of Oakland. “They give (regulators) so much discretion . . . almost any kind of horrible logging practice is approved.”

“There are, however, a few rules that we were able to use to stop some of the worst plans, especially where old-growth was concerned,” he added. “The industry has been collecting all of those decisions in our favor, and now they want to do away with the (regulatory) provisions we used.”

The timber association said in introducing its proposals that it simply sought to clean up “some vagueness in the forest practice rules” and “some confusion and capriciousness in legal interpretations of them.”

The industry group denied that a string of legal setbacks suffered recently by its members were the result of loggers breaking the law.

“We feel the adverse court decisions are based primarily on the failure to respond adequately to significant environmental points raised during the THP (timber harvest plan) review process,” it said.

Nonetheless, the timber association acknowledged that changes in forest practice rules are needed to offset the string of legal victories by environmentalists, who have blocked a significant amount of logging that could threaten the rare spotted owl or sensitive fish-spawning streams.

As discussed in its 48-page report to the board, the timber association proposals would:

- Officially elevate logging to be “paramount among all competing uses” in timber-production zones, and forbid regulatory agencies to presume that logging has “significant adverse impact on the environment.”

- Automatically reject any effort to mitigate environmental damage caused by logging if the environmental protection measures would “significantly detract from growing and harvesting timber.”

- Redefine the analysis of cumulative logging impacts to exclude areas which will be logged more than five years in the future and timber operations planned by other companies. Studies of cumulative impacts would be “guided” by undefined standards of “practicality and reasonableness.”

- Restrict requests for additional information beyond what is submitted by a timber company in its original timber-harvest plan. Information requests would have to be made through the state Department of Forestry and would be answered only if found to be reasonable and not too costly to answer. The timber harvest plan could be approved before the additional information is provided.

- Modify protection of threatened and endangered species by limiting logging restrictions only to those habitats where endangered species are known to live now, not to habitats that might be suitable for such species in the future.

“The new rules will still sound like they have protection,” said Brecher, “but because of the wiggly language they contain--and because the Department of Forestry is solidly behind this industry--they can and will be interpreted to support any kind of logging.”

Brecher added that industry proposals were so radical that environmentalists could revive the controversial notion of requiring lengthy, costly environmental impact reports for timber harvests.

An agreement hammered out in the 1970s found California’s timber laws to be “functionally equivalent” to the tough California Environmental Quality Act. Since then, timber harvests have been exempt from the law’s more arduous analysis requirements.