Julie Titone Staff writer
Spokesman-Review, SPOKANE ED, P B2
Thursday, September 1, 1994
COEUR D'ALENE - The Nez Perce National Forest has jumped a big hurdle in its goal to sell timber in the Cove-Mallard roadless area, supervisor Michael King said Wednesday.
The Forest Service has gotten permission from the National Marine Fisheries Service to continue logging in the area, which includes spawning habitat for endangered Snake River salmon.
However, NMFS attached some strings. It put significant limitations on timber harvest, grazing and other activities that could put sediment in spawning streams.
The Forest Service can't go ahead with the sales until those conditions are met.
It must also wait for a federal judge to lift the injunction that is preventing road building, timber harvest and sale planning in the Cove-Mallard area.
"There's a lot of work to do before we can move forward," King said.
Environmentalists have noisily protested the logging. Robert Amon, spokesman for the Cove-Mallard Coalition, was pleased to hear Wednesday that NMFS didn't entirely approve the Cove-Mallard sales.
"Anything that tells the Forest Service that what they've been doing is even slightly wrong validates why we're here," said Amon, whose property is used as a base camp by Earth First! protesters.
NMFS is charged with recovery of the salmon under the Endangered Species Act. It must approve federal activities that might hurt the salmon.
Requirements by NMFS include wider buffer zones on either side of some streams. That will eliminate logging of 21 of the 894 acres planned for harvest in the partially completed Noble sale, and the yet-to-be-sold Jack timber sale.
"That doesn't sound real bad in terms of (lost) timber volume," said Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association.
Kohli is more concerned about a NMFS prohibition on activities that would allow measurable increases in sediment in chinook salmon spawning streams.
"That's a zero-tolerance standard that's impossible to meet," he said.
The Noble and Jack sales are only the start of a decade's worth of logging planned in Cove-Mallard, which is adjacent to several wilderness areas.
Environmentalists are pinning their hopes on two lawsuits aimed at stopping the logging.
One suit, brought by the Idaho Sportsmen's Coalition, resulted in the injunction last February. Industry officials had hoped Judge Harold Ryan would lift that ban when the logging season resumed in June.
But Ryan is seriously ill, Kohli said, and hasn't made that decision.
Ryan's U.S. District Court in Boise is also where the Pacific Rivers Council and Wilderness Society filed suit in April.
On Aug. 19, those two groups asked the court to stop activities in the Nez Perce and five other Idaho national forests with salmon habitat. They are asking that forest management plans be rewritten with salmon recovery in mind.
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