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Show Industry claims ! Wilderness, bugs pose doomsday Between pine beetles and wilderness areas, the days of the lumber industry in northeastern Utah may be numbered. This seems to be a concensus among lumbermen in the area'. Hard line environmentalists say wilderness areas must be protected at all costs. Lumbermen agree, but say the size of the wilderness area must be within reason in order for the industry to be able to supply the lumber needs of the people. Part of the problem with wilderness areas began in 1973 when the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) was implemented by the United States Forest Service. This program was intended in-tended to determine what land should be logically designated roadless area and what should be specified for multiple-use. multiple-use. Phase I of that project eventually became phase II in order to make more extensive study, and now there is phase III around the corner to make the study even more extensive. The problem arises because all of the area in the RARE study is immediately treated as though Congress has already decreed it to be a wilderness area. A moratorium is placed on all development until the study has been completed. Now, according to W.E. Sweeney, President of Great Lakes Timber Company, there have been requests to greatly enlarge the area of the RARE study. The largest request, re-quest, according to Sweeney, has been for 771,406 acres. If this acreage is included in-cluded Sweeney says it will practically take away all the good lumber territory in the whole area. While not all of the possibilities include 771,000 acres, all recommendations do include in-clude a portion of land that was to be sold this spring for lumber harvest known as the Thornburg Sale. Gary Simper, of Simper Lumber in Vernal, said the Thornburg area is one of the few areas left that will be economical to harvest. Simper says the problem revolves around the RARE, as well as the pine beetle. He said that the lumber industry could live with either one or the other, but the two together could, in essence, put an end to the lumber industry in northeastern nor-theastern Utah. Simper said, "They already have so much wilderness area they can't take care of it." Advocates of wilderness areas might respond that is the whole point of wilderness areas, to leave them primitive and not take care of them. To simply let nature take its course. That nay be what wilderness is all about. According to Sweeney, that is exactly what is happening, nature is taking its course and in so doing ruining thousands of acres of prime timber land that should be used by the people of the United States. Sweeney said you can forget all about the lumber industry if you want, but you can't forget about the people who own the forest. What do the people want? Do they want to set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of land to be allowed to spoil because of the mountain pine beetle? Do they want to set aside hundreds hun-dreds of thousands of acres of land into wilderness area that only one-half of one percent of the people will ever use, and only one-half of those people will ever get more than two miles into the wilderness area. Sweeney thinks this is not what the people want, but this is what a few overly over-ly protective people want in order to keep this land for themselves, for their own selfish purposes. Simper said it is too late to save the forest from the pine beetle. He said something should have been done years ago while there was still a chance. In a similar situation near Craig, Colorado a 100 foot swath was cut around the infested in-fested trees, those fallen trees were then dragged into the center area, and the entire en-tire area was set afire. This saved the surrounding forest. Simper says it is way too late to do that here, there is just too must area infested. He said the best thing that can now be done is use what timber is salvageable before it all becomes infested. in-fested. "Within five years this mountain will be brown," he said. The logical question is why not harvest the infested trees? Both Sweeney and Simper said there are certain things infested in-fested trees can be used for, but in order to make a profit, green timber must be available. Too many things just can't be done with infested dead trees. Jack Watson, forest planner with the Forest Service in Vernal said the lumber people have some valid claims, but any wilderness area proposal he is aware of will not put the lumber companies out of business. He said for years the Ashley National Forest has not sold permits for as much land as has been available simply simp-ly because the- demand has not been there. Watson said the largest wilderness area proposal he is aware of is 659,000 acres. He said this proposal would have a great impact on timber cutting and sales. Most of this area, he said, is rugged and would be too expensive to harvest anyway. Because of the nature of what the pine harvested in this area can be used for, there are limitations as to how much a company can spend to get the timber out and still make a profit. Continued on page 5 Timber... Continued from page 1 Sweeney said he thinks the Forest Service Ser-vice has done a good job in arriving at a wilderness proposal. The figure proposed propos-ed by the Forest Service included 469,950 acrea. This was 61,861 acres more than had been supported by the various county coun-ty commissions of the area. Sweeney said this figure includes most of the area which is natural wilderness area Anymore goes beyond good judgment. He said this is hurting more than just the lumber industry, but also oil, gas and mining industries as well. Sweeney said if the proposed wilderness area stands at the 771,000 acres amount, and this is put under the RARE, the few wilderness area advocates ad-vocates will win the battle by default, simply because there would then be nothing more the people could do about it. Simper said the war may already be lost, since they have already written all the letters they know to write, and he doesn't know what more can be done. If the area is put under the RARE, according ac-cording to lumber industry reports, the percentage of timber sales offerings in the next five year action plan that would fall in natural wilderness roadless areas would be 1 percent in 1983, 19 percent in 1984, 59 percent in 1985, 32 percent in 1986, and 23 percent in 1987. This comes on the heels of the Forest Service saying they intend to accelerate timber sales, said Sweeney. "I'd like to know where the trees are going to come from," he said. Because only the Congress can designate wilderness area, and no one really knows what they are thinking, it is difficult to understand the whole situation, situa-tion, even for an insider, said Watson. In the past positions of the lumber industry and wilderness advocates has been very polarized, although, Watson said, he doesn't think the extreme polarization exists here as it does in some locations. The lumber industry needs 15 million board feet per year to continue to exist. Sweeney claims that amount of acceptable accep-table wood will not be available if the land is tied up in the RARE as it has been for the past 10 years. He thinks it is time some decisions are made as well as some commitments to the citizens of the United States and the environment. According Ac-cording to Sweeney, harvesting timber is not the terrrible destructive force to the environment a few hard line wilderness advocates would have you believe. What is hard on the environment is when all the trees in the forest fall down, as they do when beetle infested. Deer and elk can't get through the fallen trees and are forced to move. New growth can't come up through the forest floor. Sweeney says the hard liners keep talking about giving some of the area back to the multiple-users. "Give what back?" asks Sweeney. They can't give anything back that never belonged to them. The land has always belonged to the people, and to tie it up for a very few people just isn't fair, Sweeney said. What he would like to see happen is the Congress Con-gress forget about the RARE, accept the Forest Service's recommendation of 470,000 acreas as designated wilderness area, and the rest of the land be released releas-ed for multiple-use. In a letter to Sweeney from U.S. Senator Jake Garn, Garn said, "I share with your concerns that any Utah Wilderness Bill contain hard release language in it." "Rest assured that whatever legislation legisla-tion is introduced by me will place non-wilderness non-wilderness lands in a multiple-use classification for a long, long, time." |