Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411070061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Overall, however, the Jefferson is providing a greater percentage of timber coming off federal forests than in the past, according to Jim Sitton, timber staff officer for the Jefferson and George Washington national forests.
Sitton and more than two dozen other forest employees met with environmental activists, timber industry representatives, and other concerned citizens at the Jefferson's eighth annual public meeting Saturday.
As usual, logging was the day's most divisive issue, even though the forest spent twice as much of its $11million budget this year on recreation, natural-resource protection, wildlife habitat, land swaps and acquisitions, law enforcement, fire management and planning.
In 1990, loggers cut 9.3billion board feet of lumber from the national forests. (A board foot is a square foot of lumber, one inch thick.) That has dropped to 3 billion board feet, Sitton said.
The Southern Appalachians are contributing a greater percent of that, mostly because of the Northern spotted owl controversy, which has all but halted logging in the Pacific Northwest. Region 8 of the Forest Service, which includes the Jefferson and several other forests in the Southeast, now provides 25 percent of the total, up from 15 percent in 1990.
To some, that's bad news.
"We've been getting screwed for a long time. We still need to cut the cut in the Southern Appalachians," said Sherman Bamford, who described himself as "a roving forest activist."
Others disagreed.
"To be scaling back volume ... is a disservice to the people of Appalachia," said Terry Porter, who works at B.A. Mullican Lumber and Manufacturing in Wise County. The shift of timber production from one corner of the country to the other is "an economic opportunity for Appalachian workers," Porter said.
Several environmentalists took issue with the Jefferson for releasing budget and other complicated information Saturday, saying they did not have time to review it all on the same day.
"It's not fair to dump this on us now. This meeting is supposed to be a critique," said Justin Askins, a Radford University professor of environmental issues. Part of the problem is that the agency heads in Washington, D.C., constantly tinker with the budget process, so programs appear under different categories each year, explained Jefferson supervisor Joy Berg.
Other concerns from the 20 or so citizens who attended include:
Not enough money was spent "on the ground" in actual projects.
Too many trees were cut as "salvage" in slowing the spread of the Southern pine beetle and other pests.
The forest is behind in revising its 10-year management plan and in starting "ecosystem management" as directed by the chief of the Forest Service.
The forest is starting an inventory of "old growth" trees without having a clear definition based on opinions from all sides.
"To a timber [logger], it's eight logs high and 40 inches in diameter in four years," said one man. "To an artist, it's a scraggly little tree out in the open field."
To start the inventory, foresters are looking at trees that are at least 100 years old.
The Jefferson was too stingy in identifying only 202,741 acres for deer as the "featured species," which means all activities on those acres ought to benefit deer in some way. The forest contains 710,000 acres stretching in bits and pieces from Rockbridge to Washington counties.
In evaluation forms collected after the meeting, some people complained that the discussion had been commandeered by environmentalists and anti-logging types.
by CNB