A logging proposal just outside Crater Lake National Park has reignited the Northwest’s logging wars in miniature, pitting timber groups anxious for jobs against environmentalists who have gathered 10,000 comments in opposition.
The U.S. Forest Service’s proposed Bybee timber sale covers 16,215-acres, running up to the western border of Oregon’s only national park.
A coalition of Oregon environmental groups has lined up against the project. The sale would cut 300- to 400-year-old trees, said George Sexton, conservation director for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center.
It would run new logging roads into fingers of forest last logged more than 60 years ago, Sexton said, effectively functioning as wilderness in one of Oregon’s highest-value recreation areas.
In recent years, environmental groups have agreed to two similarly sized thinning projects in southern Oregon’s national forests, in part to help reduce fire risk. But the Bybee proposal goes well beyond thinning of young trees, Sexton said, with trees up to 4 feet in diameter on the potential cut list.
From Oregon Live: https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2013/02/logging_proposed_near_crater_l.html