Transcript from
West Virginia Public Radio broadcast

INTRO: The US Forest Service plans to increase the timber harvest on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, reversing a recent downturn in logging there. Environmental groups see it as an alarming increase in logging that could have harmful effects on the forest’s wildlife habitat and recreational use. But the Forest Service says it’s really just a return to timbering levels the forest saw through most of the past decade.

Jeff Young reports.

U.S. Forest Service records show that for the past five years the timber cut on the Monongahela National Forest has gone steadily down, from 28 million board feet cut in 1996, to less than 8 million this year [2001]. But the Forest Service wants that trend reversed in the next two or three years. Forest managers plan to offer timber sales of 20 million board feet a year.

Monongahela National Forest’s acting supervisor Don Carroll says the new timber sale targets are in line with what was cut on the forest for most of the past decade. CARROLL "Well, it’s not an increase if you look at what Mon harvested over the past 10 or 15 years. It’s still far less than what was harvested for most of the 80s and early 90s."

Q Yes but through those years there’s been a trend downward in the harvest. Is this a reversal of that trend?

CARROLL "It’s an effort to get back to a level we were at in the early 90s. Yeah it’s a reversal in the trend. But simply will people see more harvesting in the Monongahela in the coming years compared to what they’ve seen in the past 5 to 10 years the answer is no."

Environmental groups don’t see it that way. They compare the coming sales with this years cut and see an alarming potential for nearly three times the logging.

GARVIN "I think once again we see the Forest service emphasizing timber harvest over all the other multiple uses of the land."

That’s Don Garvin, president of the Mountaineer Chapter of Trout Unlimited [and Highlands Conservancy Director]. Garvin’s concerned that the Forest Service won’t be able to manage the cut in an environmentally sound way.

GARVIN "I have grave concerns that a tripling of the cut without a tripling of the staff with that there will come trade-offs. And if they’re going to sacrifice buffer zones just to get out the cut we’ll have mud in the streams. And mud and trout don’t mix well."

The Forest Service’s Carroll says the planned increase in timber sales is part of a renewed emphasis to complete planning for all sorts of projects, not just timber harvest but also wildlife, watershed restoration and road maintenance. He says budget cuts and staff shortages have made it hard to get projects moving in recent years.

CARROLL "With downsizing, with budgets declining, with the type of work we do getting more complex--it’s harder to get through planning and get projects on the shelf. Now we’re at a point that we’re not able to do the work we need to get done."

Carroll says that’s true for much of the Forest Service but especially so on the Mon, which has key positions vacant. There’s no wildlife biologist, no environmental coordinator, indeed, Carroll himself is just filling in; a permanent supervisor isn’t expected until June. Garvin says it is exactly those shortages that worry him.

GARVIN "Staff members I know feel like they’re working at maximum levels right now to plan the current operations and really are concerned about where is the time going to come from, and where will the resources come from, to have an increased management level of an increase cut?"

The Forest Service estimates that 20 million board feet of timber harvested would translate roughly into a thousand acres of clearcut forest or about 2 thousand acres of selectively cut forest. The Monongahela covers nearly a million acres in West Virginia stretching along the state’s Eastern mountains from Greenbrier County North to Preston County.

For WV Public Broadcasting I’m Jeff Young.