Environmentalists Call ‘Beetlemania’ a Hollow Excuse for Cutting Trees

WASHINGTON —  Douglas fir bark beetles are killing thousands of trees in the Pacific Northwest, and Forest Service officials say they can do little to stop them.

But the officials say some good can come from what they consider an epidemic. They can sell trees on 25,000 infected acres in Washington state and Idaho and use the proceeds to rebuild roads, plant more trees, protect streams and cut the risk of forest fires.

“What we’re trying to do is realize some of the value by salvaging the lumber,” said Dan Dallas, a district ranger in the Colville National Forest in northeast Washington. “I’m not going to have another opportunity like this, I’m sure, to make this many needed improvements in a road system I can’t maintain.”

Problem is, environmentalists say, there is no beetle epidemic.

They contend the little black-headed bug with reddish-brown wings is being used as an excuse to boost the cut and to increase Forest Service income.

“It’s very clear that the Forest Service timber program is winding down. . . . They have to come up with some reason to log,” said Ron Mitchell, who dubs the plan the “fraudulent beetlemania project.”

“They are in a desperate situation, and this is the most desperate thing they could have done,” said Mitchell, director of the Idaho Sporting Congress in Boise.

No one disputes that there are billions of the beetles in western forests. They reproduce in the inner bark of weakened Douglas fir trees. Larvae eat away at the bark, killing the tree.

An ice storm in the winter of 1996-97, plus unusually heavy snow and rains, weakened thousands of trees in Idaho and northeast Washington, leaving them ripe for infestation.

Ralph Thier, an entomologist in the Forest Service’s Boise office, inspected some damaged trees in the Boise National Forest in the spring of 1997 and sounded the alarm that conditions were ripe for a major beetle buildup.

In May 1998, Boise forest officials approved a plan to allow logging on 7,000 acres to remove infested trees and prevent a larger infestation.

They also hung bait traps on trees to try to condense the beetles in a 365-acre area of that 7,000 acres, contracting with Boise Cascade Corp. to quickly remove about 9,000 trees in the smaller area last fall.

Mitchell’s group filed suit in 1998, trying to block both the 365-acre plan and the larger effort.

In October, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise put a halt to the 365-acre plan, and in February he put the entire 7,000-acre project on hold. Winmill said the Forest Service’s environmental analysis was insufficient and the agency had presented no evidence that beetle populations were high.

Environmentalists called the decision a major victory--and proof of the “beetle hoax.”

And they say the Forest Service is falsely claiming beetle epidemics in the Colville forest and in the Coeur D’Alene and Kaniksu national forests in the Idaho Panhandle.

Agency officials say the cases are different.

Thier said that although the beetle problem he expected in the Boise forest didn’t materialize in 1998-- probably because of an unusually moist spring the year before--the problems in the Panhandle and northeast Washington have been documented.

Forest Service officials say surveys last fall found hundreds of dead trees with telltale red needles in the three forests. They expect to lose thousands more trees this spring.

The plan is to log 150 million board feet from 25,000 acres in the Colville, Coeur D’Alene and Kaniksu forests, or about 40% more than loggers typically take from those areas.

In all, trees scattered across an estimated 150,000 acres on the Idaho Panhandle national forests are under beetle attack, according to testimony last month from Stanley Hamilton, director of the Idaho Department of Lands, before a House Resources Committee panel.

“The Forest Service must consider immediate action to reduce the potential risk of high-intensity wildfire and bark-beetle infestation onto adjacent private lands,” he told the forests and forest health subcommittee.

Environmentalists say nature should be allowed to take its course.

Weakened and dead trees are home to woodpeckers, squirrels, rodents and at least 50 other species that are critical to the forest ecosystem, they note. And a rotting tree provides critical nutrients to soil.

“I do not believe we have a potentially catastrophic epidemic,” said Sara Folger, forest watch director of the Lands Council in Spokane, Wash.

“They’re killing some trees,” she said of the beetles, “but forests will regulate themselves given the chance.

“My contention is the ecosystem needs that material a lot more than the timber mills do.”

Some say the Forest Service is moving too fast.

The agency is proceeding before necessary research has been completed, says Art Partridge, a consultant and retired University of Idaho forestry professor.

“They claim an epidemic, but they don’t give you any figures to substantiate it,” he said.

Some members of Congress, and some parties who own land near the forests at issue, say the Forest Service is moving too slowly.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) is expected to introduce a bill that would push the Forest Service to speed up approval for logging in infested areas.

Under the bill, the agency would be required to seek permission from the White House Council on Environmental Quality to condense the environmental regulatory process. Paperwork that typically takes six months to complete could be finished in as little as one month.

“The Forest Service must expedite its actions,” Chenoweth said at the March 23 forests and forest health subcommittee hearing. “Not to do so would be an irresponsible and unacceptable breach of the public trust.”

Forest Service officials plan to announce a final decision on the Colville-Coeur D’Alene-Kaniksu plan by the end of this month. Then there would be a 105-day appeal period before most of the project could go forward.

Forest Service officials are seeking an exemption to log 4,000 acres in the Coeur D’Alene as early as Aug. 1, before the environmental appeals process is complete. They say the infestation on those acres has become a matter of urgency.

The rest of the logging, if approved, would begin later this year or in early 2000.