Harvest in national forest delayed

The Forest Service concedes that it needs to more thoroughly account for rare animals.

By CRAIG PITTMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 17, 2001

The U.S. Forest Service has postponed plans to allow timber companies to cut pine trees on about 1,000 acres of Osceola National Forest in North Florida after an environmental group pointed out that the agency failed to adequately check the area for rare animals.

"They could be harming endangered species without even knowing they're there," said Marty Bergoffen of the North Carolina-based Southern Appalachian Diversity Project on Wednesday.

But Denise Rains, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service in Florida, said that what the environmental group has delayed is an effort to restore habitat for an endangered species, the red-cockaded woodpecker.

"It's very ironic," Rains said. "We were going to be taking out slash pine that was planted in what was historically longleaf pine territory."

Then foresters would replant the 1,040 acres with longleaf pine "to restore it to red-cockaded woodpecker habitat," she said.

Forest Service officials had planned to accept bids this summer from timber companies interested in cutting pines on six parcels scattered around the 157,000 acres of the national forest near Lake City. According to Rains, the sale of that timber would have brought in more than $450,000.

Now the timber sale is on hold while foresters revamp their environmental report, which a regional official in Atlanta agreed last week lacked sufficient information about gopher tortoises, Eastern indigo snakes, Sherman's fox squirrels, Florida gopher frogs and striped newts, all of which are protected as rare species under state or federal law.

In the May 3 decision, the Forest Service ruled that there was sufficient information on some rare and endangered species that might be affected by the timber harvest, including the wood stork, black bear and flatwoods salamander.

But the ruling noted that the agency's own biologists had written that "no surveys have been done" and "surveys are needed" for the gopher tortoise and Florida gopher frog in particular. As for the Eastern indigo snake, the biologists noted, "the status of this snake . . . is unknown."

By failing to do a proper survey, Bergoffen said, "it's sticking your head in the sand and saying you're going to cut timber, no matter what."

Rains, however, said the problems were "a technicality" and that the work had been done, just not documented. She predicted that "the sale will be turned around very quickly."

The Forest Service was required to start doing the species surveys in 1989, Bergoffen said, "and as far as we can tell they've never done what's required," he said.

WildLaw and the Southern Appalachian Diversity Project sued the Forest Service last year over the lack of similar surveys on 56 other timber sales throughout the Southeast. Bergoffen said those timber sales are also on hold until the lawsuit is resolved. The Osceola sale, which is not part of the suit, is the first in Florida to be put on hold since the suit was filed, he said.

WildLaw attorney Brett Paben said the Forest Service had also attempted to sell timber in an area of the Apalachicola National Forest that had been proposed for protection under the Clinton administration's controversial roadless policy, but the sale was postponed after WildLaw officials objected.

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