Red-shouldered hawk factor in reduced Forest Service timber sale
(Published Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:41:44 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Robert Imrie Associated Press
WAUSAU, Wis. - An environmental group and the U.S. Forest Service reached an agreement to scale back a timber sale in northern Wisconsin to protect nearly 1,500 acres of forest that provide habitat for some threatened red-shouldered hawks, authorities said Monday.
Kathrine Dixon, an attorney for Habitat Education Center, called the development "very significant" in the relationship between the federal agency and the environmental group. It allows logging on about 4,500 acres in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest but protects a key area for the birds.
The settlement came after the Madison-based center challenged the timber sale - the so-called Boulder project in Langlade and Oconto counties.
"We have been working since 2003 on different timber sales and trying to negotiate and really haven't gotten anywhere," Dixon said. "This is the second that we settled. This is good news. We are not anti-logging, but we are looking at these timber sales as excessive."
The latest development involves one of five timber sales the Forest Service proposed in 2005 involving nearly 33,500 acres. Still in dispute between the two groups are sales involving about 20,000 acres, said Dixon, an attorney with the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago.
Deb Kidd, a specialist in forest planning and environmental analysis for Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest, said the settlement should be signed this week, allowing the agency to solicit bids for the logging.
"The significance is it would allow us to move forward and implement 77 percent of the project," she said in a telephone interview from Rhinelander.
The logging work provides money for local economies and furthers the long-term restoration of the forest by staggering the trees' age and allowing for new growth, Kidd said.
The 1,480 acres that the Forest Service excluded from the Boulder project consists of large blocks of hardwood forest and some old-age aspen, which provide habitat for the highest concentration of red-shouldered hawks in the Lakewood-Laona Ranger District, Dixon said.
The bird played a very big role in the settlement, she said.
"The Forest Service agreed to protect the entire southeast corner of what they originally proposed to cut," Dixon said. "The outcome is that hopefully more birds will be hatched. Having no logging harvest going on for a period of at least 10 years if not more will help to further the success of that species."
The red-shouldered hawk is on Wisconsin's threatened species list and could become endangered if it isn't helped now, said Bob Manwell, a spokesman for the state Department of Natural Resources.
The protected area adjoins a forest on the Menominee Indian Reservation, which contains a population of red-shouldered hawks that is currently under study, Dixon said.
In April, the environmental group and Forest Service reached a settlement on an 8,700-acre timber sale in Florence and Forest counties in which the federal agency agreed to extend a buffer around the nesting grounds of another bird - the goshawk - from 30 acres to 124 acres, Dixon said.
Dave Majewski, who served as county forest supervisor for Florence County for 33 years, said the most recent settlement goes "overboard" to protect the birds. Red-shouldered hawks need mature trees to nest in, but they also need a healthy forest for the wildlife they eat, he said.
Environmentalists are using the hawks to stop timber sales because they "want it to be wilderness up here," he said. "They don't understand forest management and how it's healthy."
But some give-and-take between the two groups is better than lawsuits that holding up logging, Majewski said.
Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, said the Forest Service never should have proposed logging the area with the hawks. The agency has ignored the potential affect on natural resources and clean water to get needed revenue from logging, he said.
Many acres pulled out of the Boulder project also border the Second South Branch of the Oconto River, which suffers from sedimentation problems, he said: "If they log too close to the stream, it silts up."
In 2005, in a lawsuit filed by the Habitat Education Center, a federal judge in Milwaukee blocked the planned sale of timber rights on about 22,000 acres of the forest, leading the Forest Service to do more detailed environmental studies examining how the cumulative effects of logging impacts wildlife habitat.
In this case, research showed the logging would not harm the red-shouldered hawk, but the Forest Service decided to settle anyway to avoid a costly and time-consuming legal fight, said Walt Ruckheim, the agency's timber program manager.
According to Kidd, the Forest Service has more 100 active logging contracts involving thousands of acres. Last year, logging from the forest provided 70 million board feet of timber products worth about $1.6 million, she said.
