July 5th, 2007

Annie’s Cabin logging bid awarded

Molalla Pioneer
By Abby Sewell

The Freres Lumber Co. of Lyons, Ore., has agreed to pay $1,928,177 to the Bureau of Land Management for a contract to log in parts of the Molalla River Recreation Corridor.

Bidding opened on the Annie’s Cabin timber sale last Thursday, with four bidders competing for the right to cut timber in the 566-acre parcel of land, appraised at a value of $1,715,977.

Prior to the sale, several local environmental groups expressed concerns about the proposed thinning project. Now the Portland-based group Bark plans to appeal the sale to the Interior Board of Land Appeals.

Alex Brown, executive director of Bark, said the group wants to see the project altered to leave a buffer around trails in the recreation corridor and to exclude parcels of old growth and habitat for sensitive species like red-tree voles, slender salamanders and tall bugbane.

“One of our biggest concerns is that the BLM owns patches of land that are mostly surrounded by private land and wildlife relies on those patches of public land for habitat,” he said. “If all of a sudden the BLM starts logging their land, those species may have nowhere to go.”
Other groups, including Molalla RiverWatch and the Molalla Community Planning Organization expressed similar concerns in protest letters filed with the BLM.

Some officials say thinning could save the recreation corridor in the event of a fire, by keeping the flames from spreading into the crown of the trees.

“As [the corridor] is right now, it’s not thinned, it’s dry and it’s thick and if there were a major fire, it would really destroy that gem that is the corridor,” said Jamie Paul, a spokesperson with the Oregon Department of Forestry Molalla Unit. “At this point, if a fire got to the point where it was large and went to the tops of the trees, it would become a very large fire.”

For his part, Rob Freres, owner of Freres Lumber said the family-owned company, which manufactures soft-wood veneer, lumber and plywood, relies on timber from public lands to keep it afloat.

“We employ 425 people and we’re dependent on public timber sales like these for our survival,” he said. “We don’t have a large land base of our own.”

In response to the issues raised by the environmental groups, he pointed out that the BLM made a concession by agreeing to primarily use helicopter logging instead of bringing logging trucks into the trail system.

“Those trails were originally logging skid trails,” he said. “We could log with tractors and cable systems. We could go in and use Caterpillars and replace the trails if they were damaged. But instead we will use helicopters, at a tremendous cost to the taxpayers.”

Brown said despite that concession, logging operations in the corridor will take away from its uses as a recreation site and a habitat for sensitive species.

“Hikers are going to be walking through a logging operation,” he said. “To me, Annie’s Cabin is symbolic of the stubborn, bull-headed approach of the BLM’s logging program right now. If I were a land manager managing America’s public forests, why would I choose to log over an amazing trail system in some of the last native habitat in the area?”

The contract on the timber sale cannot be formalized until the appeals process is finished. However, Brown admitted the appeal is unlikely to succeed.

“I think it will be flatly rejected,” he said. “Anyone who has been up there knows that area is special. But unfortunately the reality is that the BLM can log right over the trails and it’s perfectly legal.”

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More about Annie 's Cabin, Missouri Ridge and 2006 Thinning Projects...