For Immediate Release

Community and Environmental Groups Request Forest Service to Withdraw Controversial Mount Hood Timber Sale

Thursday, June 06, 2002. Portland, Oregon. A coalition of environmental and citizens groups led by Bark has formally requested the Mt. Hood National Forest to withdraw the Pollalie-Cooper timber sale. Oregon Natural Resources Council, the Friends of Mt. Hood, the Oregon Wildlife Federation, the Oregon Chapter and Columbia Group of the Sierra Club, the Hood River Valley Residents Committee, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, the Mazamas and the American Lands Alliance have joined Bark in this request. These groups have come together to oppose ill-considered activities on the Northside of Mt. Hood in the Cooper Spur Area. The groups maintain that the cumulative impact of the Pollalie-Cooper sale, the Clear timber sale, the Cooper Spur ski area expansion, and the development of a major resort at Cooper Spur represents significant new information that must considered and analyzed by the U.S. Forest Service before Pollalie-Cooper can proceed.

The Pollalie-Cooper timber sale is located in the Cooper Spur area of Mt. Hood National Forest, on the northeast flank of Mt. Hood. A controversial expansion of the Cooper Spur ski area was recently announced, along with the development of a major resort on land that Mt. Hood Meadows recently received as part of a contested land trade just outside the forest boundary. The Pollalie-Cooper timber sale involves three separate logging projects and almost entirely surrounds the area where the destination resort is proposed to be developed, and Pollalie-Cooper directly overlaps with the current 1,400 acre Cooper Spur Ski Permit area. In addition, the Forest Service is planning another large timber sale, called Clear, directly adjacent to the Cooper Spur Ski Area and the massive destination resort development.

“The Forest Service needs to step back and look at the effects of all 4 of these projects - Pollalie-Cooper, the ski area expansion, the resort development, and the Clear timber sale - together. The impact of the Pollalie-Cooper project would be serious enough, without the added impact of the other 3 projects,” said Greg Dyson, Executive Director of Bark. “The Forest Service needs to be truthful with the public and truthful with itself about the combined effects of these 4 major projects all hitting the mountain in a relatively short time frame,” he added.

Polallie-Cooper would log 9.8 million board feet of timber on 865 acres of land and would result in 4.1 miles of road construction in the Cooper Spur area. Clear would log 459 acres and build or reconstruct 5.2 miles of roads. The present Cooper Spur ski area is 50 acres, while the expanded area would cover up to 1400 acres and perhaps more as Meadows has indicated that it intends to propose expansion into the Historic District. The private resort proposal includes as much as 450 housing units, with a combination of motel, duplex, condo, single-family and employee units; an 18 hole golf course; an amphitheatre, a swimming pool, a covered ice skating rink; paved and unpaved hiking trails, groomed cross-country ski trails; and a “village core” with upscale shopping and appearance. Bark has requested the Forest Service to stop all work on the Polallie-Cooper sale until the Forest Service takes public input to determine what the public wants in this area and also analyzes the combined environmental effects of these projects.

The Forest Service and Meadows have publicly touted the proposed activities as reducing the risk of fire. In response, Joe Keating of the Sierra Club states that: “the Forest Service and Meadows must be held accountable to the fact that commercial logging is not the solution to reducing the risk of fire. There are lower impact and lower cost methods to reducing the risk from years of militaristic fire suppression. It is well-known that commercial timber sales only increase fire risk, and that ski runs do not make good firebreaks.”


For additional information please contact:
Greg Dyson, Bark – 503-331-0374 / 503-730-9241
Joe Keating, Sierra Club – 503-234-2613

www.bark-out.org
www.sierraclub.org