The Forest Service is ready to adopt a plan that dramatically changes the way it logs forests to better protect fish, wildlife and drinking water across 11 million acres of the Sierra Nevada stretching nearly the length of California. But the ambitious effort that began before President Clinton took office and is set to be adopted Friday may have a short lifespan, given strong opposition from some Western Republicans and a Bush administration suspect of such sweeping environmental protections.
Critics say it fails to do enough thinning of overstocked forests ripe for catastrophic fires.
The plan is unrelated to the Clinton administration's roadless initiative and Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck's call this week to end all logging of old-growth forests. But it is equally controversial because it implements a broad regional management plan that would limit logging to primarily small operations, mostly where communities are threatened by wildfires. It is expected to further reduce the amount of timber the Forest Service offers for sale in 11 Sierra forests in California and Nevada, where annual averages have dipped to 314 million board feet, down from 740 million in the early 1990s. She said she expects the final plan to result in about 200 million board feet of timber a year, with logging limited in most cases to trees smaller than 20 inches in diameter. The document to be released Friday has its roots in a 1992 plan to protect the California spotted owl in the northern Sierra.