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Understanding which gave the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the BLM. the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service, the EPA, and others agencies veto authority over how, when, and where 

 the Forest Service may salvage dying timber. On the Klamath National Forest, we have a 

 long history of forest fires. Like many other areas, we suffered major fires in 1994. This 

 new layer of bureaucracy was designed to slow down the salvage of dead and dying 

 timber. And on the forest I am most familiar with, the slow down is working. 



We have a large fire area called Dillion Creek, wliich is in dire need of salvage. The 

 President's Forest Plan and the Emergency Salvage MOU have combined to delay the 

 salvage of the Dillion Creek area. This area has been visited by more top natural resource 

 officials than most any other prospective timber sale in the west and they've all 

 pronounced the sale a good one. Up until last week, we thought we would finally see the 

 20 million board foot sale offered, a sale of fire-killed timber. Then the Administration 

 struck yet one more time. 



The Secretary of Agriculture released a new policy on ihe Emergency Salvage program 

 which precludes offering of salvage sales in inventoried roadless areas. For the Dillion 

 Creek sale, this new policy will result in yet one more delay. At this point, the latest delay 

 could render this .sale uneconomic You see, the agencies were going to require that 

 aknost all the volume be logged with a helicopter. As the years pass, the trees rot. At 

 some point, there is not enough merchantable wood to pay for this very expensive method 

 of logging. In this case, the Secretary's decision may have sealed the fate of this sale. We 



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