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Roadless Area Conservation Rule Violated by Forest Service in 2005 Without much fanfare or controversy the Siskiyou National Forest planned and allowed the clear-cut logging inside the North Kalmiopsis roadless area as part of the Berry salvage logging timber sale in the Biscuit burn in 2005. Thus the US Forest Service unilaterally decided to violate the Roadless Area Conservation Plan at least one year before Federal Courts were to decide the legality of such actions. Surely, the Forest Service will claim that this roadless area is only an "un-inventoried" section of the North Kalmiopsis roadless area outside the official "inventoried" roadless area. This so called "un-inventoried roadless area" is contiguous with the North Kalmiopsis roadless area. The Siskiyou National Forest also must have used a similar argument when they planned and allowed the logging on top of the Babyfoot Lake trail and illegally logged 17 acres of the Babyfoot Lake Brewer's Spruce Botanical Reserve in 2005. This was also an un-inventoried roadless area that bordered the Kalmiopsis Wilderness area. The pictures below document the areas clear-cut inside the North Fork Indigo Creek drainage in 2005. What was documented represented perhaps 20 -40 acres of clear-cut salvage logging. There were no roads within ? mile of these units. I suppose Siskiyou National Forest personnel figured that they would get away with this because no one would notice, at least not until the trees were cut and hauled away. Well, I guess they were right. Also, I suppose Forest Service personnel told them selves, well even if we do get caught no one would get punished. In fact they would likely get a pat on the back, a bonus or even promotion for doing the Bush administration's and Oregon's timber baron's bidding. I have worked for the Forest Service and I know how things have worked there in the past. Are you surprised by this news that the Forest Service has already violated the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule? It seems that all natural resource management agencies from the ground up are rotten and corrupt to the core. In fact, since science has proven what damage land management agencies have done and continue to do with past and current land management practices, one can surmise that most agency personnel are even more corrupt than they have ever been because agency personnel can no longer claim ignorance to the environmental damage that they are perpetrating on the land.
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