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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/cort20.shtml

It's back to drawing board for land swap

Court halts logging, orders impact work

Thursday, May 20, 1999

By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT

The Forest Service needs to do its homework and sort out environmental effects of a major land swap with the
Weyerhaeuser Co. in the central Washington Cascades, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled
yesterday.

The three-judge panel did not void the 1998 exchange, which involves timberlands along three of the state's
mountain pass highways. But it told Weyerhaeuser to halt further logging on lands it acquired until the federal
agency completes its evaluations.

The trade gave Weyerhaeuser 4,300 acres on Huckleberry Mountain, in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National
Forest east of Enumclaw, in exchange for 30,000 acres of company-owned land. U.S. District Judge William
Dwyer had allowed the exchange.

The state's environmental movement has been split over the Weyerhaeuser exchange, as well as a larger pending
trade between the Forest Service and the Plum Creek Timber Co. Divisions were apparent in reaction to
yesterday's court decision.

"This ruling will have a substantial impact on the exchange process. It orders the Forest Service to step up and
take a more pro-active role in protecting the public interest," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Land
Exchange Project.

Blaeloch brought suit to halt the exchange on behalf of the Pilchuck Audubon Society. She later was a founder of
the land exchange project.

The land exchange was also challenged by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, which argued that it failed to preserve
the ancient Divide Trail on Huckleberry Mountain. The 17.5-mile trail runs along the mountain ridge between the
Green and White rivers.

Blaeloch argued that the Forest Service should consider other options, such as outright purchase of
company-owned lands, or attaching deed restrictions on what timber companies can do when they take
possession of national forest lands.

But Charlie Raines, a longtime Sierra Club leader, said the Weyerhaeuser-Forest Service trade contains major
public benefits. "We believe the exchange will ultimately be affirmed in its current configuration," Raines added.

As part of the exchange, said Raines, the Forest Service obtained about seven miles of land along the Skykomish,
Snoqualmie and Greenwater rivers. "These lands have great value from an ecological standpoint," he said. "They
are areas most vulnerable to conversion to some use other than as forests."

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It's back to drawing board for land swap http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer/index.asp?ploc=b

The exchange was designed to end a checkerboard ownership in which square-mile sections of national forest land
alternated with sections of company-owned forests.

A major headache to forest managers, the ownership pattern is a legacy of the 1864 Northern Pacific Land Grant,
which conveyed huge amounts of federal land to railroads. Late in the 19th century, railroad baron James Hill sold
900,000 acres of Cascade timberland to his St. Paul, Minn., neighbor Frederick Weyerhaeuser, launching
Weyerhaeuser's namesake timber company's operations in the Northwest.

Weyerhaeuser is "deeply disappointed" in the 9th Circuit decision, company spokesman Frank Mendizabal said
yesterday. He added that the company is willing to work with the Forest Service and the Muckleshoot Tribe "to
satisfy the court's requirements as quickly and fairly as possible."

As part of the exchange, Weyerhaeuser donated 2,000 acres of land to the Forest Service -- 1,000 acres on the
slopes of Mount Index, a landmark on the Stevens Pass highway, and an equal amount along the boundary of the
Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area.

In its unanimous ruling, the 9th Circuit judges said the Forest Service had failed to ask for restrictions on logging
along the Divide Trail. Although the agency proposed to document the trail in maps and photographs, such
measures "do not preserve the trail's historic features," the judges said.

Almost all of the land included in the Weyerhaeuser-Forest Service swap has been logged in the 20th century. But
the exchange included an extensive amount of second-growth timber 60 to 80 years old. Weyerhaeuser has
logged about 10 percent of the land it acquired.

Sending the case back to Dwyer, the appellate judges ruled that the Forest Service should have considered asking
Weyerhaeuser to follow its own logging standards, rather than less restrictive state regulations.

"We are troubled that in this case, the Forest Service failed to consider an alternative that was more consistent
with its basic policy objectives," the court said.

The Forest Service has suffered from declining budgets, particularly as logging of old-growth trees in national
forests has been curtailed. But the agency has aggressively sought to end checkerboard ownership.

"I think, considering where this exchange is located and the importance placed on it, that the Forest Service will do
the work that the judges say they need to," said Raines, who has worked on exchanges for more than 20 years.

The larger pending exchange, mostly east of the Cascade crest, would convey 50,000 acres of Plum Creek land
to the Forest Service, in exchange for 16,000 acres of federal land from three national forests.

The 9th Circuit ruling was by Judges Betty Fletcher, Stephen Reinhardt and Sidney Thomas.

P-I reporter Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattle-pi.com

© 1998-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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