Environmentalists Buy Trees In An Effort To Halt Logging; The Government Cries Foul. By Kevin Franklin ARIZONA environmentalists put their money where their mouths are by purchasing logging permits in the Chiricahua Mountains southeast of Tucson in an attempt to halt timber cutting there. But U.S. Forest Service District Ranger Brian Power says if the environmentalists won't log the area, he will keep their $3,500, sell more permits, and get someone else to cut the trees. Power wants to log 1,600 dead trees from the Rustler Park area burned in 1994 by the 27,500-acre Rattlesnake Fire. Members of the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, the Student Environmental Action Committee and the Arizona Audubon Society contend the trees left after a forest fire are crucial to forest health. "Dead and dying trees are the most valuable trees in the forest," says Bob Witzeman, Maricopa Audubon Society conservation chairperson. Witzeman explains that after a forest fire, burned trees provide a critical function by getting nutrients back in the soil, providing habitat for new plant and animal species recolonizing the area and slowing erosion. Besides, says Shane Jimmerfield, Southwest Center assistant director, what the Forest Service wants to do is illegal. The trees in question lie within the habitat of the Mexican spotted owl. Last year U.S. District Court Judge Carl Muecke issued an injunction halting much of the logging in the Southwest until the recovery plan for the endangered owl was completed by a consortium of federal agencies. The impact of logging in owl habitat was to be determined before logging in those areas could resume. Meanwhile, Muecke gave the go-ahead for logging in pine forests that were not owl habitat. Mixed-conifer forests and forests within designated core areas should not be logged, Muecke said. In the Rustler Park sale, the Forest Service unilaterally deleted an owl core area, something the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says they are not supposed to do. Then the Forest Service claimed the Rustler Park area was pine habitat and not subject to protection, but then issued permits and marked trees that are mixed conifer. That is a direct violation of the court order, Jimmerfield says. The Southwest Center will attempt to prove Power and the Forest Service are violating the court order. The matter is scheduled for hearing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on October 10. But meanwhile, the logging of the Chiricahuas has already started and will continue. By purchasing roughly half the permits in the area, the coalition of environmentalists saved those trees--for now. Power told the coalition all along that if they would not log the trees, he would see to it that someone else did. The environmentalists are hoping to win their case before the next session of permit bidding begins on October 14. "The permit is authorization to remove," Power says. "You don't buy a tree and then it belongs to you. You only have the authorization to remove it off the National Forest." Power says the sale of these trees will provide income for erosion control and replanting the area. Jimmerfield says the administrative costs of the sale will eat up any money generated. Virtually all government timber sales end up costing more than they make, the General Accounting Office has determined, so he's probably right. Power says irrespective of any number crunching, the Forest Service has a duty to provide lumber products to the public. Jimmerfield argues desert mountain habitats are so rare and the Chiricahuas in particular represent such an incredibly unique environment, that logging in these places makes no sense. Power thinks the environmentalist's claims are overblown. "I disagree with them trying to make a big deal out of a very small area," Power says. "They are not looking at other people's needs in acquiring a natural product."

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