RENO, Nev. (AP) -- A Forest Service study suggests that accelerated logging in the Sierra Nevada is the best way to ease fire threats, protect wildlife, create jobs and ultimately have more old-growth forests a century from now.
Without a sharp increase in logging aimed at thinning overstocked forests across 11.5 million acres, fish and wildlife habitat will face far greater risk from wildfires, the agency said Thursday in its environmental study.
The report analyzes the Forest Service's proposal to ease logging restrictions imposed by the protection plan the agency adopted in 2001 under President Clinton for the 11 national forests in the Sierra, from south of Yosemite National Park to north of Lake Tahoe.
Industry officials have pressed the Bush administration to log larger trees that were off limits under the Clinton plan.
``Clearly the most significant environmental problem facing our national forests today is the risk of catastrophic wildfire,'' said David Bischel, president of the California Forestry Association.
But environmentalists scoffed at the idea of logging the forests to save them.
``It appears the Forest Service's solution to restoring and protecting the Sierra Nevada is to commit logging on top of logging on top of logging,'' said Jay Watson, regional director for The Wilderness Society in California.
Timber harvest levels would nearly triple during the first decade under the new proposal. Logging levels would drop after that.
The revisions ``would continue the framework's preservation of all large, old trees, but would more effectively reduce the risk of fire that threatens those trees and habitat for wildlife, such as the California spotted owl,'' said Jack Blackwell, regional boss of the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest region.
The bigger volume of wood would come primarily from increasing the size of the trees that could be cut _ from a maximum of 24 inches in diameter under the old plan to up to 30 inches.
Environmentalists said removing bigger trees that are less susceptible to fire will increase fire threats.
The Forest Service said making trees larger than 2-feet thick off limits to logging makes it financially impractical for timber companies to bid on projects aimed at removing smaller trees that pose the greatest fire risk.
``We want to remove dangerous fuels by cutting a few medium-sized trees to help offset the costs of removing many more small-diameter trees, which are unnaturally dense and have little or no commercial value,'' Blackwell said in a statement.
If adopted, the study estimates the increased logging would reduce the total number of acres burned by wildfires by 23 percent within 50 years.
For the first six decades, both plans would provide about the same amount of older forest stands, the study said. But within 100 years, the new proposal ``would support more old forests than would the current direction,'' it said.
The study projects the increased logging plan would cost the federal government about $27 million less than the old plan. It estimates the boost in timber production would result in 1,894 jobs, compared with 957 jobs projected under the old plan.
