Two years of wrangling and two days of intensive, closed-door negotiations ended in compromise yesterday when the U.S. Forest Service and environmentalists agreed to allow limited logging of burned timber in Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest. Under the terms of the agreement, the USFS will begin logging about 14,770 burned acres; in exchange, it will not immediately pursue logging on another 29,000 acres and will drop its appeal of a federal court ruling preventing the agency from any logging in the Bitterroot. (That ruling came down after environmentalists sued Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey for bypassing Forest Service procedure and unilaterally approving a logging plan.) In all, the USFS will be able to harvest about 60 million board-feet, or roughly one-third of what it had hoped for. “It’s kind of a mixed bag,” said Larry Campbell, executive director of the Friends of Bitterroot, “but overall I do feel pretty good.”
