
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 23, 1994                   TAG: 9405230171
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
DATELINE: SEATTLE                                LENGTH: Medium

TIMBER SALES STILL RESTRICTED

A federal judge Friday deferred lifting his three-year-old ban on selling old-growth federal timber, disappointing timber interests and the Clinton administration.

U.S. District Judge William Dwyer scheduled oral arguments for May 31 on a government motion to end the timber-sale ban.

The Clinton administration has been anxious to speed a decision. Dwyer shut down old-growth sales in 1991 after finding that the Reagan and Bush administrations had violated wildlife protection laws.

Yesterday was the second time in two weeks that the Clinton administration had hoped in vain that Dwyer would lift the injunction. Press releases taking credit for re-establishing a broad Northwest timber sale program have been drafted but withheld.

On the other hand, the administration's forest plan quietly went into effect Friday, with the crucial exception of the frozen timber sales. The plan is built on a system of old-growth reserves where almost no harvest will be allowed.

The judge's delays followed a protest against lifting the injunction from the Forest Conservation Council, a small environmental group that is one of the original plaintiffs in the case. All other parties to the case voiced no opposition to ending the timber-sale ban.

Dwyer left unclear how much longer he would wait before ruling on the matter. He could rule as early as May 31, but could take weeks or months longer if the injunction's fate becomes entangled with new challenges to President Clinton's forest plan.

The injunction's importance may be more symbolic that substantive. The administration concedes that it will have trouble selling more than 200 million to 250 million board feet of federal timber this year in the affected forests - less than one quarter of its annual sales goal and only about 5 percent of the average sales there in the 1980s.

Also Friday Dwyer combined newly filed environmental group challenges to Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan with the lawsuit that produced his current timber sale injunction. The new suits charge the plan fails to adequately protect declining salmon, northern spotted owls and other wildlife. The government also wants to consolidate these cases with a timber industry challenge to the plan, now pending in a Washington, D.C., federal court, for speedier resolution.

Lauri Hennessey, a spokeswoman for the administration's Office of Forestry and Economic Development, welcomed a review of the injunction motion. ``We don't want people to feel their legal questions were given short shrift,'' she said.

But Hennessey said she was encouraged by Dwyer's suggestion that the litigation ``should be completed as soon as possible.''

by CNB