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Interest groups are essential to the American political system because they represent virtually everyone in American society. Jon Agnone, a sociology doctoral student of the University of Washington, compared the number of bills passed between 1960 and 1994 by the U.S. Congress, with tactics used by special interest groups within the same year. The study showed that each protest raised the number of pro-environment bills passed by 2.2%, but that neither efforts at conventional lobbying on Capitol Hill nor the state of public opinion made any difference. Similarly, the salvage logging has consistently sparked controversy while interest groups have had a tremendous impact in shaping the nation’s future in salvage logging.

In July 1995, President Clinton signed the salvage logging rider which caused public negative reaction. The measure, attached to a budget bill containing financial aid for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing and for war-torn Bosnia, increased logging of dead and dying trees. Clinton later realized that signing the rider was a mistake and that it had to be repealed. On July 27th, 1996, organized by the Sierra Club, forest activists rallied in major west coast cities like Portland, Seattle, Eugene and San Francisco to mark the one-year anniversary of the salvage rider.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) have given local residents of southwest Oregon a reason to be concerned about salvage logging. Foresters commonly argue that salvage logging removes dangerously flammable dead wood and promotes faster forest recovery. In June 2004, scientists from the WWF and CBI released a report outlining a comprehensive wildfire preparation plan for the southwest Oregon area affected by the Biscuit fire of 2002. The report concluded that the highest priority for fuel treatments is in and around the towns of Cave Junction and Selma, Oregon, and not in the backcountry of the Biscuit fire area that the Forest Service was currently focusing on. The environmental organizations put pressure on the Forest Service to treat the highest priority areas and let nature recover road-less areas and old-growth reserves.

Since the Biscuit fire in the summer of 2002, salvage logging has become the focus of an intense political and scientific battle between environmentalists and the Bush administration. Salvage logging was a large issue in the presidential race of 2004 in Oregon. As part of his agenda, President Bush discussed using the plan to fight future fires by logging burned trees, while his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry, disagreed. Republicans in Oregon, like Senator Gordon Smith, described the forests affected by fires as a “charred moonscape” that could not recover without reforestation. Several professors in the college of forestry at Oregon State University wrote a paper supporting the president’s viewpoint. Still, environmentalists disagreed, encouraged by Forest Service surveys conducted after the fire that had found about half the vegetation in the fire zone had little or no damage. During this time, Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), printed an article co-authored by Jerry Franklin (professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington) stating that salvage logging could impair ecosystem recovery and that salvage logging undermined long-term benefits that increased biological diversity. Jerry Franklin and other environmentalists found that the Bush plan had nothing to do with forest recovery.

In May 2005, the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE), an environmental group, sent a formal notice to the Forest Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to halt further sales of timber burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire. The group threatened to file a lawsuit unless the Forest Service consulted NOAA Fisheries over the effect that changes in the logging plan would have on salmon protected by the Endangered Species Act. Environmentalists have tried to strictly limit the amount of burned timber removed from burned areas. FSEEE believes that salvage logging promotes erosion that chokes salmon streams and removes essential building blocks of a new forest that will benefit fish and wildlife. NOAA Fisheries decided that the proposed logging plan was not likely to do damage so no buffer was made.

The American Forest Resource Council, an industry group, says the possibility of global warming argues for salvage logging and replanting before it becomes harder to kick-start new forests that could act as "carbon sinks," trapping the carbon dioxide that constitutes the most troublesome greenhouse gas causing global warming. Scientists reporting in Science magazine, say this type of industrial logging harm the watersheds on which nature relies on. They maintain that forests generated naturally are much more resilient to climate change than forests grown for paper and lumber.

Bibliography

Barnard, Jeff. “Group fights salvage logging in Oregon.” Associated Press May 2005. ESPN Outdoors. http://espn.go.com/outdoors/conservation/news/2005/0524/2067704.html.

DellaSala, Dominick A. “World Wildlife Fund and Conservation Biology Institute Release Report on Reducing Fire Risks To Rural Communities.” Newsroom June 2004. WWF Press Release. http://www.worldwildlife.org/news/displayPR.cfm?prID=127.

Harden, Blaine. “Salvage Logging a Key Issue in Oregon.” Washington Post 15 Oct 2004: A04.

Knickerbocker, Brad. “New rumbling over salvage logging.” The Christian Science Monitor January 2006. Lexis-Nexis. http://www.wbcsd.org/Plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?ObjectId=MTc4MzY.

Schwartz, Joel. “Protests more help in passing environmental laws than working on 'inside.’” UW Office of News and Information August 2004. Social Science Law and Policy. http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=5271.

Wooten, George. “A Short, Sharp, Clear Cut Essay.” Kettle Range Conservation Group March 2002. http://www.kettlerange.org/salvagelogging.