The Bush Administration has closed some of the key loopholes utilized by environmentalists to challenge logging in national forests.

An overhaul of national forest policies was launched in 2002 and recently went into effect. The policy lays out a new yardstick for assessing logging operations. The forest service will now focus on overall forest health. Before, logging operations were measured according to their impacts on certain species, known as indicator species.

Environmental groups say “forest health” is not a good yardstick. It is too subjective.

“With species viability you have some check points. If you have a decline in species, that raises some red flags. It is not clear what would do that under ‘maintaining healthy forests,’” said Hugh Irwin, conservation planner with the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition.

It gives foresters, who are sometimes predisposed toward logging, too much discretion, Irwin said.

The species yardstick had its downsides, too, however.

The forest service would classify a handful of species that prefer clearings as their indicator species. Logging could be justified under the guise of creating habitat for these clearing-loving creatures. But environmen-

talists played the same game, heralding a handful of species that thrived in old growth forest as their preferred indicator species.

Steve Henson with the Southern Appalachian Multiple Use Council, a logging industry group, said the new policy provides a better approach to forest management.

“Having a diversity of forest conditions, all the way from open fields to mature and old growth forests, you have different species of wildlife out there that use different stages of that forest succession,” Henson said. “That makes a lot more sense than trying to manage for individual species.”

Destruction of endangered and rare species will still be avoided under the new policy. But species on the verge of becoming rare will no longer get special treatment.

“It allowed us to look at species that were running into viability concerns so we could do something before it got to the point where they were listed it as threatened and endangered,” Irwin said.

Two other logging changes implemented by the Bush Administration also disturb environmentalists.

• Logging operations of less than 70 acres are exempt from public comment and review. In fact, the forest service doesn’t even have to tell the public about logging operations under 70 acres. If the public happens to learn about them, they have no recourse. Appeals and protests on logging operations under 70 acres have been barred.

• Public input on logging operations of all sizes has been reduced.

Under the old rules, the forest service issued an environmental assessment before making a final decision on proposed logging and allowed public comment. Now the forest service can go directly from a brief description of the project to a final decision without seeking input in between.

The initial description is sometimes vague, however. A logging proposal in the Wayah district of the Nantahala National Forest calls for logging between 22 and 763 acres in parts of Macon, Swain and Jackson counties. Environmental groups say that this description contains too little information to offer meaningful comment.

While the forest service is currently conducting an environmental assessment of the specific areas to be logged, the new rules mean the forest service won’t have to seek comment again until a final decision has been made, leaving the environmental groups no recourse at that point other than appealing the decision. Some forest service districts, like the Cheetah district of the Nantahala, say they will continue to include the middle step of public comment even though it is no longer required.

“They’ve made it difficult for the public to comment on publicly owned land,” said Bob Gale, ecologist with the Western North Carolina Alliance.