US timber company Boise Cascade’s old growth logging pact with environmental groups has been threatened by the company’s forest operations in Washington and Oregon.
The Rainforest Action Network and other groups claim two timber sales in the states include cutting old growth trees, which would violate an agreement they made with the company in 2003.
Boise denies that the sales, which would involve cutting salvage timber from areas burned by forest fires, involve any old growth logging. It says the forests are second growth which were last harvested in the 1950s.
Environmentalists say ponderosa pines larger than 21in would be cut in the proposed logging. They also claim some trees are up to 175 years old.
