Conservationist’s Logging Deal Draws Fire : Environment: Magazine reports that Wilderness Society chief cut old-growth trees from his ranch. He defends sale as ‘model’ of good forestry practices.

The president of the Wilderness Society, a venerable conservation organization that has fought to protect wildlife and forests throughout the country, logged more than 400,000 board feet of timber from his western Montana ranch early this year.

The timber sale is detailed in a Nation magazine article being published today. The society’s president, G. Jon Roush, was severely criticized in the article, written by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, as having betrayed the ideals of an organization founded in 1935 by legendary wilderness advocates Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall.

“The head of the Wilderness Society logging old growth in the Bitterroot Valley is roughly akin to the head of Human Rights Watch torturing a domestic servant,” the article said.

Roush, in a telephone interview, said the timber sale was a “model” of good forestry practices that was supervised by a forest consultant and far exceeded the requirements of Montana’s forest practices law.

Although Roush said he has not visited the ranch since the logging, he said he has been assured by the consultant that no old-growth trees were cut. The article alleged that much of the logging involved old-growth ponderosa pine, an ecologically important species that has suffered from overcutting through much of the West.

“Nothing over 90 years old was taken,” said Roush, adding that no logging was done within 100 feet of streams, no new roads were constructed that could have caused more erosion and only about one-third of the trees that could have been cut under state law were logged. Roush said he decided to sell the timber only after he was unable to sell his almost 800-acre ranch to pay for a divorce settlement and tax bills.

Roush’s timber sale from the $2.2-million ranch comes 12 years after he went to court to block a 16 million board-foot timber sale in the Bitterroot National Forest, which abuts his property, arguing successfully that the sale would damage streams and wildlife.

Roush said there were fundamental differences between the sale from his own ranch and the sale he blocked, which he said would have involved timber on steep slopes, required the construction of new roads, and caused erosion into streams. Of his own sale, he said: “I’m told you’d be hard-pressed to find a better managed or more environmentally conscious sale.”

The logs from Roush’s land, enough to build 40 average-sized homes, were sold by the logging contractor to a mill owned by Plum Creek Timber Co., a large holder of private forest lands that has long been vilified by environmentalists for its timber-management practices in Montana.

Plum Creek’s recent acquisition of land from Champion International Corp. brought its holdings in Montana to almost 2 million acres, including large tracts of land in grizzly bear habitat.

Although Plum Creek has recently taken steps to remake its image and overhaul its forestry practices--striking a tentative grizzly bear conservation deal with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for example--it has been portrayed by some conservationists as a ruthless liquidator of forest resources.

Roush said he had no control over the ultimate destination of the logs taken from his ranch.