Forest Service proposes dramatic restrictions in Sierra Nevada   by JOHN HOWARD January 12, 2001, Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The U.S. Forest Service issued a plan Friday to safeguard a huge swath of the Sierra Nevada, proposing dramatic restrictions on logging and new protections for water and wildlife in 11 national forests. Environmentalists welcomed the blueprint, while the timber industry was critical and charged that the plan was pushed through in the waning days of the Clinton administration as part of the president's attempt to build an environmental legacy. "It will all but eliminate logging in the national forests," said Chris Nance of the California Forestry Association, which represents mills, foresters, wood-products manufacturers, forest owners and others. The proposal, the product of years of study and hearings, bars logging of old-growth and big trees, protects areas near streams and meadows and calls for thinning of small-diameter trees near inhabited areas to prevent wildfires. The plan covers 11.5 million acres of federal forests, and includes protections for the California spotted owl and other species. Opponents have 90 days to appeal to the chief of the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck, a Clinton administration appointee who is expected to be in office for another four months. If Dombeck upholds the rules, opponents could pursue further appeals in court. The Sierra, a spectacular 500-mile-long mountain range that includes Mount Whitney, Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite and Sequoia national parks, has suffered environmental damage for years from logging, a growing population, traffic and increasing numbers of visitors The Forest Service plan covers about 40 percent of the Sierra. It does not apply to private or state property. Environmentalists said the 1,800-page proposal marks a welcome shift by the government toward conservation. "It is a shift in the Forest Service's fundamental goal of forest management," said Jay Watson of The Wilderness Society. "The shift is from logging to what will now be a focus on old-growth protections and reducing the risk of wildfire." Nance, the timber industry representative, said the plan would limit logging to 50 million to 100 million board feet annually. The Forest Service's numbers were higher -- 191 million board feet during the first five years, and just over 100 million board feet after that. But federal authorities, environmentalists and timber interests agreed that under the new plan, logging would be dramatically limited. At logging's height, in the late 1980s, timber harvesting reached an estimated 900 million board feet.