DUBOIS, Wyo. -- The Wyoming chapter of the Sierra Club says it will oppose all efforts to harvest timber blown down by a freak tornado in the Teton Wilderness just south of Yellowstone National Park.
Chapter Vice President Merideth Taylor Monday said the 30 million board feet of timber blown down by a rare high altitude tornado in July should be left undisturbed because federal law prohibits any timber harvesting in a wilderness area.
Taylor set it would set a 'dangerous precedent' for other wilderness areas to make an exception and allow timbering in the Teton Wilderness, as has been suggested by Sen. Malcolm Wallop, R-Wyo., the timber industry and the Fremont County Commission.
Those groups have argued the fallen timber poses a fire threat, could result in an epidemic of beetle infestation and would provide area lumber mills with needed work, thereby reducing pressure for timber harvests in other areas of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
Taylor discounted those arguments, saying a blowdown of a section of the forest in 1962 has not resulted in any fires and claiming logging is not an effective way to stop insect infestations.
'Insect infestation is just a natural part of forest ecology and it's going to happen no matter what we do,' she said.
Taylor said the decaying trees will instead aid the area in its natural regeneration and the site can be used by biologists to study insect activity and burn patterns.
'I can't see that it's being wasted at all,' she said. 'Information and knowledge is a resource in itself.'
Taylor also said harvesting the timber would require the construction of 20 to 30 miles of access roads that would destroy the wilderness aspects of that part of the forest.
