CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SACRAMENTO : Timber Group Asks Logging Speedup

Timber industry spokesmen asked the U.S. Forest Service on Friday to speed up logging of trees killed by the 3-year-old drought in California’s mountain forests. “We think there are about 6 billion board feet of dead trees between Lassen County and the Mexican border, and they ought to be removed because they will be a fire hazard next summer,” said Kevin Ekery, spokesman for the lumber industry’s Alliance for Environment and Resources. Both the Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry agree that as much as 20% of the timber in the central Sierra may be dead as the result of the drought.