Loggers continue working on the ground while lawyers spar over two controversial timber salvage sales in roadless areas of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

All the trees marked for cutting on the Mike's Gulch salvage sale and about 40 percent of the trees slated for harvest in the Blackberry salvage sale have been felled, said forest spokeswoman Patty Burel.

"Mike's Gulch could be wrapping up relatively soon," she said Tuesday. "Yarding is expected to be completed by midweek."

U.S. District Court Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco last week reinstated President Clinton's 2001 roadless rule that prohibits logging and other development on national forest roadless areas. She did not call for logging to stop on the two salvage sales.

The agency believes the two salvage sales containing trees killed by the 2002 Biscuit fire are exempt from that ruling because they were previously authorized. A conference call on Monday with the judge, attorneys representing both the agency and the Silver Creek Timber Co. of Merlin, which bought the two sales, and opponents did not change that perception, Burel said.

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"The judge clarified that Blackberry and Mike's Gulch are not currently enjoined, meaning at this moment in time the court ruling does not apply," she said, noting the reasoning was based partially on the significant investment made in the units.

Another session with the judge and the attorneys is set for Oct. 4.

Those opposed to ongoing logging in the two roadless units say they haven't given up.

The plaintiffs, which include the Siskiyou Regional Education Project in Grants Pass, will submit a brief to the judge this morning, arguing that her ruling should be applied retroactively.

"We still don't have the final answer — we're still hopeful the judge will act before it is too late," said Rolf Skar, the group's campaign coordinator. "We want to resolve this issue before it becomes a moot point."

He believes that even with Mike's Gulch, stopping the logging is not a dead issue.

"There is still a lot of value for those trees for erosion control and for rebuilding the soil," he said.

He did acknowledge that stumps in a roadless area would degrade it for wilderness potential.

Mike's Gulch salvage sale in the Illinois Valley Ranger District includes 9.36 million board feet of fire-killed timber on 251 acres. The nearly 8-million-board-foot Blackberry unit in the Gold Beach Ranger District covers about 274 acres. Both require no road building in the roadless areas and must be logged by helicopter.

In her Sept. 20 ruling, Laporte found that a 2005 Bush administration move that replaced Clinton's rule as part of a court settlement violated federal law by failing to perform environmental assessments required by the National Environmental Policy Act and by failing to consult wildlife agencies as required by the Endangered Species Act.

Bush's rule had opened roadless areas to logging, although it allowed state governors to petition to preserve the roadless sites.

Clinton's rule put 58.5 million acres of national forest inventoried roadless areas off-limits to development. There are nearly 2 million such acres in Oregon's national forests, including some 368,000 acres in the Rogue River-Siskiyou forest. The inventoried roadless areas are in blocks of more than 5,000 acres.

Plaintiffs in the case seeking to restore the 2001 roadless rule include the governors of Oregon, Washington, California and New Mexico as well as 20 environmental groups, including the Siskiyou Regional project and the Ashland-based Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.