The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - The U.S. Forest Service is allowing substantial logging to resume in the Wayne National Forest for the first time in eight years.

The forest service decided in December that cutting down the trees would not harm a colony of endangered bats.

"We feel it's long overdue," said Karl Gebhardt, a lobbyist for the Ohio Forestry Association. "Making these selective cuts represents proper management of the forest," which covers nearly 233,000 acres in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio.

Legal challenges have delayed plans to cut two 100-year-old stands of oak and hickory in Lawrence County. All logging in the forest was suspended in 1997 after endangered Indiana bats were discovered near one of the sites.

Forest service officials said sales of wood cut from the stands will benefit the forest by opening up the tree canopy and promoting the growth of younger trees.

About 20 percent of the trees on the 300 acres affected by the decision will be cut.

Loggers will pay about $128,000 for the timber. The government has paid them about $24,000 for interest and equipment time lost while the sales were delayed.

Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, forest biologists restricted the size and types of trees to be cut down.

Forest service records indicate that about 90 percent of the trees marked to be cut in the mid-1990s have died. Most of the rest are split or have broken tops. Those types of trees are favored roosting sites for Indiana bats, an endangered species that wasn't found in sizable numbers in Ohio until the 1990s.

The bats nurse their young during the summer in large trees with loose or peeling bark, including those favored by loggers. Discovery of the bats has helped environmental activists delay logging in national forests from Missouri to New York.

The forest service is under pressure from timber interests and business leaders in southeast Ohio to allow more timber sales.

Supporters of logging say national forests were created in part to provide a steady supply of timber. Some biologists also think that logging can benefit forests by culling older trees and promoting a diverse mix of younger species.

Environmentalists are urging the forest service to ban all commercial logging. They want public lands preserved for wildlife and recreation, which they say provide more jobs and money than logging.

"It doesn't make sense that they would run off to do these sales while they are developing a plan for the entire forest," said Fred Gittes, a Columbus attorney who represents the Sierra Club and the Buckeye Forest Council.