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A NEW WORLD VIEW
3. Case Study: The Headwaters Controversy
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Winter 2008. Plan in Peril. Alice Talmadge, Forest
Magazine.
The war over old-growth
forests in the Pacific Northwest may not be over,
despite a thirteen-year truce that has curtailed
harvesting, protected water quality and provided
habitat protection for threatened species such
as the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet.
Measures that were put in place in 1994 by the
Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan are in danger
of being drastically cut by a combination of economics,
skewed science and political pressure to increase
the timber cut in Oregon and the rest of the Pacific
Northwest. |
This
August, the Bureau of Land Management proposed
tripling the current amount of logging allowed
on 2.5 million acres of forests-called O&C
lands-that the agency manages in western Oregon.
The Western Oregon Plan Revision calls for dccreasing
riparian zones, logging in old-growth forest reserves and reducing
habitat conservation areas.
The proposal has raised the ire of conservationists and political
veterans of the old-growth wars. Logging Oregon's remaining old
growth "is not going to happen," asserted Lane County
Commissioner Peter Sorenson at a recent roundtable discussion
of the plan.
Josh Laughlin, the conservation director of the Caseadia Wildlands
Project in Eugene, echoed Sorenson's frustration. "The fabric
that holds the [Northwest Forest Plan] together is being unwoven
in front of us."
Hammered out in the wake of a successful lawsuit to protect oldgrowth
forest habitat for the northern spotted owl, the Northwest Forest
Plan significantly reduced logging on federal lands in western
Oregon, Washington and northern California.
Ever since the plan went into effect, the timber industry has
fought to loosen its restrictions.
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In
2001 the industry filed a number of lawsuits
to weaken or remove many of the Northwest Forest
Plan's protections. In Oregon, it charged that
the plan violated a 1937 law staring that the
O&C lands should he managed for "permanent
forest production." The administration
settled the suit in 2003, giving the timber
industry most of what it asked for. The agreement
eliminated a program that required surveying
timber sales for rare species before harvesting
(a federal judge subsequently reinstated the
surveys). It called for reviewing the status
of the northern spotted owl and the marbled
murrelet and redrawing logging boundaries based
on the outcome. The
ELM also agreed to revise management for its O&C lands to
focus on timber harvesting.
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The
ELM's current proposal is the outcome of that
settlement agreement. But it relies on another,
highly controversial plan released earlier this
year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on
the northern spotted owl. The "2007 Draft
Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl" concluded
that the bird's populations are declining because
of incursions of the barred owl into its territory,
not because of fragmented habitat. The plan
called for reducing critical habitat for the
owl by 20 percent, or 1.5 million acres.
Biologists—including
those whose work was cited in the report--—blasted
the conclusions, saying the agency misused research
results, selectively used research that supported
its bias and overemphasized the barred owl factor.
"Northern
spotted owls are at risk because old-growth
forests have been logged and are largely gone," wrote
one anonymous peer reviewer. "Any strategy
to recover owls has to focus on conservation
and recovery of those old-growth forests." In
October, 113 scientists sent a letter to Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, urging him to have
the study redone according to scientific findings,
not political pressure.
The head of Fish and Wildlife, Julie MacDonald, resigned in May
following allegations of improper conduct in passing internal
documents to industry lobbyists. The Union of Concerned Scientists
found that MacDonald meddled with and re\ ersed scientific findings.
Remarks made by agency employees in a 2007 report by the inspector
general "describe a manager determined to see that agency
findings and the underlying science conform with policy goals," according
to the New York Times.
A
final decision on the BLM's plan is due late
in 2008. The timing is critical; timber-dependent
counties that have not transitioned to other
sources of revenue are looking at their nearby
forests with hungry eyes. The BLM says the new
plan could create 3,000 jobs and provide annual
county receipts of $108 million, although critics
say the numbers are optimistic.
Environmentalists are preparing lawsuits in the event the agency
opts to clearcut old-growth forests, but the Northwest Forest
Plan and destroy hopes for the spotted owl.
"We are not going to sacrifice old growth to fund essential
county services," Laughlin says. "The remaining old
growth is not up for grabs." -AT |
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