Conservationists, timber industry unhappy with plan
Copyright 2000 Associated Press
December 13, 2000
By AVIVA L. BRANDT, Associated Press Writer
PORTLAND, Ore. - Conservationists and timber industry officials expressed disappointment Wednesday with the final draft of a federal plan for managing land and wildlife on 64 million acres in the Pacific Northwest.
"Seven years ago, before this thing started, I predicted we'd get some useful science and a disappointing environmental impact statement. And I think that's what we've got," said Rick Brown, senior resource specialist at the Portland office of Defenders of Wildlife.
He and other conservationists said the plan showed good intentions, but didn't offer enough standards to show how improvements would be made.
Industry officials said the plan required too much additional analysis before they would be able to do anything.
The report, one step from final approval, was issued Tuesday by the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.
The joint effort by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management produced the largest federal land-use plan ever proposed. It covers the agencies' lands in eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho and western Montana.
The plan, in the works since 1994, would automatically amend 62 local land-use plans when it gains final approval. Already, the plan has cost about $47 million.
Niel Lawrence, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the issue for conservationists was "whether they have finally, after $40 million and six years, come to grips with management issues - meaningful standards for restoring badly managed public lands."
"Up to now, these agencies have steadfastly refused to say when, where and how they will use their discretion about dealing with fire risks and other ecological damage in the region," Lawrence said.
"If their final EIS doesn't do more, then it will be nothing more than an endorsement of sweeping agency discretion that has been a complete waste of time and money," he said.
Stefany Bales, spokeswoman for the Intermountain Forest Association, an industry group, said the plan requires logging companies to jump through too many hoops before being able to do any work.
"We have so much data about the condition of forests and the interior West," Bales said. "You can study and analyze something to death and in the meantime lose it to fire or insect outbreaks or whatever."
She also complained that the plan was unwilling to accommodate any short-term risk to the forest ecosystem.
"Our point of view is sometimes you've got to do that to prevent some long-term catastrophe or event that could damage the forest long-term," Bales said.
The basin project was requested in 1993 by then-U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., and former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. The goal was to avoid the kind of bitter fights that erupted in the early 1990s over logging restrictions imposed west of the Cascades to protect the threatened northern spotted owl.
The proposal "promotes the health of federal lands and benefits fish and wildlife habitats, tribes and communities," the agencies said in releasing the document.
The report estimates timber harvesting would rise by 22 percent under the plan but that size and quality of logs would decline because cuts mostly would involve thinning and other steps "to promote forest system restoration."
Livestock grazing on federal range land would decline, for land and watershed protection and restoration, by about 10 percent.
While grazing employment would drop by about 100 jobs, the agencies estimate their total employment would rise by about 4,000 jobs due to more forest-related work.
Participants in the planning process who believe the draft will adversely affect them have until Jan. 16 to file protests with directors of the federal agencies, who can make changes before final adoption.