Clinton Administration Rejects Forest Strategy
11/14/97
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Headline: Clinton Administration Rejects Forest Strategy
Source: Los Angeles Times
Date: 11/14/97
Author: Frank Clifford, Times Environmental Writer
Copyright: Los Angeles Times
Clinton Administration Rejects Forest Strategy Sierra: Management plan
inadequately protects many wildlife species, report says. A logging official
criticizes the decision as a costly and unnecessary delay.
The Clinton administration on Thursday formally rejected as
environmentally unsound the U.S. Forest Service's long-term
strategy for managing the 10 national forests in the Sierra
Nevada.
In a strongly worded report prepared by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, a committee of 11 experts concluded that the
Forest Service management plan did not adequately protect numerous
species of wildlife--and could cause some small mammals to become
extinct--and that it prescribed levels of logging that were up to
40% too high for the overall good of the forest.
"Of major concern to the committee are the lack of any
treatment of the uniqueness of the old-growth . . . forest
ecosystems and their constituent species," the report said.
The administration's endorsement of the report means that the
Forest Service will have to begin anew the painstaking process of
developing a management plan for the Sierra that protects natural
resources while permitting at least enough commercial logging to
ease the growing risk of fire in many of the region's overstocked
forests.
"We need to go back to the drawing board," said Jim Lyons,
undersecretary for the environment for the Department of
Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service.
"The department is going to take the recommendations in this
plan and put together a team to get back on track with a strategy
to protect the Sierra," Lyons said.
Coming on the heels of last summer's Lake Tahoe environmental
summit, the administration's intervention in forest management is
the strongest signal to date of an intent to play an active role
in the protection of natural resources in the Sierra.
At Lake Tahoe, Clinton pledged over $25 million to help the
region improve water quality and rehabilitate forests damaged by
draught, disease and excessive logging.
Thursday's report was praised by environmental groups. "The
administration is demonstrating a commitment to good science with
this report, and I hope it will provide a basis for charting a new
course in the Sierra," said Louis Blumberg of the Wilderness
Society.
Logging industry spokesmen, on the other hand, said the
administration's decision amounts to a costly and unnecessary
delay.
"Agriculture Secretary [Dan] Glickman's decision to redo the
plan confirms that our national forest planning process finally
has spun out of control and become a perpetual planning machine,
through which it has become impossible to implement even the most
basic forest management goals," said David Bischel, president of
the California Forestry Assn.
Historically, the 8 million acres of national forest land in
the Sierra have produced about half of the timber harvested on all
18 federal forests in California, according to a Forest Service
spokesman.
But logging--along with mining, livestock grazing and real
estate development--has taken a heavy toll on the region, as
documented in a 1996 congressionally sponsored study of the
Sierra.
Three years in the making, the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem
Project found that nearly one-fifth of all Sierra land animals
were in decline, two-thirds of its stream systems degraded and
almost 90% of the national forests' oldest, largest trees had been
cut down.
The report was enthusiastically received by both the logging
industry and the environmental movement. But its recommendations
for managing the Sierra forests were not reflected in the Forest
Service management plan, according to the committee report
released Thursday.
Since 1993, the Forest Service has been under pressure from
the environmental movement and the timber industry to come up with
a strategy acceptable to both sides. Prompting that pressure was
concern over the decline of the California spotted owl, which
triggered interim federal guidelines that dramatically reduced
logging by virtually prohibiting the cutting of trees 30 inches in
diameter or larger.
Under the 1993 guidelines, the amount of logging in Sierra
forests fell to less than half the historic highs of about 1
billion board feet. It takes about 10,000 board feet to build a
three-bedroom house.
Key ingredients of the plan that the administration has now
repudiated were leaked last year and caused immediate controversy
in part because they would have raised logging about 30% above
1993 levels. At the time, Forest Service officials said the plan
also would lead to a 50% increase in jobs and up to 400% more
revenue for some Sierra counties.
Completed just three months before the presidential election,
the plan was roundly condemned by California environmental groups
whose support Clinton was courting.
The administration then formed the 11-member panel to review
its contents. The committee was headed by Charles Philpot, the
retired chief of the Forest Service's Northwest Research Station.
The panel's report issued Thursday said that the levels of
Sierra logging allowed under the Forest Service plan would have
been 14% to 39% too high for the well-being of streams and
adjacent habitat that require shade and cool temperatures and can
be harmed by erosion caused by logging.
In addition, the panel said the Forest Service plan did not
offer adequate protection for spotted owls, who often build their
nests in big trees.
Although the Forest Service acknowledged the danger of
catastrophic fire to owl habitat in the Sierra forests, the panel
of experts faulted the plan for not doing anything about the fire
risk for several decades.
The report went on to fault the management plan for failing
to evaluate the effects of logging on a variety of species.
"Analysis of effects on many other vertebrates, including fur
bearers and amphibians, appears to be inadequate or absent," it
said.
The report also complained that the plan did not protect
fur-bearing mammals, such as the Pacific fisher and the American
marten, both members of the weasel family, to the point that they
would "have a high probability of extirpation."
"Perhaps, most important," the report goes on to say, the
plan "was not developed with formal collaboration with the
scientific community, adjacent land owners and managers and other
federal agencies."