White House Rejects Plan for More Sierra Logging
11/14/97
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Headline: White House Rejects Plan for More Sierra Logging
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle
Date: 11/14/97
Author: Alex Barnum, Chronicle Staff Writer
Copyright: 1997 San Francisco Chronicle
Copyright: The Chronicle Publishing Company
SIERRA
A U.S. Forest Service plan to boost logging in the
Sierra Nevada by 50 percent has been thrown out by the
Clinton administration after an independent scientific
review found that it lacked adequate protections for
spotted owls and ancient trees.
The long-term plan, under development for six years,
had attempted to maintain protections for imperiled
wildlife while providing relief to the timber industry,
which has been forced to drastically cut back logging
because of environmental restrictions.
Encompassing a 400-mile swath of California from
Sequoia to Lassen national forests, the plan was
expected to restore about 2,000 jobs and boost timber
revenues in Sierra counties by 400 percent.
But in a report to be issued today, a team of 10
scientists strongly criticized the plan, saying it
lacked protections for the Sierra's ancient trees,
failed to protect the California spotted owl and other
species and would do little to reduce wildfire dangers.
Heeding the report's recommendations, senior
administration officials said yesterday in Washington
that they would scrap the plan and begin putting
together a new, more ecologically sensitive proposal.
Meanwhile, the more restrictive logging guidelines will
remain in place.
The Forest Service plan ``missed the mark in terms of
looking at the broader ecosystem,'' said Undersecretary
of Agriculture Jim Lyons, who oversees the agency.
``The most important thing is to acknowledge that
instead of blindly defending'' the plan.
Timber industry officials blasted the administration's
move as a monumental waste of public money and said
that the plan could have easily been revised under
normal administrative procedures to reflect the
scientists' concerns.
``We've spent $12 million over the last six years for
studies involving hundreds of scientists,'' said David
Bischel, president of the California Forestry
Association. Yet ``we're no closer today to coming up
with an environmental solution than we were.
``Our national forest planning process finally has spun
out of control as a perpetual planning machine,'' he
said.
Environmental groups, on the other hand, hailed the
decision as a victory of science over the Forest
Service's historical predilection for managing national
forests more for the timber industry than for wildlife
and recreation.
``The Forest Service is stuck in the same old groove of
emphasizing timber production,'' said David Edelson, an
attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in
San Francisco. ``But the science shows that the
Sierra's forests, rivers and wildlife need more, not
less protection.''
Under the threat of lawsuits by environmentalists and
pressures to prevent the listing of the California
spotted owl as an endangered species, logging levels in
the Sierra have fallen by more than two-thirds since
their peak in the mid-1980s.
The Forest Service proposal, however, would have raised
the logging limits in eight national forests of the
Sierra to 620 million board feet from 416 million board
feet in a previous plan.
It also would have allowed timber companies to cut
larger, older trees by raising the size limit to 40
inches in diameter from 30 inches in diameter. The size
limit protects the spotted owl, which makes its home in
the larger trees.
But the Clinton administration, fearing an
environmental backlash in California during last year's
presidential election, held up the plan and assembled a
panel of academic and government scientists to review
it.
Among the concerns was that the plan did not
incorporate the findings of the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem
Project, a landmark study that pointed to destructive
logging practices as an important factor in the overall
ecological decline of the Sierra.
The panel of 11 scientists found the following flaws in
the Forest Service's proposal:
-- It lacked ``any treatment of the uniqueness of the
old-growth'' Sierra forests. After more than 100 years
of logging, only 16 percent of the Sierra's original
forests remain.
-- It did not adequately protect the California spotted
owl.
-- It would probably lead to the extinction of the
American marten and the Pacific fisher, two species of
weasels that are already scarce, and lacked adequate
protections for other species.
-- It lacked an overall strategy to reduce wildfire
hazards.
Environmentalists discounted the benefit that the
Forest Service plan would have provided to Sierra
communities, saying that timber industry jobs account
for only 2.5 percent of employment in the Sierra.
Recreation and tourism account for more jobs and more
revenue.
But Bischel of the forestry association said, ``It's
real easy, after five years of devastation to rural
communities, to turn around and say it's no longer a
major part of the economy. The fact is, it still is a
major part of the economy.''