BLM misreads mandate

A Guest Viewpoint by an Earthjustice attorney looking at the relationship between the O&C Act and the WOPR.

The Bureau of Land Management has proposed sweeping changes to the land management scheme that has governed its Oregon public lands for almost 15 years. Known as the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, it is a transparent attempt to return to the days of cut-and-run logging. The BLM contends that it must make these changes due to specific legal requirements in the Oregon and California Lands Act of 1937. In an April 18 guest viewpoint, William Wynkoop repeated this claim. Both the BLM and Wynkoop should seek better legal advice.

As part of the settling of the West, a large amount of land was granted to the railroads. When the railroads breached their duties with respect to these lands, Congress ultimately passed the O&C Act, revesting the lands in the federal government. These lands are now managed by the BLM. Congress sought to put an end to wasteful and destructive logging practices that clear-cut large areas for short-term gains without safeguarding the forests and other resources.

The actual language of the statute makes it clear that the O&C Act does not simply direct the BLM to manage these lands for the production of timber:

“[O&C lands] shall be managed … for permanent forest production, and the timber thereon shall be sold, cut and removed in conformity with the principal [sic] of sustained yield for the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply, protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, and contributing to the economic stability of local communities and industries, and providing recreational facilities.”

The law instituted a conservation ethic, making it the first federal statute to impose sustained-yield constraints on timber cutting, to protect streams and watersheds, to view the economic stability of local communities as more than boom-and-bust cycles, and to consider recreation a purpose of these lands.

The BLM now claims that the O&C Act requires logging to take precedence over all other uses. Sustainable forestry seems to have disappeared from the BLM’s position, despite a legal interpretation from almost 30 years ago clarifying that “permanent forest production” is not the same as commercial logging and includes watershed and streamflow protection and recreation.

When Congress passed the O&C Act, it sought to curtail the type of boom-and-bust logging frenzies that had generated instability for rural communities in the past. Congress did not support maximizing timber production for short-term economic gain; instead, it sought long-term sustainability.

To comply with the O&C Act, the BLM must consider alternatives that promote such economic stability, even if they favor thinning over clear-cutting and even if they shift some forest areas to activities other than logging. Similarly, the BLM must manage the O&C lands to protect high-quality recreational opportunities valued by all Oregonians.

Wynkoop is correct that one decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found a timber emphasis in the O&C Act, although he may not know that a later 9th Circuit decision held that the BLM had plenty of discretion to protect the lands entrusted to its care. But no matter: BLM has drunk the Kool-Aid served by the timber industry, which, contrary to the O&C Act itself, seeks indiscriminate logging from these lands — sustainability, clean water, economic stability and recreation be damned.

The BLM’s legal misinterpretation of the O&C Act dooms WOPR, and that’s without considering its lack of scientific integrity. As Rep. Peter DeFazio has pointed out, the BLM’s own scientists have flunked it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publicly voiced concern over WOPR’s impact on the drinking water of 1 million Oregonians and 113 community water systems, and the National Marine Fisheries Service pointed to numerous problems for salmon and steelhead.

In addition to economic stability, our public lands deserve forestry that does not sacrifice remaining oldgrowth forests, clean water, or chances to hike, hunt, fish and camp. More than 70 years ago, the O&C Act started us down just that path. There’s too much at stake with WOPR to talk in sound bites about legal mandates.