BLM Outlines Federal Forest Plan

Bureau of Land Management presents to Columbia County residents about the proposed plan revisions that would increase timber harvest on public lands.

Darryl Swan / The South County Spotlight

Randy Gould, a planner with the Bureau of Land Management, outlines to local Columbia County residents the four plan alternatives that will decide harvest levels on federal forestlands.

If the Bureau of Land Management successfully sells its preferred forest management alternative as part of the federal agency’s revision to its Resource Management Plan, Columbia County – and all of Oregon – could find itself back in the black where timber harvests are concerned.

Environmental advocates are skeptical of the preferred alternative, however, one of four options being proposed by the BLM as part of a 10- to 15-year management strategy for 2.5 million acres of federally controlled forests. The last management plan was approved in 1994.

The four alternatives include no change to the existing plan or adoption of one of three alternatives that propose varying degrees of increased harvests.

The meeting was specifically to educate local residents about the plan alternatives, and to encourage resident comments on the plans to the BLM. Comments are due to the BLM by Nov. 9.

“I suspect that the proposed plan is one going to have elements from each of the alternatives,” said Randy Gould, a BLM planner who has staged several such meetings.

BLM’s preferred option would drop fish habitat buffers from 360 feet on each side of any fish-bearing waterway down to 100 feet, and would decrease riparian habitat for spotted owls and marbled murrelets to the bare minimum allowed to meet clean water and riparian area acts.

In timber management areas, no owl-activity centers would be retained, whereas today owl-activity centers known as of January 1994 are untouched.

Also, how timber is salvaged after events such as fires would be altered to allow increased salvaging regardless of the affected land. Today, salvaging on some sensitive lands is allowed only if fire covers more than 10 acres.

Gould said that each alternative meets the environmental minimums for the protection of endangered wildlife.

“Under all of the alternatives, we have allocations in here to protect endangered species,” he said.

One function of the revised plan is to incorporate new stream inventory and mapping technology, actions that by themselves will increase timber harvests from today’s 211 million board feet to 268 million board feet per year.

Some opponents have argued that the increased logging being proposed in the preferred alternative would wipe out existing buffer forests.

Most of the properties surrounding BLM lands in Columbia County are owned by timber companies, and have already been extensively harvested, said David Powers, who opposed the BLM’s preferred alternative.

If the BLM lands also fall to increased logging, Powers said, those timbered patches would be decimated, leaving behind wide, deforested tracts of open soil.

“These federal lands have been the workhorse for providing habitat,” Powers said. Powers works closely as a volunteer with the Scappoose Bay Watershed Council.

The council has replaced culverts on around 40 fish-bearing streams that pass through sections of the BLM land, an action intended to aid migrating fish. The culvert replacements occurred through BLM-funded grants.

One projected outcome of the increased harvests on around 11,000 acres of county-located federal land would be to offset the need for federal safety net payments, stemming from federal legislation, called the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

The act was intended to help out timber-dependent counties and school districts that struggled under the more stringent environmental laws. As such, safety net payments were implemented in 2000 by the Clinton administration to make up for timber revenue losses due to increased environmental protections for the spotted owl.

In Columbia County, the act provides around $2.5 million annually. A one-year extension of the act was approved following its expiration in 2006.

Several versions of a multi-year extension of that act are even now under congressional consideration, though Gould said the underlying assumption the BLM employed in drafting its alternatives is that the act will not be reauthorized.

If the safety net payment is reauthorized, any increased timber harvests would decrease county payments under the safety net legislation.

If the BLM’s second alternative is approved, it will raise harvests on the BLM lands to harvest levels seen in the late 1980s.

For more information and to comment, go to www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/index.php.