Scrap BLM forest plan: Kempthorne should tell BLM to craft new strategy

Eugene Register-Guard editorial calls on Interior Department to scrap the BLM's Western Oregon Plan Revision that would increase old-growth logging across western Oregon.

It’s bad for spotted owls, bad for rivers and bad for fish.How much more information does the U.S. Bureau of Land Management need before it yanks its plan to dramatically increase logging on 2.2 million acres in Oregon?

The Register-Guard’s Susan Palmer reported last week that two Environmental Protection Agency officials sent letters warning that draft plans by the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could roll back water quality gains in Oregon watersheds that have occurred since the Northwest Forest Plan was put in place 13 years ago.

Those gains have been hard won — and even with them, too many Oregon rivers fail to meet the standards prescribed by the federal Clean Water Act. But those rivers would be in far worse condition without the Northwest Forest Plan, which amended BLM and U.S. Forest Service forest management plans to reduce logging by more than 80 percent to protect habitat for spotted owls, salmon and other species.

A recent government survey of 250 watersheds found that 57 percent were in better shape from 1998 through 2003 than they had been before the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented. The most significant improvements were in areas that had been designated as late successional reserves for spotted owls.

The Northwest Forest Plan is now in jeopardy. The BLM is planning to roll back habitat protections while ramping up logging on public lands under the agency’s settlement of a lawsuit by the timber industry and counties. The lawsuit charged that the BLM had failed to fulfill its obligations under a 1937 law that directed that O&C lands — so named because they once belonged to the Oregon & California Railroad — be managed for “permanent timber production” and for the economic stability of rural counties.

As a result of that settlement, the Bush administration proposes lifting restrictions on logging 23 percent of the land now designated as critical habitat for the spotted owl.

The plan and its underlying assumptions have drawn scathing reviews from scientists. Six peer reviews by outside researchers, five of them funded by the federal government, have agreed that the draft recovery plan wrongly downplays protecting the Northwest’s remaining stands of old-growth forests and its protections for the spotted owl.

Earlier this month, 113 scientists wrote to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, saying that the plan ignores — and may have distorted for political reasons — evidence about the spotted owl to justify opening old growth habitat to logging.

Factored with the warnings earlier this year from EPA officials, it should be clear to the administration that there is little chance a court would find that the plan satisfies the Endangered Species Act.

By blindly plodding forward with this flawed plan, the administration is missing a prime opportunity to craft a forest management strategy that increases timber production through means other than clear-cut logging in old-growth forests.

Kempthorne has heard from the scientists, and he’s heard from EPA officials. Now he should scrap the BLM’s misguided plan and demand a new one that produces more timber, while at the same time protecting spotted owls, Northwest rivers and the fish that live in them.