Shift of BLM forest strategy at hand despite opposition

Logging plan enters finals days of Governor review as opposition mounts.

The trees that hug the ridges rising steeply north and south of this stretch of the McKenzie River near Vida will be on the block for clear-cutting under a new management strategy expected to go into effect at the end of the year.

After 15 years of managing its 2.2 million acres of forests in Western Oregon under the guidance of the Northwest Forest Plan, the Bureau of Land Management will shift to a new resource management regime that emphasizes timber revenue over habitat protection. It would increase logging 335 percent, from about 135 million board feet a year to 588 million board feet.

The proposal — likely to face legal challenges once it’s implemented — has a few last hurdles before being signed into law. Gov. Ted Kulongoski is reviewing it for consistency with state laws and goals, and a last bout of protests have been filed with the BLM.

The fact is, few people on either side of the logging debate are happy with the Western Oregon Plan Revision, WOPR, as it has been called.

The American Forest Resources Council — which filed the lawsuit that led to the Bush administration settlement that required the plan — thinks it falls short of producing a sufficient timber harvest, said council Vice President Ann Forest Burns.

BLM forests grow an average of 1.2 billion board feet a year, Forest Burns said. “Under the plan, less than half of that will be harvested,” she said.

Nevertheless, her group has asked supporters to encourage the governor to give it a green light.

“It would mean a difference of 5,000 jobs to rural Oregon if this plan were put in place,” she said. “It would also replace a substantial proportion of the monies that the counties have had to seek from the federal government since the northern spotted owl was listed.”

Evaluating the proposal

Concern about the owl, listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, was responsible for federal intervention in the mid-1990s that led to the Northwest Forest Plan.

The governor’s office has received hundreds of phone calls regarding his review of the logging plan, said spokeswoman Jillian Schoene. The majority are against the logging increases, she said.

The governor has already outlined for the BLM the principles he will use to evaluate the proposal. They include an array of issues: a predictable and sustainable timber harvest, compliance with federal environmental laws, support for Oregon’s salmon recovery plans, and recognition of the beneficial role forests play in protecting against climate change.

The BLM believes it has addressed the governor’s concerns through significant revisions to the draft proposal it released last year, said BLM spokesman Michael Campbell.

“We added a climate change discussion and we added a whole section on carbon sequestration,” he said.

The BLM also increased buffers along streams and rivers to better maintain water quality.

The changes, made in response to broad public comments, reduced the proposed annual harvest by 139 million board feet, but haven’t been enough to deflect criticism. The BLM has received 1,500 protests of the final plan, Campbell said.

EPA adds its recommendation

The Environmental Protection Agency sent the BLM a letter on Nov. 25 recommending that the agency maintain the larger stream buffers required by the Northwest Forest Plan.

The new proposal represents a “significant reduction” in the current level of protection on BLM lands for watersheds that provide drinking water to more than 1 million Oregonians and key watersheds for salmon conservation, according to the EPA letter.

Water quality concerns are just one of several problems meriting intervention by the governor, said Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator with Oregon Wild, a conservation nonprofit group.

The proposal shrinks older forests protected from logging by 143,000 acres and buffers along waterways by 139,000 acres, according to an analysis by Oregon Wild.

Those changes not only threaten drinking water supplies, they put salmon threatened with extinction at greater risk, Heiken said.

The BLM has also failed to plan for the uncertainties in climate change and the role mature forests play in reducing the impact of greenhouse gases, Heiken said.

Oregon Wild also took a specific interest in the section of BLM land that surrounds Rennie Landing. Back in 2005, the conservation group asked the BLM to designate its forests there — about 7,600 acres worth — as areas of critical environmental concern, which would have kept trees that range in age from 80 to 150 years old from being cut.

That designation offers an extra level of protection for lands that might otherwise fall through the cracks of federal guidelines.

Timber harvest carries weight

While the BLM agreed that the area met the criteria for such a designation, the mandate for timber harvest carried more weight, said Wayne Elliott, a BLM resource adviser on the Eugene District.

The governor must submit his review to the BLM by today, Campbell said.

If he raises objections, the appeal process could push implementation of the plan into mid-January, Campbell said. But once the plan becomes law, it is likely to face court challenges by environmental groups that say the logging increases will put the BLM at odds with federal laws such as the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Even if it isn’t challenged in court, it will take a couple of years for logging under the new plan to begin.