For Immediate Release: April 19, 2005

For More Information Contact:
Steve Pedery, (503) 283-6343 ext. 212

Northwest Forest Plan At A Crossroads

Press statement of Doug Heiken, Forest Policy Analyst, Oregon Natural Resources Council

Ten years ago the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted to bring balanced management to federal public forestlands in the Pacific Northwest. The decade that has passed since the plan’s adoption has seen both successes and failures. The pace of old-growth logging has slowed, and public values such as fish, wildlife, and clean water are finally getting some recognition. As a recent federal report on the effectiveness of the plan has shown, if we want to protect these values we must safeguard our last old-growth forests, and restore the areas that have been degraded.

Unfortunately, all across the Northwest old-growth forests continue to be cut down, and critical habitat for rare plants and animals continues to be destroyed. And now the Bush administration and the logging industry appear hell-bent on gutting the environmental safeguards the plan provides and returning our federal forestlands to the “log and leave it” mentality of the 1980’s.

From a conservationists’ perspective, there was much to like about the Northwest Forest Plan as it was originally proposed. It began with the ambitious goal of taking a vast area of public forest land that has been fragmented and degraded by 100 years of reckless logging and restoring it to a functioning and well-connected old-growth forest system. It created old-growth forest reserves as a safety net of habitat for rare plants and animals, from coho salmon to spotted owls, and sought to protect healthy rivers and streams.

But while the plan began with ambitious conservation goals, it was far from perfect. The Northwest Forest Plan sought to continue the un-sustainable practice of old-growth logging on federal public lands, even as it acknowledged that past logging has created severe environmental problems and a shortage of old-growth and mature forest types. The plan also made promises to rural communities that could never be kept, and has failed to fulfill promises to protect fish, wildlife, recreation, and clean water.

The Northwest Forest Plan did bring science to the management of federal public forestland, often for the first time. But while this science-based approach has put the brakes on the most extreme logging proposals, the cutting of old growth continues. Here in Oregon, in the McKenzie River watershed alone, 15 separate logging sales targeting old growth and mature forest stands will be carried out in 2005 and 2006. Similar large-scale logging of old growth and mature forests are being carried out in other parts of the Northwest.

But even the unsustainable level of logging that the plan has allowed has not been enough to appease the logging industry. The Bush administration has sought to meet their demands for old-growth logging by eliminating “survey and manage” standards intended to protect rare plants and animals, and weakening rules such as the Aquatic Conservation Strategy that safeguards salmon and other fish. More recently, the administration has begun to rewrite management plans for Bureau of Land Management forests in western Oregon eliminate old-growth reserves entirely.

When it comes to defending these actions, the Bush administration has been playing fast and loose with the facts. They recently released a “10 Year Report for the Northwest Forest Plan,” which paints a rosy picture of our forests by claiming that some 600,000 acres of trees have matured to become 20 inches or more in diameter in the last decade. They compare this statistic to a figure of “only” 17,000 acres of true-old growth forests being clear-cut during the same time period.

The comparison is misleading. First, there are many types of logging that do not completely clear-cut a stand of old trees, yet still do enormous harm to fish, wildlife, and the landscape. In the recent Spotted Owl Status Review, the US Fish and Wildlife Service found the owl is still in decline in part due to the 160,000 acres of old-growth and mature forest habitat that has been logged in the last ten years-far more than the 17,000 acre figure cited in the Northwest Forest Plan report. The 1995 Salvage Logging Rider led to more than 7,000 acres of ancient trees being logged inside old-growth forest reserves alone.

The report does contain some useful information. It notes that the federal public lands that have seen the greatest improvements in overall watershed health are the ones where the strongest environmental safeguards-old-growth forest reserves-have been put into place. Areas where logging is occurring “…generally had low condition scores compared with other federally managed lands.” The report also confirms what economists and conservationists have known for over a decade. Logging is no longer central to most communities’ economic or social well-being, and the public wants our remaining old growth protected.

The good news is that we can protect our old-growth forests while still meeting the nation’s timber needs.

Literally hundreds of thousands of acres of public and private forestlands in Western Oregon have been clearcut over the last century. Often re-planted at high densities to maximize timber production, the thick, stunted stands that have grown back have little value for fish and wildlife. A well-designed program to thin these dense plantations would introduce complexity and diversity to the forest-improving habitat, producing timber, and creating jobs for rural economies.

Over the last decade, some national forests have recognized the value of pursuing this path through the woods. The “log it and leave it” years of the 1980’s left the US Forest Service with a black eye with the public, forests filled with clear cuts and mudslides, and a host of endangered species concerns. Innovative forest managers in the Siuslaw National Forest and elsewhere have responded by adopting conservation-based thinning programs, and turning away from old growth logging.

In doing so responsible forest managers have moved beyond the bitter legal battles of the past, where courts have been more than willing to overturn logging projects that violate the environmental safeguards of the Northwest Forest Plan. But unfortunately the Bush administration and the logging industry have not embraced this common-sense vision, and are instead trying use their court losses to justify weakening the plan. This does not protect the environment or carry out the public’s desire to see old-growth forests protected.

The window of opportunity for a compromise that protects old growth while thinning younger forests may be closing. Young stands across Oregon and the Northwest are passing through the optimal stage for thinning, and the public is losing patience with forest policy that increases old-growth logging and other destructive activities. As we enter the second decade of the Northwest Forest Plan, it is vital that the Bush administration follows the trail blazed by forest managers in the Siuslaw, and embrace a compromise that preserves old growth and embraces the alternative of conservation-based thinning programs.