A Clear-Cut Solution?
By Susan Palmer, Eugene Register-Guard
October 29, 2007

They’re not much, as Douglas firs go. This little patch on U.S. Bureau of Land Management forest in the Coast Range west of Lorane is young — 10-year-old trees in a section that was logged from 1996 to 1998 and then replanted.

But this is no standard clear-cut. Interspersed among the saplings are bigger, older trees, eight to 12 per acre, that were left behind to create a more structurally complex stand than the dense single-age trees on nearby privately owned timberlands.

Because of the older trees, this neck of BLM woods has the potential to become suitable habitat for old-growth-loving northern spotted owls more quickly than if all the trees had been cut, said Richard Hardt, a BLM forest ecologist.

Yet the BLM soon may move away from this type of compromise between logging and wildlife habitat. In its new Western Oregon forest management strategy, in draft form and expected to be finalized by December 2008, the BLM calls for clear-cutting — leaving no live trees behind in areas designated for timber harvest.

Hardt was on the team that developed the Western Oregon Plan Revision that could almost triple logging in coming years on the BLM’s 2.2 million acres. The forests can handle that increase, Hardt said.

“We’re not mortgaging the future at all by doing this,” he said. “We’ve modeled it out for 400 years.”

That prediction is music to the ears of those who work in the old-growth timber industry, and to county governments eager for timber sale revenue that would replace declining federal aid. But environmentalists see it as a giant step backward.

BLM lands represent just 10 percent of the forests managed under the Northwest Forest Plan, the 1994 document that currently guides management of Western Oregon’s federal lands, but they provide key habitat for the imperilled northern spotted owl, environmentalists say.

Unlike the national forests, the BLM lands are broken up into one-mile square chunks that alternate with private lands in a checkerboard pattern from Portland south to California.

“The BLM lands are inherently better suited to the owl because of their low elevation,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “Historically, the biggest, most majestically huge trees are grown there,” he said. Those lands also form a key bridge between owl habitat in the Cascade and Coast ranges.

“The BLM is the stepping stone for the owl’s survival,” Stahl said.

So, the main clash over the plan in coming months will be between advocates of logging and advocates of environmental protection. But a sideshow may emerge because the money that BLM log sales would channel to rural Oregon counties may not be enough to keep the cash-strapped counties happy.

The new plan’s biggest fans are the modest number of Western Oregon mills that are dependent on big logs from public lands.

“The BLM revision would extend the life of this company way out into the future,” said Robbie Robertson, manager of Starfire Lumber in Cottage Grove. The mill, which specializes in big logs, has an annual payroll of about $3 million and pays an additional $5 million in subcontracted work to truck drivers and loggers, Robinson said.

Half of the revenue from BLM logging sales goes to counties, and the bump in harvest would spare them from having to beg on Capitol Hill, he said.

“Are we going to continue on a welfare program where everybody’s going back to Washington, D.C., with a tin cup in their hands every year?” he said.

A 1937 law directed the BLM to log on a sustained yield basis with 50 percent of the revenue going to 18 Western Oregon counties where the forests are located. With logging curtailed by the Northwest Forest Plan, Congress filled the revenue gap with subsidies that have diminished over time. The federal payments end this year.

The proposed BLM ramp-up in Western Oregon logging would yield 720 million board feet of timber a year on a continuing basis. That’s almost triple the current harvest.

“These people know what they’ve got out there,” Robinson said of the BLM estimates.

Environmental advocates say it could have a devastating impact on the northern spotted owl and on Oregon watersheds.

The BLM has prepared a 1,700-page draft environmental impact statement on its plan.

The 16-page summary offers generalities: clear-cutting to achieve the higher yield, generating $108 million annually for counties.

The BLM also estimates a net increase of 3,442 jobs and $136.5 million in wages under its proposal.

To see the environmental price tag for such a payout requires reading the three-volume document itself.

Reserves for northern spotted owls would be cut 36 percent, from 809,400 acres to 521,500 acres.

The habitat for marbled murrelets, the sea-going birds that lay their eggs on thick Douglas fir tree branches, would be cut 16 percent.

Both are listed as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act.

The plan would shrink by 57 percent the tree buffers along rivers and streams that provide shade, bank stability and downed wood in the water, which create good habitat for fish.

It would add 1,000 miles of roads.

And it would cut down 109,600 acres of trees 120 years of age and older.

The plan would log trees on an 80- to 100-year rotation on the forests not set aside as reserves.

The BLM’s Hardt says the 1937 federal law requires that much logging. Just as the national parks were set aside for recreation and wildlife refuges for birds and animals, the BLM forests were designated for timber production, he said.

While Oregon’s congressional delegates are working to renew direct payments to counties for another five years, many people are looking to the forests to fill budget gaps that have slashed services.

Coos County, for example, cut 70 positions last March. Jackson County shuttered libraries. Lane County made cuts in law enforcement, prosecutions and jail beds.

Upping BLM logging to fill those gaps doesn’t go over well with some.

Leslie Rubenstein, a teacher who lives in Cottage Grove, said she appreciates the fact that counties need a source of revenue. But the 1937 law guiding BLM logging doesn’t take into account 80 years of science about the importance of forests and the environment, she said.

Many county commissioners, however, see logging revenue as the only permanent fix.

“It is the dominant purpose of the lands to provide a continuous flow of timber,” Coos County Commissioner John Griffith said.

In Lane County, where voters have consistently rejected tax increases to fund services, Commissioner Bobby Green throws the funding question back: “If not this, then what?”

Yet even if adopted, the BLM plan would take a couple of years to map out timber sales and put them up for bid.

And that’s before environmental advocates have their say.

“The BLM knows there’s a massive lawsuit in the works to stop what we believe is the most reckless logging proposal in decades,” said Josh Laughlin, conservation director at Cascadia Wildlands Project.

The BLM plan’s biggest weakness is its lack of data about the northern spotted owl, said Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. There are many pages devoted to the plan’s impact on spotted owl habitat, but the plan never mentions the impact on the numbers of owls.

“You can read the BLM revision cover to cover and never see any reference to the (spotted owl) science. That’s the Achilles’ heel,” Stahl said. In comparison, the Northwest Forest Plan has many pages of information on the best owl science available at that time, he said.

Congress may have intended the BLM lands for logging, but the agency must still comply with all other federal laws, and where conflicts arise, new laws trump old ones, Stahl argued.

The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act all still apply.

The BLM asserts its plan complies with the legal requirements.

“Throughout this whole planning effort, we’ve said we need to meet all applicable laws,” BLM spokesman Michael Campbell said.

Environmentalist charge that the BLM stacked the regulatory deck by pushing through changes to the northern spotted owl recovery plan that’s being crafted by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The draft recovery plan would make it easier for the BLM to justify cutting more old trees, critics say.

The BLM says it is listening to its critics.

The agency already has identified elements of its forest plan that it needs to fix, Hardt said.

The clear-cutting proposal is one of those items. “We’ve already identified it as something we’re going to explore,” he said.

Both the recovery plan for the owl and the BLM forest management plan will be finalized in a year of presidential politics and most likely will be used by Democrats and Republicans in their quest to win congressional seats and the White House.

Outside of the courtrooms, the outcome of the new battle over Oregon’s big trees may lie in the hands of the next administration.

“If the Republicans remain in office, the Northwest Forest Plan is in trouble,” Stahl said. “It has survived several years of a whole host of meddling. I’m not sure it could survive further meddling.”

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