Protecting Oregon’s Heritage Forests From Myopic Management

By Lesley Adams

Rather than uniting communities by bringing together loggers,
local governments and conservationists with far-thinking public
land proposals,the Bureau of Land Management is once
again threatening Pacific Northwest ancient
forests with unsustainable clearcutting.

By the time I moved to the Little Applegate Valley in the spring of 2002, I was already smitten with the natural beauty surrounding my new home in the eastern Siskiyou Mountains. I had been a visitor in the area for years, hiking the trails, watching the birds and swimming in the rivers of southwest Oregon.

The eastern Siskiyou Mountains comprise an unusually diverse concentration of varying ecosystems. Located in the rain-shadow of the Siskiyou’s highest peaks, the arid climate is possibly the driest and sunniest location in western Oregon. The area contains the largest, most diverse, northern extent of California chaparral shrub communities in Oregon and boasts extensive intact native grasslands. It is home to the largest groves of old-growth juniper stands in western Oregon and contains the second largest populations of Gentner’s fritillary, which is listed on the Endangered Species Act list. The area is nestled in the larger 10-million-acre Klamath-Siskiyou region, internationally recognized for its astounding biodiversity, ruggedness and epic salmon runs.

While I was aware of the rich ecological gems of the eastern Siskiyous, I was less aware of the progressive and stimulating communities tucked into these mountains. Vibrant organic farming and ranching families dot the rivers and creeks throughout the Applegate. Enticing recreation opportunities like fishing, hiking, camping and paragliding bring people from around the country to enjoy the beauty, serenity and challenges of the region. The blossoming Applegate Wine Trail takes one through a series of vineyards that are developing world-class wines, and cutting-edge loggers have built a cottage industry employing local people in restoration forestry that provides materials to build fences and barns in the valley.

Also in the Applegate are the stunning hillside public forests managed by an “Adaptive Management Area,” one of several land designations created in the Northwest Forest Plan. The landmark 1994 plan was created by the Clinton Administration as a solution to the “timber wars” that had resulted from the peak of rampant public forest logging in the 1980s. The widespread liquidation of public forests had contributed to the severe decline of old-growth associated species such as the northern spotted owl and Pacific salmon, and the environmental crisis had reached a point that it could no longer be ignored. In addition to the Applegate there were nine other Adaptive Management Areas created under the Plan to test innovative projects and apply learned knowledge to future management.

A Step in the Right Direction

The Northwest Forest Plan covers nearly 25 million acres of public land stretching from the Canadian border to northwest California. While primarily covering Forest Service lands, the Plan also includes the nearly 2.6 million acres of public forest administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in western Oregon. In addition to Adaptive Management Areas, the Northwest Forest Plan created “Late Successional Reserves,” intended to protect old-growth forests and species, “Matrix” lands, which were considered the land appropriate for logging, and “Riparian Reserves,” to protect aquatic habitat.

A major problem that remained was old-growth logging on public lands at a time when public opinion for the protection of such rare forests was crystallizing across the nation. The Northwest Forest Plan designated many forests that had been clearcut as Late Successional Reserves because those areas would someday, theoretically, grow back into old-growth. Meanwhile, existing old growth was intentionally put into the Matrix lands for the purpose of logging it and converting old-growth ecosystems into tree farms. While not perfect, the Northwest Forest Plan’s scientific framework was an unprecedented agreement on a national scale, and certainly better than the status quo.

US District Judge William Dwyer noted at the time that the Northwest Forest Plan was the “bare minimum” needed to comply with environmental laws while allowing continued old-growth logging in the Pacific Northwest. The bare minimum of the Northwest Forest Plan included protecting the forests administered by the BLM in Oregon.

The history of exactly how the BLM, under the Department of the Interior, came to manage public forests is fascinating. It is a history laced with corporate corruption dating back to late 19th century that eventually resulted in a land seizure by the federal government from fraudulent railroad companies (for more on this history, read Railroads and Clearcuts by George Draffan and Derrick Jensen).

It is important to point out that the BLM only manages significant acreage of public forests in western Oregon, whereas the US Forest Service, under the Department of Agriculture, manages almost all of the federal forests across the country. While it is an anomaly that public forests are administered by the BLM, some argue it would be economically prudent to streamline such federal management under one department. The Forest Service, who oversees approximately 193 million acres of forest, is certainly capable of managing the 2.6 million acres of forests in Oregon.

While public forests, whether For-est Service or BLM land, are managed under many of the same laws, there are some differences. The obscure O&C Act is of paramount significance to Pacific Northwest forest ecosystems, and only applicable to BLM forests. Passed in 1937, there is raucous debate about the intentions of this antiquated law, but what is clear is that the law is being used by the Bush Administration to justify a regressive direction in the management of these 2.6 million acres of public lands.

Industry Guiding Public Policy, Two Steps Back

Fast forward to 2001. Just as I was setting my sights on the Applegate Valley, the Bush Administration was settling into their offices and quickly solidifying their plans for America. The timber industry, which was a major contributor to Bush’s Presidential campaign, outlined a series of actions to unravel protections for Pacific Northwest forests. One by one, the Bush Administration acted on that industry wish list, such as their repeated attempts to dismantle the Northwest Forest Plan and open up our remaining Roadless Areas. Luckily, conservation groups have held them at bay thus far by enforcing our nation’s environmental laws. However, we are currently embroiled in the last request on that industry wish list, which is creating the most dramatic threat to Pacific Northwest ancient forests in more than a decade.

The timber industry filed a lawsuit against the federal government in 1995 claiming that the Northwest Forest Plan violated the 1937 O&C Act, and therefore BLM forests should not receive the environmental protections set forth in the Plan. The lawsuit was dismissed by a D.C. District Court and was on a longshot appeal when, in 2003, the Bush Administration sat down with the timber industry and asked nicely what they would like in order to withdraw the lawsuit. Rather than defend itself in court, the Bush Administration chose to make a “sweetheart settlement” with the industry by giving into their demands in exchange for the industry dropping their lawsuit. The result was an agreement to revise the management plans for the 2.6 million acres of BLM public forests in western Oregon by the end of 2008, and to consider in those revisions removing BLM lands from the scientific framework of the Northwest Forest Plan altogether. This shady tactic, used liberally by the industry during Bush’s two terms, is known as “sue and settle.”

Getting Hit By a Whopper

On August 10th, the BLM released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR), which proposes a new management direction for the 2.6 million acres that it manages. While the timber industry settlement agreement stated that these new plan revisions must consider removing BLM lands from the Northwest Forest Plan as one option, all three action alternatives offered in the WOPR replace the land designations of the Northwest Forest Plan and create new designations, which severely weaken or effectively remove environmental protections. The proposal affects not just the Applegate but treasured public lands up and down western Oregon.

WOPR highlights under the agency’s “preferred alternative” include an extreme boost of old-growth logging and places forests in a timber cutting rotation every 80-100 years. The plan would also dramatically shrink buffers around creeks, implement clearcutting while leaving no green trees standing after a “regeneration harvest,” and build 1,000 miles of new logging road in the next ten years. The proposal clearly puts logging above all other resource assets, including clean water, plant and wildlife habitat, recreation and fish. Perhaps most appalling, the WOPR ignores climate change, and proposes to increase fire hazard and decrease forest resiliency.

The BLM has narrowly interpreted the O&C Act to justify turning precious public resources into tree plantations. The intention is it to convert complex native ecosystems into simplistic, biologically deficient tree farms for rotation forestry to benefit timber companies. Bush’s proposal to turn back the clock and ramp up clearcut logging in old forests fits a pattern of environmental abuse from a corrupt administration bent on appeasing a handful of well-connected political donors without regard to science or public opinion.

There is Another Way

In the early stages of WOPR, an overwhelming majority of the 3,000-plus comments submitted asked the Bush Administration to protect mature and old growth forests, embrace second growth thinning and safeguard communities from wildfire.

Many federal forest managers are already moving beyond the conflicts of the past. By focusing on previously logged and fire-suppressed forests, which are often in need of thinning, they are providing wood to mills, improving habitat and keeping saws out of old-growth forests.

Collaborative groups like the one on the Siuslaw National Forest bring together loggers, local governments and conservationists to design projects with broad community support. The Siuslaw is consistently among the largest timber producers of any National Forest in Oregon. In contrast, rather than focus on forest management that highlights common ground, the BLM is prioritizing controversial old-growth clearcuts above thinning projects that would provide jobs and help restore our bruised public forests.

Harmful Economics

Between the 1940s and 1980s, county governments earned timber sale receipts from logging public forests, creating an economic situation in which counties became dependent upon logging revenue. By the 1980s, bloated county budgets caused by rampant old growth logging left fish and wildlife populations marching toward extinction. Currently, county governments receive Payments in Lieu of Taxes to replace the timber sale receipts, but the future of PILT is uncertain. Thus, many in county government are short-sightedly looking to the ramp-up of old-growth logging from WOPR to solve current county budget crises.

However, an economic bust is easily foreseeable under the Bush plan as fish, wildlife and the old growth forests that they rely on dwindle. Instead, we should make policy decisions now to reform county finances and build infrastructure capable of processing and utilizing small trees to supply local demand for wood products and help to sustain essential public services. The timber industry and county governments need to acclimate to a leaner, more sustainable supply of timber from public lands. Most certainly, American consumers must acclimate to a leaner, trimmer supply of wood products, be they from America, British Columbia, the Amazon or Siberia. Our relatively small population is consuming a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources and America needs to go on a diet.

A Conveyer Belt or Dynamic Problem Solving?

The intention of Adaptive Management Areas, under the Northwest Forest Plan, was to create areas where federal managers and local communities could work together to design innovative projects that would garner public support and offer educational experiences to apply to future management decisions. This appears to be a sensible, indeed critical, direction for land management at a time when human consumption is overwhelming the planet’s ability to keep up.

The WOPR proposes to turn the Applegate Adaptive Management Area (AMA) into a Timber Management Area (TMA). If one compares the maps of the existing designation to the proposed one, the TMA looks like a wound was cut open and bled all over the AMA. While there are practical differences between the AMA and the TMA, like the amount of the land base open for logging, the amount, or lack of, streamside protections, and the willingness to protect habitat for old-growth dependent species, there is a larger philosophical difference that is indicative of the land management direction proposed under WOPR.

Adaptive Management Areas were designated to encourage new approaches to achieving desired ecological, economic, and social objectives, thus promoting learning about how to manage forests and nurture a sustainable relationship between humans and our landscape. Conversely, Timber Management Areas, proposed under the Bush Administration’s WOPR, are areas to be intensively managed for timber on an 80-100 year clearcutting rotation, while all other forest values take a backseat. This short-term thinking is not only detrimental to countless species and ecological systems that keep the planet vibrant and alive, it is sure to hasten ecological collapse.

Rather than integrate the myriad and dynamic values of forest ecosystems, such as soil stabilization, water filtration, climate regulation, wildlife habitat, genetic diversity and rejuvenation of the human spirit, the BLM is simplifying the production of these ecosystems like they were a conveyer belt spitting out two-by-fours. As if a streamlined process of one-way extraction and consumption could persist forever. In fact, such a recipe of intensive extraction is a proven failure.

History is replete with examples of civilizations that thrived and crashed due to the over-exploitation of the land base. The Khmer Empire of southeast Asia, the Maya of Central America, the Anasazi of the American southwest, the Mycenae of Greece and the Greenland Norse all serve as foreboding warnings to modern society. If we do not practice long-term thinking and make bold, courageous decisions that positively affect perceptible problems that have not yet reached crisis proportions, we are doomed to fail in the footsteps of these earlier civilizations.

There is much promise for the future of public forests in the State of Jefferson, if we can learn from history. Fostering the clean water, wildlife habitat and economic abundance that flows from these natural assets takes a change in course from cut and run, boom and bust forestry. It takes respect for these great lands that provide us with so much, while encouraging the industries that live within the laws of nature. It takes adaptation.

The American public has an opportunity to speak out and stand up for the future of public lands in western Oregon. These forests are part of an ancient ecosystem that has dwindled to 15% of its original cover, a figure small enough to warrant crisis proportions.

The BLM is accepting public comments through November 9, 2007. Please visit www.oregonheritageforests.org to learn more and take action on behalf of forests, rivers, critters, and our future. As a wise Native American elder reminds us, be a voice for the voiceless.

Lesley Adams is the Outreach Coordinator for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (www.kswild.org), an advocate for the forests and wildlife of the Rogue and Klamath River watersheds of southwest Oregon and northwest California.

October/November 2007

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Protecting Oregon's Heritage Forests from Myopic Management
Lesley Adams

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A Journey into Consciousness
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Mixed Media Reviews

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Cosmic Calendar
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