The New York Times
Thursday 18 October 2007
Galice, Oregon - A 1990s' truce that quieted the bitter wars between loggers and environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest is in danger of collapse.
With that truce, made final in 1994 by the Clinton administration, the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, seemed to be getting the breathing space it needed to regroup. While some land was opened to loggers, nearly twice as much was set aside for owls' hunting grounds. But more than a decade later, their numbers continue to decline faster than expected.
Now the truce, the Northwest Forest Plan, is in jeopardy as one of the parties to it, the Bureau of Land Management, is rethinking its participation. It is proposing a threefold increase in logging on its 2.2 million acres in western Oregon, with greater increases in the old-growth stands that are the owls' preferred territory. The land agency's action would reduce by 10 percent the territory covered by the Northwest Forest Plan.
With the agency's proposal, it seems that the timber industry, which never stopped pressing for access to more trees than the Northwest Forest Plan allowed, is getting what it had long sought in court.
The industry and local county governments, which get a share of the proceeds, say the plan restores the rightful primacy of logging on these tracts. The timber industry also believes that the villain in the spotted owls' continued decline is not loss of forest habitat, but the arrival of the barred owl, an eastern bird that now out-competes the spotted owl.
But environmentalists and scientists argue that the agency's proposal will torpedo the whole Northwest Forest Plan, which encompassed 24 million acres, and damage the spotted owl's chances for survival.
Jerry Franklin, a professor of ecosystem analysis at the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington, said, "We are on the cusp of a point where the whole edifice could collapse."
If the land agency's share is taken out, the plan's objectives in providing old-growth habitat for the owl cannot be met, Mr. Franklin said.
Dick Prather, the Bureau of Land Management official leading the project to revise the forest plans, said the new strategy tried to remedy the failure of the Northwest Forest Plan to produce the amount of lumber expected.
Whether the agency's move will lead to a new round of timber wars is unknown. The conflict in the 1980s was a public relations defeat for all concerned, with environmentalists being painted as extremists and timber interests as wantonly destructive.
But here on the steep, forested hillsides along the Rogue River, a skirmish over the fate of 514 acres of old trees offers a taste of what might happen in the current tug of war over timber.
At issue is a timber sale, informally called the Kelsey-Whisky sale after nearby creeks that feed the Rogue River. It contains towering Douglas firs 100 years old or more, which provide the kind of landscape the owls favor. When cut, the trees become lumber for companies like the Rough & Ready Lumber Company of Cave Junction, Ore.
Rough & Ready's owners plan to turn the timber into building materials and expect to make a profit, despite the current housing slump, said Jennifer Phillippi, the company's president.
But the spotted owl's needs have gotten in the way.
As required by the Endangered Species Act, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service judged that sales like the Kelsey-Whisky one would not endanger the species' eventual recovery.
That decision was challenged in court by the Oregon Natural Resources Council, now renamed Oregon Wild. Doug Heiken, a representative of that group, said the fish and wildlife agency had given no indication of how many owls would be harmed by this logging.
With court reversal of the agency's judgment likely, the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew its blessing for the Kelsey-Whisky sale, and plans for logging were suspended.
On the larger landscape, the Bureau of Land Management's plan must have a similar scientific underpinning. An advisory committee has devised a plan that allows for some increase in logging - but not as much as the agency first proposed.
Bush administration officials in Washington suggested that a second option be prepared. As written, that option could allow for much more logging on the 2.2 million acres.
The new option sets aside no territory for the owl. Instead, it provides for ad-hoc decisions based on ongoing evaluations of the owl's health. Crucial to both options was a determination that owls can thrive outside old-growth stands.
This summer, scientists, including those whose work was cited by the fish and wildlife agency, accused the service of misusing and cherry-picking the available science.
In response, Lynn Scarlett, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, said the Washington supervisors had asked if a second option was feasible. In an interview, Ms. Scarlett said: "The idea that any science was interfered with could not be more inaccurate. No scientific document changed, no scientific conclusions were altered - just zippo, zero."
Still, the scientific outcry insures that the recovery plan will be reworked. David Wesley, the official, based in Portland, Ore., who heads the fish and wildlife advisers, conceded, "We did push a little too far" by using inadequate data when determining where owls can thrive.
If the fish and wildlife advisers decide the owl needs more old-growth forests, the land agency, like Rough & Ready Lumber, will have a plan without a scientific blessing. If not, the agency could probably proceed with expanded logging.
In that case, environmentalists say, the truce protecting the owl would be dead.
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