(The following is compiled information from Forest Watch, Headwaters, and the Klamath Forest Alliance.)
Keeping his promise at the close of the April 2nd Northwest Forest Conference, Bill Clinton, in choosing Option 9, has succeeded in displeasing nearly everyone.
This compromise plan calls for cutting both jobs and old growth. Rep. Mike Kopetski (D-OR) said, "They didn't cut enough and they didn't preserve enough." Ironically, Kopetski's comment is probably right. The administration could have selected an option that contained a system of permanent and inviolate reserves and harvested at least 1.2 billion board feet. But they chose not to. Why? Politics.
A permanent multi-million acre reserve system that was immune from logging would appear to be a cave-in to environmentalists. Instead, the White House endorsed a plan that shared the sacrifice, where they could say to the industry: "See, we chose not to give the environmentalists the very thing they wanted the most." Permitting any kind of logging in old-growth reserves is an act of political symbolism. But this symbol has real ecological consequences.
Option 9, also known as the Unified Reserve Option, seems to meet all the key interests of the administration: it allows timber management across a broad landscape; it establishes an old-growth reserve system, but doesn't exclude management and it promises a predictable level of timber sales from the matrix and the adaptive management zones. Out of the 10 alternatives developed by the scientists, Option 9 ranks second in the amount of timber available for sales and eighth in the number of acres set aside in reserves. It was clearly a compromise that may cut deeper into the ancient forest than into the timber industry.
Under Option 9, old-growth forests receive inadequate protection. One fifth (21%) of what remains is still open for commercial logging, because the Reserves in the President's Plan focus on "late-successional forests" (including stands as young as 80 years of age and single story stands with trees as small as 21" in diameter). The 950,200 acres of classic old-growth open for cutting under Option 9 should be protected in special Reserves to provide a VERY HIGH likelihood that all forests species will survive. We can't afford to lose the last 21% of these forests on federal land, knowing that we are down to the last 10% in the region as a whole. These areas have not even been adequately mapped or surveyed for their unique and often hidden biodiversity.
Roadless Areas (areas over 5,000 acres with no roads) receive no special protection. Their importance to restoring the salmon, steelhead and trout fisheries is widely recognized, and they are our last chance to retain large and relatively undisturbed ecosystems. The 685,323 acres of Roadless Areas open for cutting and roadbuilding under Option 9 should be added to the Reserve System. The undisclosed number of roadless acres in Key Watersheds (that could be logged following a "Watershed Analysis") should also be protected.
Protection for small streams has been weakened. No-cut buffers along the intermittent streams in headwater areas have been cut in half (to only 50 feet on each side of the stream). This contradicts recommendations for 100 foot buffers in the Scientific Analysis Team Report (March, 1993), even though wider buffers are considered essential for giving salmon and steelhead a "high" chance of viability. Full SAT protection should be given to all small streams. Otherwise native species such as coho salmon and Illinois River winter steelhead are doomed. These buffers are also crucial for terrestrial species like salamanders, mosses, lichens, and arthropods.
Clearcutting (slightly modified) and even-aged management are endorsed in Option 9, although 15% of the cutting units must now be left in green trees to provide a "legacy" for the future (older trees, standing snags and fallen logs). At least half of the leave trees must be left in patches from 1/4 to 4 acres in size, with the rest scattered around the unit. This is still clearcutting, and the resulting soil impacts, "edge effects" (drying, blowdown, climatic change) and "fragmentation" will damage wildlife habitat and ecosystem functions for decades. All clearcutting and even-aged management should be stopped to maintain biodiversity. Forest's ecosystem functions should be left intact when trees are removed.
Under Option 9, forest canopy cover in commercial logging zones outside the Reserves will be reduced to extremely low levels. This is due to the elimination of the ISC's "50-11-40" rule that stopped further cutting in areas where less than 1/2 of the landscape had trees less than 11" in diameter and 40% canopy closure. Restoring the "50-11-40" rule will protect dispersal habitat for juvenile spotted owls and maintain connecting corridors and habitat areas for many species across the landscape. Connectivity is already weak (less than 15% of the public and private lands are late-successional forests) and should not be weakened further.
BLM lands are usually less protected than Forest Service lands. The modifications for clearcuts do not apply to BLM lands, where a mere 6-8 trees per acre are generally required to be left after clearcutting. The exception is south of the "Grants Pass line" in southern Oregon, where partial cutting will be used to leave most of the stand intact. BLM lands should ge given equal or greater protection than Forest Service lands. BLM checkerboard lands are usually surrounded by cut-over private industry lands and need even greater numbers of leave trees and forest patches to protect biodiversity. Elimination of clearcutting is especially urgent.
Option 9 encourages thinning in the Reserves, and not in the Matrix where it belongs. Benefits for the ecosystem are attributed to "thinning" in tree farms and natural stands less that 80 years old in the Reserves, but this alleged benefit isn't encouraged in logging zones, where clearcutting is favored. Thinning-from-below in younger stands should be used as an experimental program in the commercial logging zones, where mistakes would do less damage than in the Reserves. Protecting older stands everywhere would allow for inventories of sensitive species to be completed and further mistakes to be avoided.
The administration chose not to endorse a ban on raw log exports, instead it merely announced its intentions to support elimination of the tax incentives to export logs and new tax incentives to encourage secondary processing. The volume mills claim they need to avoid shutdown can be found on the Pacific Northwest export docks, where the equivalent of nine billion board feet of logs, chips and pulp is exported yearly.
Clinton's Northwest Economic Development Plan is "the spoonful of sugar" that he is offering in hope that option 9 will be swallowed by rural communities. It is one of the least examined aspects of the forest plan. This key political pay-off is a $1.2 billion economic development and assistance package that will be phased in over a five year period, ($270 million in the next year) assuming the money is appropriated by Congress. The "intent" is to fast track the awarding of hundreds of millions of dollars to the rural counties and communities of the Pacific Northwest to ease the transition caused by the so called "timber crisis".
The plan was developed by Peter Yu, the director of the National Economic Council, to provide support for economic "adjustment and diversification." It includes funding for business development, planning, infrastructure development, ecosystem restoration, worker retraining and tax incentives to encourage value added manufacturing. Yu estimates that the economic plan will create 8,000 jobs and fund retraining of 5,400 other workers. In all the Clinton administration is proposing to spend nearly $200,000 for each job lost as a result of Option 9.
The central components of the plan include:
* TIMBER WORKERS: $42 million funding for job search, retraining and relocation under the Job Training Partnership Act ($22 million above the current funding);
* NORTHWEST BUSINESS: $240 million in business development funds that include improved access to capital, technical assistance and enhanced access to domestic and international markets; ($76 million in new funds);
* COMMUNITIES: replaces the 25% Fund payments "with a reliable schedule of payments" delinked from timber harvest levels; $374 million in Community Block Grants, Rural Development Administration grants and new water/waste water treatment plants ($75 million in new funds); and
* ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION: $519 million in investments in watershed maintenance, ecosystem restoration, environmental monitoring and forest stewardship ($81 million in new funds).
Although, on the surface this "Plan" may appear to some to be a dream-come-true, there are many unanswered questions and concerns. Where is the money coming from? The U.S. Forest Service, BLM, and JTPA are some possible sources. Who administers the Funds? Right now this is undetermined. What does rural development mean? It could mean environmentally and socially responsible business and manufacturing, clean public transportation systems, and trained, well-paid workers; or condos, docks, R.V. parks, gas lines, water mains, paid bureaucrats, lined pockets, and hundreds of minimum wage jobs that send local monies out of communities. Even more ironic and tragic, the prime beneficiaries of these projects may well be the same individuals and companies who have profited from exporting logs from private land. Beware of politicians bearing gifts!
The Clinton Forest plan is a wickedly political "attractive nuisance" that the Ancient Forest community embraces at its peril. While ostensibly a pre-decisional document in the form of a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the document actually presents as "science" a decision made months ago; that much of the remaining Ancient Forest, roadless areas, and species in the Pacific Northwest must be sacrificed. To package this decision as sound ecological science it presents data in a way that underestimates the amount of Ancient Forest that will be placed at risk and the benefits of creating reserves, but overestimates the benefits of logging. It arrays data so that it cannot be compared with pervious reports, and assumes the success of major projects neither funded nor designed. The process records and meeting minutes are sealed or nonexistent, and the methodology received inadequate peer review. Fortunately, because the plan's technical and legal construction is so weak and species protection so poor, it probably won't survive a legal challenge.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited