Conferees OK Compromise on Logging, Spotted Owl Protection

A House-Senate conference committee Friday approved a compromise that significantly reorders national forest management policies to protect the northern spotted owl while permitting logging in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The agreement opens the way to a permanent solution to the bitter, two-year debate over how to manage some of the last remaining virgin forest in the United States.

“It’s not a wonderful agreement, but it is a workable agreement,” said Bill Arthur of the Sierra Club.

The compromise, part of an $11-billion Interior Department appropriations bill that will go before the House and Senate as early as next week, provides that:

Regional Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management timber sales would be 9.6 billion board feet in fiscal 1989 and 1990, twice what has been allowed by court orders protecting the owl.

Timber sales would have to be laid out to “minimize fragmentation of significant old-growth forest stands.” No sales would be allowed in newly expanded spotted owl habitat areas.

Court challenges to individual timber sales would be allowed, but they would have to be filed within 15 days of the sale offering and the courts would have to decide within 45 days.

Of the sales currently enjoined by federal courts, 1.1 billion board feet would immediately be released for sale and 700 million permanently withdrawn.

Lawmakers have been trying to ensure a steady saw log supply from Northwest old-growth forests while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decides whether to declare the northern spotted owl an endangered species. The spotted owl lives almost exclusively in old-growth forests and each pair require a very large area.

The old-growth controversy--portrayed by special interests as vital both to hundreds of timber-dependent towns and millions of acres of delicate forests--became hot enough to transform forest management from a regional to a national issue. Legislators from states with little national forest land, such as Massachusetts and Illinois, for the first time joined Oregon and Washington lawmakers in shaping forest policy.

“Environmentalists came out with a pretty deal, as (did) workers in the timber community,” said Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.). He said the compromise would assure a steady timber supply by reducing lawsuits.

However, Gus Kuehne of Tacoma, Wash., president of the Northwest Independent Forest Manufacturers, said he doubted the House plan would provide enough timber to keep the region’s timber mills in full operation.

Jim Bloomquist of the Sierra Club said environmentalists were pleased with a smaller harvest, preservation of the right to file suit against bad plans, and more protection for owls and virgin timber.

“Congress clearly is on record as saying for the very first time that old growth is an important national resource and is worthy of significant federal protection,” said Arthur, of the Sierra Club. He added that the agreement should lead to smaller but sustainable harvests.