Old-Growth Forests Take Root as a Divisive Issue

Freshly felled trees lay like match sticks on the hill overlooking Windfall Lake, a small, clear jewel that brims with cutthroat trout and once was flanked by towering stands of Douglas fir.

To Forest Service managers, the 35-acre timber sale was a routine part of business in the Willamette National Forest, a sprawling, New Jersey-sized preserve that is the largest timber producer in the United States.

But to Forest Service wildlife biologist Ken Kestner, it was a mistake. Last summer, Kestner identified the area as the “center of activity” for a pair of northern spotted owls--a rare, nocturnal species uniquely dependent on the Northwest’s virgin forests--and recommended against the cutting.

“I would assume that whatever tree they used for nesting has probably been harvested out,” Kestner said while touring the site recently. “I see it as making a significant impact.”

The division within the Forest Service is symptomatic of the broader debate over the future of the Northwest’s dwindling ancient forests, a mountainous, fog-shrouded realm that stretches from Northern California to British Columbia.

The controversy entered the national political arena after lawsuits by environmental groups on behalf of the spotted owl limited timber sales throughout the Northwest, prompting loud protests from logging towns and the timber industry.

But the compromise that emerged from Congress in September was only a yearlong stopgap, leaving unresolved basic questions with profound implications for national forest policy, the environment and the economy of the Pacific Northwest.

On one side are the multibillion-dollar wood-products industry and hundreds of towns that depend on the timber harvest for their economic lifeblood. On the other are environmentalists, many scientists and a mounting body of evidence that “old-growth” virgin forests play a key role in the maintenance of wildlife populations, soil quality and biological diversity.

Because the forests make up the last remnants of temperate rain forests in the continental United States, the debate has also assumed international significance in light of U.S. efforts to curb the destruction of rain forests in Brazil and elsewhere in the Third World.

Although Northwest forests are replanted or grow back on their own, scientists say that generations will pass before they assume the characteristics of those they replaced.

“Besides the aesthetic value, old-growth forests represent a reservoir of biological diversity and nutrient recycling that is essentially irreplaceable,” said C. J. Ralph, a Forest Service research ecologist.

Concentrated for the most part in 12 national forests on the western slope of the Cascades, these giant evergreen stands of spruce, hemlock and Douglas fir--some more than 500 years old and taller than a 30-story building--once covered an estimated 19 million acres.

Today scientists say only 2.5 million to 3.5 million acres of old-growth timber remain and that is disappearing at the rate of 67,000 acres a year. About 900,000 acres are permanently protected in parks or wilderness areas.

Environmentalists have tried for years to slow the logging in the Northwest, but they acquired the mechanism to do so only after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to consider listing the spotted owl as an endangered species.

Under intense pressure from logging interests, members of the Northwest’s congressional delegations fashioned a compromise that forced environmentalists to lift some of the injunctions in exchange for reducing the overall timber harvests for 1989 and 1990.

Contrary to assertions by some politicians that the lawsuits had shut down mills throughout Oregon, the injunctions will not have a significant impact until next year.

That is because the injunctions blocked timber sales, which typically take place a year or two in advance of harvesting, and loggers are still cutting trees from timber purchased in 1988 or before.

“The cutting is going on fiercely,” said Mike Kerrick, supervisor of the Willamette. “The market’s been real hot.”

Timber industry spokesmen assert that further restrictions will jeopardize jobs and communities. Moreover, they say, adequate amounts of old-growth timber already are protected in parks and wilderness areas, while modern forestry practices ensure a sound environment in harvested forests.

“It isn’t an all-or-nothing situation,” said Chris West, a forester with the Northwest Forestry Assn., an industry group. “We may not have as many spotted owls, but the biological diversity will be there.”

Although the matter is far from settled, few people expect the record harvests of recent years to persist. The Forest Service is preparing long-term management plans for the Northwest, and officials have indicated that old-growth and spotted owls will figure prominently in the calculations.

Last month, Associate Chief George Leonard announced that the service had adopted a policy that would preserve about half the remaining unprotected old growth in the Northwest.

Environmentalists were skeptical, noting that the Forest Service has yet to decide precisely which forests fall into the category.

Nevertheless, even the agency’s harshest critics concede that the Forest Service’s traditional focus on timber production is changing. Publicity brochures emphasize recreation and wilderness, not tree farms. More significantly, pesticide use is down, and loggers often are required to leave branches and other tree remnants for the benefit of soil and wildlife.

“We are very capable of altering our management systems to protect more of the kinds of ecological values associated with old growth,” said Jerry Franklin, the service’s chief plant ecologist and a frequent critic of past logging practices. “Right now the rate of change is just breathtaking. And it’s very hard to see where it’s going to end.”

Perhaps nowhere are competing pressures more acute than in the 1.7-million-acre Willamette, which sprawls across Oregon’s western Cascades like a giant throw rug.

Like other national forests in the Northwest, the Willamette remained largely undisturbed until the postwar building boom. Even now, “scenic buffers” along major roads shield many logged-over areas from public view.

But from the air can be seen a checkerboard of bald hillsides and mountains laced with logging roads. Spotted owls and environmentalists notwithstanding, timber still drives the regional economy and accounts for 85% of the Willamette’s management budget, according to Kerrick.

About 500,000 acres of old-growth remain in the Willamette, and 90,000 of that has been permanently protected as designated wilderness. Management plans call for setting aside an additional 207,000 acres for at least the next 15 years, Kerrick said.

“The environmental community would have you believe that the last of the old-growth is on a logging truck, and that’s not the case,” he said.

Rangers such as Karen Barnett emphasize recreation--hiking, rock-climbing, fishing, boating. “Sweet Home probably has more opportunities (for recreation) than other districts,” Barnett said. “We have significant stands of old-growth left.”

But many government scientists remain concerned that the Forest Service’s shift in priorities may come too late for some species, particularly the spotted owl. Some scientists estimate that a single pair of the rare nocturnal birds, which grow to about 15 inches tall, require about 4,000 acres of old-growth forest to ensure an adequate food supply.

“If you cut down the old trees, you will drive the bird to extinction,” said Charles Meslow, an Oregon State University professor of wildlife ecology who has studied the bird since 1975.

Biologists estimate that the bird’s population, now at about 3,000 pairs, is declining at the rate of 1% to 2% a year.

But forest managers in the Willamette and elsewhere are still obligated to provide timber at the levels specified by Congress. As a consequence, they frequently find themselves at odds with their own biologists.

The most recent conflict has occurred in Oakridge, a traditional Oregon timber town where local officials have been trying to diversify the economy through tourism. The effort got a boost last summer, when the local sawmill shut down after running out of timber on adjacent private lands.

“Obviously, you can’t sell yourself as a recreational paradise if you have no trees,” City Administrator Wes Hare said.

Last summer, Hare and the supervisor of the local recreation center, Norm Coyer, learned of the Forest Service plan to allow logging at Windfall Lake, their favorite trout fishing spot. “I’ve been to hundreds of lakes in this part of Oregon and I’ve never seen one quite like it,” Coyer said. “It was a very special place.”

The two raised the matter with Kestner, the Forest Service biologist, who agreed that it should not be logged. Situated in a remote basin reached after a grueling scramble down a steep mountainside, the lake in reality is a tiny pond, formed when a natural landslide dammed a creek.

With its high elevation and girdle of old-growth forest, the area constituted “a mini, little wilderness,” Kestner said. Moreover, Kestner determined that the area was being used by a pair of spotted owls, although he was never able to find the nest.

But the district ranger overruled his request, explaining that no “substitute” timber was available elsewhere.

Kerrick said he is sympathetic to Kestner’s concern but that a timber sale, once made, is very difficult to undo. “That’s hard for biologists to accept,” Kerrick said.