U.S. Presents Plan to Save Owl, Logging

In a partial victory for the timber industry and a blow to environmentalists, the Bush Administration Friday proposed a plan that it said would preserve the territory of the northern spotted owl while allowing additional logging in other areas in an attempt to save jobs.

A Cabinet-level task force recommended a 1991 timber harvest on U.S. Forest Service lands of 3.51 billion board feet, including 310 million board feet from Northern California and 3.2 billion from Oregon and Washington. The figure includes 200 million board feet carried over from 1990.

The recommended harvest represents a reduction of about 20% from current levels. Even so, it is higher than the 2.6 billion board feet recommended by scientific experts as the minimum reduction needed to save the owl.

The Administration, however, noted that nothing in the task force recommendations “would require sales of timber from the habitat conservation areas.”

“The task force sought to balance conservation of the spotted owl and the economic well-being of families who live in the region,” said a statement issued by Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter and Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., who headed the panel.

“This is not a perfect answer, because a perfect answer does not exist,” they said. “But it is the beginning of a good balance built on knowledge and dialogue to protect our heritage, while minimizing economic dislocation in timber-dependent communities of the Pacific Northwest.”

The task force urged Congress, which sets timber harvest levels annually, to immediately approve its recommendations.

The Administration acknowledged, however, that the proposed level of tree cutting could not occur under current laws governing scenic areas, water quality and the like. It called on Congress to write an exemption to those laws and allow the cutting to proceed.

Although the federal government said that the recommended harvest level could be accomplished without cutting into those areas needed to preserve the owl, environmentalists and others in the Northwest are worried that there will be massive amounts of clear-cutting in other areas, including some of the Northwest scenic corridors.

“The Administration has been looking at this as if it’s only a jobs vs. owls issue,” said Fran Hunt, a forestry resource specialist with the National Wildlife Federation. “What they don’t see is that we’re dealing with an ecosystem that was once 20 to 30 million acres in size and has already been reduced by logging to something around 10% of its original size. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. They’re coming up with a short-term fix. What will happen to the loggers when the last 10% of the forest is gone?”

Syd Butler, the Wilderness Society’s vice president for conservation, called the Administration’s language “sleight of hand,” adding: “They are not saying there shall be no sales of timber from habitat conservation areas.”

Butler said that it would be impossible to harvest that much timber “without decimating owl habitat.”

Timber industry spokesmen, however, also reacted without joy to the plan.

“This deadly serious game over the fate of the Pacific Northwest economy has just begun,” said Mark Rey, executive director of the American Forest Resource Alliance. “The timber families that depend on the forest products industry for their livelihoods cannot tolerate the continuation of the historical downward trend in federal timber harvest.”

Michael Draper, executive secretary of the Western Council of Industrial Workers of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO, which represents 23,000 workers in the timber industry, agreed.

“This proposed plan would make workers in the Pacific Northwest an endangered species,” he said. “Thousands of hard-working Americans depend upon public timberland for their own survival.” He said that the Administration recommendations represent “a formula for economic depression, personal hardship, and social turmoil . . . .”

A spokesman for Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that the appropriations process likely would approve a harvest level comparable to the figures proposed by the task force.

However, he said it is not clear whether Congress would act on the Administration recommendations to circumvent laws regulating other lands, including the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

“We face an uphill fight,” said Rep. Douglas H. Bosco, a Democrat who represents the north coastal region of California. He predicted that the plan would cost his district “thousands of jobs.”

“Most people in Congress don’t know the issue--they only tangentially understand the economics,” he said. “Getting anything through Congress--especially something that would fly in the face of very powerful environmental groups--would be difficult.”

Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) agreed, saying that it would be “politically very difficult” to get Congress to change existing laws to allow the recommended timber harvesting. “I think the members are going to insist on a long-term approach, and the clock is really ticking down on this session,” he said.

The Administration asked Congress to enact legislation to authorize the immediate convening of the Endangered Species Committee. The special panel, known informally as the “God Squad,” could override the Endangered Species Act in cases of severe economic and social distress.

“This recommendation would not in any way alter the substance of the Endangered Species Act,” the task force said. “The intent is to allow the Endangered Species Committee to act efficiently and in a timely manner in applying the standards of the ESA to actions taken by the federal land management agencies.”

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) called the recommendations “a mixed bag” for Oregon.

“I would have liked to have had them recommend a slightly higher level of cut,” he said. “However, I’m pleased with their recommendation to immediately convene the Endangered Species Committee.” Packwood said that he plans to press legislation “to jump-start the God Squad,” adding: “I want to get this legislation passed this year.”

Lujan said that he will appoint a team to begin developing a “recovery plan” for the owl, as required by the Endangered Species Act. “This recovery plan will outline a series of steps needed for the conservation of the owl and will be developed with extensive involvement of scientific experts, environmental organizations, timber interests and the public.”

Lujan and Yeutter said that the task force will continue to function, with an expanded mission to “broadly review the nation’s forest management needs.”

The Cabinet-level panel, which was appointed in June, was composed of the secretaries of agriculture and the Interior and the heads of the Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Economic Advisers.

The group missed its Sept. 1 deadline by three weeks, with its members reportedly deadlocked in debate over what to recommend.

The panel began its work after a decision by Interior’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the spotted owl as a “threatened” species, a classification that requires the federal government to develop a protection plan.

In April, a blue-ribbon committee of scientists issued a document known as the Jack Ward Thomas Report, which recommended a substantial cutback in the Pacific Northwest timber harvest to save the owl.

The Thomas report--which has been described as the minimum action that must be taken to save the owl--suggested that the Administration adopt guidelines developed by the U.S. Forest Service that call for reducing the timber harvest on Forest Service lands to 2.6 billion board feet a year, down from more than 4 billion during the 1980s.

Cimons reported from Washington and Balzar from Seattle. Staff Writer Sue Ellen Christian in Washington also contributed to this story.