Panel Will Consider Timber Harvesting in Spotted Owl Habitat

Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. said Tuesday that he will convene a Cabinet-level panel that can override the Endangered Species Act and allow timber harvesting on nearly 4,600 acres considered vital to survival of the Northern spotted owl.

Lujan’s decision to have the panel consider a possible exemption to the law came in response to a lengthy application filed Sept. 11 by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which wants to sell 44 tracts of old-growth timber in southwestern Oregon.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with administration of the Endangered Species Act, formally concluded in June that logging the tracts would jeopardize the owl’s continued existence.

Lujan, who has drawn fire for past off-the-cuff comments on endangered species, said he regrets that he could find no other course in the struggle between environmentalists committed to saving the reclusive bird and logging communities concerned about losing jobs.

Reactions from the opposing camps were true to course, with timber interests endorsing the decision and environmentalists characterizing it as an assault on the Endangered Species Act.

It is only the second time in the history of the law that the Endangered Species Committee--dubbed “the God squad” because of its power to permit actions that might further jeopardize a species when overriding economic interests are at stake--has been called upon to consider granting an exemption.

Lujan, by law the committee’s chairman, has 140 days to conduct a hearing and receive evidence on the Bureau of Land Management’s application to allow the logging. The seven-member panel will have 30 days to decide what to do.

Stressing that the exemption being sought is a narrow one and that measures to protect the owl will continue, Interior Department spokesman Steven Goldstein said the action is not viewed as precedent-setting. “That,” he said, “is not the goal of the secretary.”

The committee’s makeup, determined by the Endangered Species Act, suggests that the BLM application is likely to be accepted because most of its members represent interests considered unlikely to side with environmentalists.

Serving on the panel with Lujan will be Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan; Army Secretary Michael Stone; Michael Boskin, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; John A. Knauss, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a state representative approved by President Bush.

To be approved, the requested exemption must receive at least five of the seven votes.

Lujan’s action drew praise from timber interests. “The department’s decision is a positive and necessary step toward protecting the environment and preserving the overall economy of Northern California, Oregon and Washington,” said Mark Rey, director of the American Forest Resource Alliance.

“However, it should be made crystal clear that today’s decision in no way removes the need for Congress to approve a long-term solution to the constant timber availability crisis,” Rey said.

The move was assailed by environmentalists. National Audubon Society Vice President Brock Evans and World Wildlife Fund official Donald Barry suggested that BLM Director Delos Cy Jamison had submitted the timber application without complying with the law’s requirement to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service in search of a less drastic solution.

“I think this is illegal because they did nothing,” Evans said. “I think it is designed to (boost Republican Bob) Packwood’s campaign for reelection to the Senate from Oregon and to gut the Endangered Species Act.

“These are terrible sales. They are going to kill owls and destroy their habitat, and it is going to embarrass the Administration when scientists come to the committee and say that this is a disaster,” Evans added.

Packwood tried unsuccessfully last year to get an amendment through the Senate that would have made it much easier to impanel the Endangered Species Committee. Last month, Jamison announced his decision to seek the exemption in a Capitol Hill news conference with the senator.

In the massive application submitted to Lujan, Jamison said that existing plans for protection of the remaining spotted owls will cause major economic disruption in Oregon because timber sales will be reduced by 75%. The 44 tracts covered in his petition were originally included in BLM’s plan for fiscal 1991 sales.

Although environmentalists argue that the economic impact of protecting the owl has been exaggerated, the logging and timber industries estimate that the protection of the birds will cause the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

With an estimated 3,000 pairs of the owls still in existence in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, the Fish and Wildlife Service is at work on a plan, due to be completed before the end of the year, to bring about the owl’s recovery. Part of the plan is to clearly designate the creature’s vital habitat.

Despite the characterization of the application as a narrow issue and the insistence that Lujan has no intention to set a precedent, some environmentalists said they view the move as being designed in part to help set the stage for a fight in Congress when the Endangered Species Act comes up for reauthorization next year.

California potentially has its own showdown between jobs, economics, and environmental protection in a separate Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to list the delta smelt, a three-inch fish found in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta, as a threatened species.