Clinton Acts to Break Logjam Over Northwest Timberlands

He ducked it cleanly during his campaign, but President Clinton announced Wednesday that he will duck it no longer. On April 2 in Portland, Ore., Clinton will plunge himself into a quick, one-day primer on the Northwest’s long and troubling deadlock over its ailing forests and struggling logging communities.

With national lumber prices soaring, rural unemployment high in the region, the U.S. Forest Service losing money, stands of ancient trees down to only remnants of the past, and important wild animals being pushed closer to the brink, Clinton is likely to come face-to-face with a problem as daunting as any President could imagine.

The White House said that Vice President Al Gore, three Cabinet secretaries and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency will join in the conference to be held one day before Clinton opens his international summit with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, a one-hour flight to the north in Vancouver, B.C.

Virtually all with a stake in the dispute said they expect that the conference will be only a new start toward a resolution, not the end itself.

“It is time to break the gridlock that has blocked action and bring all sides together to craft a balanced approach,” Clinton said in a statement.

Gore met with members of Congress at the Capitol and said a compromise was not impossible. “We owe it to our children and to every generation that follows to preserve this unique treasure with a balanced long-term policy that recognizes we don’t have to sacrifice jobs to protect a unique natural resource,” he said.

The conference seeks to fulfill a Clinton promise from last autumn. Back then, candidate Clinton said only that he would hold a “summit” on the issue if elected. Now, the meeting will be less than a summit, more a one-day executive branch hearing that the White House called a “conference.”

Depending on how timberlands are counted and who is counting, the management of anywhere from 7 million to 25 million acres of federal lands in California, Oregon and Washington will be on the table for discussion. Most hotly disputed are 6 million acres that are habitat to the threatened northern spotted owl.

In brief, here are how the three sides line up in preparation for Clinton:

ENVIRONMENTALISTS: About 3 million acres of virgin or ancient forests remain vulnerable to cutting. Environmentalist leaders such as the Sierra Club and the Oregon Natural Resources Council insist that these trees, and surrounding watersheds and connecting corridors, be permanently protected from logging. By their count, 90% of the region’s ancient forests already have been cut.

These groups also want the President to devise ways to assure survival of the owl and other wildlife, including shrinking numbers of wild salmon.

That might leave enough public lands for the logging of about 1 billion to 1.5 billion board feet of timber from public lands in the region annually hereafter. That would be a 75% reduction from historic highs of the 1970s and 1980s.

TIMBER INDUSTRY: With the election of Clinton, the lumber and paper industry has reorganized its multiple trade groups into a single operation to present its strongest front.

Mark Rey of the new American Forest and Paper Assn. said the industry will support some land set-asides to protect the spotted owl and some portion of remaining unprotected ancient forests. But, in turn, the industry wants guarantees of a “reasonable” level of harvest and the rewriting of environmental law by Congress so that environmentalists cannot so easily challenge logging in the courts.

LABOR: Labor is being courted by both sides, who are encouraging Clinton to provide retraining money and community assistance to displaced timber workers.

So far, labor said it was sticking to its alliance with the timber industry. Mike Draper, executive secretary of the Western Council of Industrial Workers, said environmentalists are “wrong to think we’ll trade timber jobs for any jobs” and said the annual guaranteed harvest needed to be much larger than 1.5 billion board feet.