ENVIRONMENT : Conference on Trees vs. Jobs Will Put Clinton’s Ideas to the Test

In the old days Hortons Bay was a lumbering town. No one who lived in it was out of sound of the big saws in the mill by the lake. Then one year there were no more logs to make lumber.

--Ernest Hemingway, Michigan, 1927, in his story, “The End of Something”

No, it’s not a new tale. America has heard it before, the story of falling trees, closing mills, lost jobs and displaced wildlife--the end of something for which nobody takes blame or delight.

In Portland Friday, President Clinton will see if he can stand up to this history.

With Vice President Al Gore and four Cabinet officers in attendance, Clinton will host a one-day, round-table “forest conference” that promises to test like nothing before his belief that economic growth and environmental preservation are compatible pursuits.

Somehow, someway, the towering coastal forests of Northern California, Oregon and Washington state can be made to serve the values of the wild and the needs of people, forever. Or so Clinton has vowed. As campaign promises go, this one is a doozy.

For more than a decade, the Pacific Northwest has been quarreling--each year with increasing hysteria--over the fate and future of the dense, moist stands of fir and spruce and hemlock and pine. This terrain is America’s rain forest, its finest tree habitat; lumbering is among its pioneer industries.

The primary dispute involves those portions of the forest owned by the public, managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management for what is called “multiple use” purposes. Within these public forests of the three states are some 3 million acres of unlogged, ancient forests that are at the very heart of the fight.

If the loggers and those elements of the timber industry dependent on cutting in national forests--and, importantly, not all are--have their way, the future will look something like this:

Some minimum quantity of old growth stands are set aside for environmental protection. But the remainder will be penetrated by a web of new roads and the trees will be cut down as fast as they can, sold to the highest bidders, and replaced with fast-growing seedlings. These will then be harvested on rotations of somewhere between 30 and 50 or more years.

The national forests, then, will look pretty much like the privately owned tree plantations operated across vast areas of the region--dense patches of like-sized and single-species trees interspersed with clear cuts and replantings.

Over time, there will be fewer jobs because of mechanization. But at least the volume of wood fiber coming out of the forests remains as high, and the price as low as possible.

If environmentalists have their way, not another of these trees will fall to the saw, and the 3 million acres will be held in preserves, joining another 3 million of designated federal wilderness and parklands. This “ecosystem” will provide the remaining space to hold off extinction of animals dependent on the complex ecology of the ancient forests--such as the much-discussed, seldom-seen spotted owl, the cancer-fighting Yew tree and other life forms.

Lumber jobs will decrease faster than they otherwise would. But environmentalists argue the time is ripe for government action to help both workers and the regional ecology with some sort of forest lands rehabilitation jobs programs, such as tearing out old logging roads and restoring spawning streams for the troubled northwest salmon.

As for wood fiber, logs now cut from private lands will meet all domestic demands if the government will ban their export to Asia, or eliminate agricultural tax breaks that provide an incentive to send this unmilled wood abroad.

During his campaign, Clinton refused to take sides in the Northwest forestry dispute. Instead, he promised to elevate the issue to a presidential priority by calling all parties together at a “summit.”

As a result, so much presidential horsepower will be assembling at the scene of trouble that experts could not easily recall a precedent.

Administration officials emphasized repeatedly that Clinton’s intention Friday is to listen. His proposals for a new national policy on Northwest forests are not expected for several weeks.

In a recent statement, the President warned that his eventual decision “will probably make everybody mad.”

Environmentalists have come to expect the new Administration will tilt their way, citing the overall tone of the presidential campaign, the repeated and specific promises of the candidate and the background of his appointees.

“There is a reason that this conference is being held here on the Pacific Coast. We’ve cut our way from the East to the West. And now we’ve run out of forests,” says Sierra Club Northwest regional director Bill Arthur.

Labor is no less determined that Clinton back down not one inch from his unequivocal vow that jobs and job growth are the heart of his presidency.

“We can’t base this decision on science alone. It has to take into account the human and economic consequences . . . there has to be some risk for animals as well as folks,” says Mike Draper of the Western Council of Industrial Workers.

Oddly, the effect of heightened presidential interest in the Northwest forests may be to exaggerate the dimensions of the problem in the public eye.

For instance, the Administration of President George Bush, which was openly sympathetic to logging interests, estimated that 30,000 jobs could be at stake, even at the worst case. This is fewer than recent reductions in automobiles, aerospace, IBM, or the military, to name just some, and none of those have rated on-the-spot presidential conferences.

University of Oregon economist Ed Whitelaw says the Northwest weathered the recession better than much of the country, despite pockets of woe in rural timber communities. Unemployment in Oregon, for example, is lower than in New York or California and its economic growth rate higher.

“The engine of timber has decoupled from the train of our economy,” says Whitelaw. “We have other engines now. Some of the folks riding back in the train don’t realize this, however.”

One of the major bones of contention is a threatened shortage of logs to keep domestic mills operating in the Northwest.

Both industry and environmental specialists agree, however, that private landowners like Weyerhaeuser Co. export more unmilled logs abroad than whatever quantity is likely to be reduced from national forests as the result of old-growth preservation.

Environmentalists argue that if jobs really are the issue, these exports should be banned, or at the least the government should eliminate the tax incentives that favor exporting U.S. logs the same as exporting U.S. wheat.

The industry argues that log export bans would interfere with private property rights and depress U.S. trade and corporate profits. A recent surge in the price of lumber also has entered the debate. The National Assn. of Home Builders calls this “a crisis” that has added $3,600 to the price of a new home.

However, the association’s chief economist acknowledged that this increase has been more than offset by recent and long-term reductions in interest rates. And even today, lumber prices are no greater in constant dollars than during the late 1970s.

Times researcher Doug Conner assisted with this story.

The Buzz Over Timber

The forest conference will feature talk of the God Squad, the Gang of Four and stumpers such as sufficiency language. Here’s a guide to some of the buzzwords and phrases:

The God Squad: The Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed because it can exempt a creature from the Endangered Species Act and allow it to become extinct if the cost of saving it is too great.

The Gang of Four: A committee of four scientists who gave Congress the most recent data on the condition of old-growth forests, home to the spotted owl.

Critical habitat: The area designated essential to the existence of a creature, in this case the spotted owl. Anyone who wants to conduct commercial activity, including logging, on land declared a critical habitat must first get permission from the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Indicator species: Kind of like a canary in the coal mine. Because it’s at the top of the food chain, its health is an early warning of the overall health of other life in the forest.

Certainty: Nobody agrees on what that means. To environmentalists, certainty means assurances that the old-growth forests will be protected against logging. To the timber industry, it means they’ll be allowed to cut enough trees to meet demands for lumber and wood products. And to workers, it means a promise they still will have a job in the forest or the sawmills.

Sufficiency language: Such language in a bill would have the effect of insulating the legislation from certain court challenges, an idea opposed by environmentalists.

Sources: Associated Press, National Park Service, Times staff