Biologist Named as Chief of U.S. Forest Service : Land use: Environmentalists applaud choice of scientist who warned about plight of spotted owl. Timber executives say he is unqualified and biased.

A renowned Oregon wildlife biologist who drew attention to the plight of the spotted owl and headed the Clinton Administration team that designed a plan to manage Pacific Northwest forests was named chief of the U.S. Forest Service Wednesday.

The appointment of Jack Ward Thomas, the Forest Service’s senior scientist, was applauded by environmentalists, who say they prefer to have a scientist rather than a bureaucrat managing the nation’s forests. But timber industry executives contended that Thomas is unqualified and tends to side with preservationists.

“We’ll have to see whether Jack Ward Thomas has the knowledge, experience and insight to manage this embattled agency,” said Chris West, vice president of the Northwest Forestry Assn. in Portland, which represents 80 timber companies in Oregon and Washington.

The appointment, effective Dec. 1, signals the Administration’s first big step toward overhauling the Forest Service, which manages 191 million acres of national forests.

Thomas replaces Dale Robertson, who was ousted recently by Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy after a series of controversies dogged his tenure. The most notorious is an ongoing, years-long court battle over allegations that the Forest Service violated environmental laws by allowing over-cutting of federal forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

In announcing his choice, Espy said Thomas “has the scientific credentials, the dedication and the professional integrity to guide the agency as we move toward the 21st Century.”

Thomas, 59, a Forest Service biologist for 27 years, chaired a scientific panel in 1990 that told Congress that Northern spotted owls were headed for extinction because of mismanaged federal forests in the Pacific Northwest.

Earlier this year, Clinton named Thomas as head of a scientific team to try to break the long gridlock over timber harvesting in the region. The team endorsed an option, assailed by both sides as unworkable, that reduces harvests to about one-third of the amount a decade ago. Clinton has until March to decide what to do, after his staff reviews a record-breaking 103,000 public comments filed this year.

Environmentalists say the decision evens the playing field after years of Forest Service policies that they say favored the timber industry over ecologically sound management of public forests.

Karin Sheldon, president of the Wilderness Society, said Thomas’ reign could “mark the end of timber-dominated management of the national forests” and “decades of excessive logging, political interference and mismanagement.”

Louis Blumberg, the Wilderness Society’s assistant regional director in California, called Thomas “a good scientist. He told the truth and the timber industry doesn’t like the truth. We see this as potentially a step to rebuild public confidence in the Forest Service, which has been destroyed.”

Environmentalists said the appointment is no panacea, however, because they still oppose the forest plan endorsed by Thomas’ panel. But they believe the scientist’s key role will mean that environmental arguments will carry more weight with the Administration.

“We may not always agree with Mr. Thomas, but we know that our disagreements will be based on questions of science and policy rather than semantics and politics,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

Timber industry officials decried the choice as a political appointment that breaks the longstanding tradition of naming the forest chief through the Civil Service process, which means that the appointee is a career employee with management experience.

“It’s the first time that somebody has been named as chief of the Forest Service who doesn’t have the long experience of administering and managing forests across the nation,” West said.

Jim Craine, vice president of public lands for the California Forestry Assn., said it is hard to judge the impact Thomas will have on forest policies.

“It depends on whether Dr. Thomas handles himself like an objective scientist or like a politician,” he said. “Given his recommendations to date, and his treatment of the data before him, I don’t see us coming up with any real good sound forest management practices in the near future. I certainly hope I’m wrong about that.”

Rep. Bob Smith (R-Ore.), a main backer of the timber industry, said Thomas is “legend” for helping environmentalists shut down timber harvesting in his home state. Logging has been banned across much of the area since a federal judge ruled in 1991 that the Forest Service was violating federal environmental laws.

“I do not wish those troubles on the rest of the nation,” Smith said. “We can’t survive him in Oregon.”