Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan Drafted Illegally, Judge Rules

A federal judge ruled Monday that the Clinton Administration broke the law in developing its plan for management of national forests in the Pacific Northwest but refused a timber industry request to block implementation of the plan.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, ruling on a suit brought by the Northwest Forest Resource Council, said that the Administration had violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act’s requirements for open proceedings in numerous instances during development of the forest plan.

But barring the Administration from following through with its plan “would exceed the injury” from its violation of the law, Jackson wrote. It would be “premature” to block implementation because the plan is just a written prescription at this point. He left open the possibility that other courts could find the violation serious enough to block forest management decisions called for in the plan.

The forest plan is intended to break a long political deadlock over preserving old-growth forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California and protecting the threatened northern spotted owl. New timber sales in the region have been enjoined for several years by federal judges who ruled that previous Administrations broke environmental laws by their management of logging.

President Clinton convened a conference on forest management issues in Portland, Ore., last year, and the Administration released details of a plan for managing the forests that would reduce the annual timber harvest to about one-fifth of the levels during the 1980s.

The forest plan was developed by a White House-appointed team of several dozen experts in forestry management and other fields, aided by several hundred others.

Mark Rey, vice president of the American Forest and Paper Assn., played down the industry’s failure to win an injunction. “The injunction is probably less important than the fact that the Administration’s plan has been found to be legally flawed by the very first review that took a look at it.”

An Administration official said the judge’s decision would have little practical effect.