Conservationist Can’t Cut Deal to Save Federal Forest Timber

It was a bargain Mitch Friedman says he couldn’t pass up--trees from the government for just 60 cents each.

When a stand of fire-damaged timber in Washington’s Okanogan National Forest went to auction Dec. 20, Friedman’s outfit was there, outbidding three timber companies.

Business as usual--except that Friedman is an environmental activist, not a logger, and he wants to leave the trees in place, not cut them down. All of which means he’s more likely to spot Bigfoot than get the timber contract.

The Forest Service says you can’t buy its trees without cutting them down, but Friedman, director of the Bellingham-based Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, figures it was worth a try.

Northwest environmentalists have few other options these days.

A measure passed by Congress and signed reluctantly last July by President Clinton suspends environmental laws across thousands of acres of the Northwest’s old-growth forest.

Of all the rollbacks in environmental regulation promised by congressional Republicans, this is one of the few that has stuck. The Wilderness Society calls it “the worst blot” on this Congress’ environmental record.

Friedman calls it the bad old days. Loggers have returned to the Northwest woods, clearing large swaths of centuries-old trees next to streams and on steep, easily eroded slopes.

No longer able to challenge timber sales through legal channels, environmentalists have gotten creative--if not very effective.

“This is an act of desperation,” Friedman said of his attempt to buy timber. “Congress has slammed shut the courtroom doors.”

Civil disobedience is the order of the day as slogan-chanting college students replace briefcase-toting lawyers at the front lines of the Northwest’s timber battles.

Protesters trying to stop a 55-acre clear-cut in the Olympic National Forest this month set up a mock living room on a forest road, locking themselves onto a couch embedded in concrete.

Forest Service officials took some of the protesters’ clothes and boots, forcing the chilled activists out, but one activist snuck back a few nights later, climbing 100 feet up a tree. A Feb. 17 rally near the site drew at least 250 protesters, 100 of whom were arrested for trespassing after crossing into a closed area.

Two days later, the tree-sitter had climbed down, the protesters had gone home, and the chain saws were roaring.

Loggers are savoring a rare victory in their quest for timber.

“What this legislation did was basically restrict some groups from obstructionist lawsuits,” said Chris West, spokesman for the Northwest Forestry Assn., a timber-industry group.

“Environmentalists have been able to totally shut down the federal timber program in the Pacific Northwest,” West said. “That has put dozens and dozens of mills out of business and tens of thousands of people out of work.”

All the rhetoric must sound distressingly familiar to Clinton, who tackled the Northwest’s timber crisis soon after taking office.

His March 1993 forest conference in Portland, Ore., addressed a basic question: How much of the region’s few remaining stands of old-growth forest should be logged, and how much reserved for imperiled wildlife such as spotted owls and salmon?

The answer turned out to be as tangled as the forest itself. Clinton’s forest plan promised Northwest loggers about 1 billion board feet of federal timber each year--one-fifth the level of logging during the booming 1980s.

The plan drew legal challenges from both sides, further slowing timber harvest. But another phenomenon--the sprouting of small, local forest-watch groups--may have slowed things even more.

A few years ago, only logging contractors and government foresters typically cared about the nitty-gritty details of timber sales.

But the spotted owl’s legal stopping power impressed environmentalists who formerly might have staged a demonstration, hugged a few trees and gone home.

Banding together in small groups with names like Headwaters and the Cheetwoot Wilderness Alliance, they started tramping through nearby national forests to check whether managers violated their own regulations. They say they often find streams, old logging roads and rare plants overlooked by officials.

“Our comments aren’t the sort ‘Never cut another tree’ or ‘The wilderness is our sister,’ ” Friedman said. “We’re citing the scientific literature and presenting it to them on their terms. We’re offering them a real service.”

Forgive forest officials if they don’t always appreciate it.

Don Rose, a silviculturist on the Okanogan National Forest, says his agency’s administrative appeals system is vulnerable to people who want to block timber sales, not improve them.

“Sometimes, people would wait until the planning process was done and say, ‘Wait, you forgot this.’ Whether or not the intent is to slow things down, I don’t know, but that’s the result of it,” Rose said.

Because of such challenges and the Clinton administration’s own foot-dragging, West said, loggers have received just 25% of the timber promised under Clinton’s forest plan.

Last summer’s salvage rider was promoted as a way to give those timber-starved loggers a quick source of wood while ridding the forest of fire- and insect-damaged trees.

To do that, the rider exempts federal timber-salvage operations nationwide from virtually all environmental challenges through the end of October.

The Forest Service expects the law to increase its timber sales nationwide by about 21%, with salvage timber comprising 47% of all timber sold. Without the salvage law, that portion would have been 38%.

But the rider’s biggest effect in the Northwest has nothing to do with burnt trees. Another section revives about 650 million board feet of old timber sales in Washington and Oregon.

Those parcels, put on hold by Clinton’s forest plan or other environmental concerns, now are being cut under the original terms of the logging contracts--even when those terms violate current environmental laws.

Clinton initially vetoed the rider, then signed it July 27 after it was attached to a popular budget-reduction bill.

He since has said the provision has the potential to cause “grave environmental damage” and has instructed federal forest managers to continue using environmental safeguards in planning new timber sales.

Environmentalists worry that the timber industry and forest managers will enjoy their new freedom from citizens’ appeals so much they’ll try to make the arrangement permanent.

“The timber industry is constantly accusing environmentalists of filing frivolous lawsuits,” Friedman said. “They’re not frivolous. We win our lawsuits. Our forest agencies had free run for decades, and they really made a mess out there.”