Judge Freezes 9 Timber Sales in Northwest

In a major move to protect wildlife in old-growth forests, a judge has halted nine federal timber sales in the Pacific Northwest and ordered further reviews that could stop logging in large sections of Washington, Oregon and California.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer in Seattle ordered the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management late Monday to conduct detailed wildlife surveys before proceeding to log up to 100 million board-feet of timber on federal land--in accordance with the Clinton administration’s Northwest Forest Plan.

Also, no new logging can take place on 100 other timber sales in the three states without the court’s consent, an order that could affect the majority of logging approved on federal lands in the Northwest over the last several years.

The ruling is the most significant rollback of federal logging since the northern spotted owl’s decline in the early 1990s brought federal court oversight to Pacific Northwest timber harvests. Conservation groups hailed it as a new move to protect declining wildlife in the nation’s last remaining old-growth forests.

“What this ruling shows is that the commitment to balance, to protect wildlife while doing other things, is very clear in the Northwest Forest Plan. This reaffirms our allegation that the forest service and the BLM were putting logging activities ahead of their responsibilities to protect wildlife, fish, clean water and old-growth forests,” said Dave Werntz of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, a Washington-based organization that was one of 13 conservation groups to challenge the logging plans.

The Northwest Forest Plan--a 1994 compromise drafted by the Clinton administration for old-growth forest management--allowed some continued logging as long as there were sufficient protections for species that depended on old trees.

Major Disruptions of Logging Predicted

Timber industry officials predicted that Monday’s ruling would cause major disruptions in logging and other public projects on federal lands throughout the Northwest.

“Any project that hopes to be implemented is at risk,” said Chris West of the Northwest Forestry Assn. “Not only the timber sales, but watershed projects, fish and wildlife restoration, recreation projects are all at risk” if they are proposed on lands within the scope of the Northwest Forest Plan, West said.

“We are generally disappointed that the judge feels he knows the plan better than the professionals in the federal government,” he added.

Rex Holloway, the Forest Service spokesman in Portland, Ore., said that it would take several days to analyze the ruling to determine precisely how many pending timber sales and other projects would be affected.

The 100 timber sales subject to review represent “a majority of our current sale program,” Holloway said.

At least two Northern California logging projects--in the Klamath and Trinity national forests--were among the nine immediately halted by Dwyer’s ruling. Those sales--including 85 million board-feet on Forest Service land and 14.9 million board-feet on BLM lands--account for about a fifth of all timber set to be cut this year west of the Cascade mountains.

The battle over the old-growth forests began when sharp declines in the northern spotted owl population indicated that large numbers of species dependent on those rich shelters could be jeopardized by widespread logging in the Pacific Northwest, especially on its vast, federally held lands.

After Dwyer stepped in to halt logging, effectively shutting down whole timber economies within the region, the administration called logging and environmental interests together and drafted the Northwest Forest Plan.

The current court challenge claimed that the Forest Service and the BLM failed to conduct detailed surveys of 77 species within the old-growth reserves, as required under the plan.

The species are not well-known like the spotted owl; rather, they are various types of mollusks, lichens, wildflowers, salamanders and snails, which are among the most difficult to survey.

But they are critical to the survival of entire ecosystems within the Northwest’s old forests, environmental groups say.

For example, the red tree vole--a small rodent--is one of the most important food sources for the spotted owl.

“If red tree voles become extinct, then the spotted owl becomes extinct,” said Mike Axline, who argued the case for the Western Environmental Law Center in Portland.

“We’re talking about 77 species that scientists thought were rare or about which little was known, but that were thought to be critical to the functioning of the ecosystem. Losing one of those species would be like pulling the bottom card out of a house of cards. By itself it might not seem significant, but it plays an important role in supporting the entire ecosystem,” Axline said.

Difficult to Conduct Surveys

Forest Service officials acknowledged the requirement for surveying all the species in old-growth forests scheduled for logging, but said many are so obscure and seasonal that it has been difficult to get surveys done on all 77.

Instead, they conducted detailed environmental reviews that determined there was no significant threat if some logging were done before the surveys were completed. It was that delay that environmental groups challenged, and Dwyer concurred.

“The plan’s requirement that surveys be conducted cannot be dropped simply by the issuance of memoranda concluding that ‘field surveys are not needed,’ ” the judge wrote. He held that the government’s failure to conduct the surveys is “contrary to the forest plan” and any decision to approve timber sales without them is “arbitrary and capricious.”

The federal government has been conducting surveys on its most recent timber sales, those approved since October. It is likely that all timber sales approved between 1996 and the end of 1998 are at risk, officials said.

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Researcher Lynn Marshall contributed to this story.