Sunday, Aug 21, 2011

In 1994, after 10 years of litigation, the federal government put in place the Northwest Forest Plan. The plan oversees management of much of our nation's temperate forests, including the remaining hundreds-of-years-old forests that survived 20th century logging.

These majestic, and dare I say spiritual, cathedral-like stands of trees simply are irreplaceable. Once logged, we will never see their like again - not in our children's, grandchildren's or even their grandchildren's lifetimes.

Many environmental injuries can be restored, from toxic waste dumps to dirty rivers. But a 500-year-old forest cannot be re-created, not even by the most scientifically trained foresters.

In its day, the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was revolutionary. For the first time, the government acknowledged that old forests have intrinsic environmental benefits that may exceed their value as wood products. For the first time, the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management admitted that they had been significantly over-cutting the federal forests and not giving enough weight to wildlife, fish and water quality concerns.

But the Northwest Forest Plan also has two Achilles' heels, and they have become more apparent over time.

First, the plan fails to protect more than a million acres of old growth forests - these are irreplaceable ecosystems. Second, the plan does protect more than a million acres of clear-cut and young, second-growth forests - these are easily replaceable plantations.

What? That doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. The Northwest Forest Plan was a political document with a scientific veneer.

Here's what its authors did. They drew lines around 50,000-acre chunks of land, distributed regularly across the national forests. They called these areas "late-successional reserves," and within them they banned most logging (permitting only thinning of young forests). Clear-cuts and plantations comprise more than half the land in these reserves. The authors reasoned such forests would, in several hundred years, resemble today's old growth.

Meanwhile, not included within the plan's late-successional reserves are more than a million acres of old growth forest eligible for logging now. The Northwest Forest Plan is premised on the notion that old growth logging can continue today in return for a promise that future generations will choose not to cut the maturing forests set-aside to be future old growth.

That's just the sort of "spend now, pay later" policy that has run our nation's fiscal debt to record levels. It's even more toxic when applied to our environment, where decisions made today have irreversible consequences.

Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics has a solution. We have proposed that the O&C lands - which make up 2.4 million acres in Western Oregon, be divided into two equal-sized public land trusts. These lands are in a checkerboard pattern, with public alternating with private square miles of ownership. The BLM has been logging these lands since they were taken back from the successor to the Oregon & California Railroad after an early 20th century land fraud.

Today, half of the O&C acres remain as native forest, while the other half are recently cut-over and second-growth plantations. But because BLM manages under the Northwest Forest Plan, it allows unprotected old growth to be logged. At the same time, a large fraction of its second-growth trees are off-limits to harvest because they are "protected" in late-successional reserves.

It makes more sense to save the irreplaceable native, old growth forest and focus timbering on the second-growth plantations.

The intractable conflict between environmental and timber interests can be solved through this simple win-win solution. U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, whose district has most of these O&C lands, agrees. Together with DeFazio, we are developing a legislative proposal that would separate the O&C lands into two public land trusts.

The Environmental Trust would be established to protect the old growth and native forests that still remain on the O&C lands. A board of trustees would administer the forest's protection, with oversight provided by the trust's beneficiaries - each and every one of us who benefits from protecting these invaluable forests. The land would still be federally owned, but it no longer would be managed by the BLM, an agency with a logging and timber bias.

The Timber Trust would be created to tend the existing plantations and second-growth forest to benefit counties that rely upon the revenue produced from these formerly private lands. The Timber Trust would oversee logging of the plantations to ensure that it is done responsibly so that water quality is not harmed.

With the protection of ancient forests assured by the Environmental Trust, the Timber Trust would be able to operate without the conflict and controversy that has dogged the BLM for the past 30 years.

Creating and promoting a win-win solution in our current hyper-partisan political environment is no easy matter. Both sides think that if the other's position improves, it must be at the cost of their own. That kind of zero-sum thinking makes it tough to act outside the box.

We should not be willing to be hamstrung by conventional wisdom. Old growth forests need permanent protection. Rural woods workers need jobs. Counties need revenue to provide services.

Win-win solutions are the only ones we can afford to pursue.

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