The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is trying to dismantle a 1994 landmark management plan that balances logging, endangered species and old-growth forest protections. BLM wants to revise the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) to allow logging on nearly one million acres of old-growth forest area included in the plan that protect habitats for species such as the northern spotted owl, salmon and other old-growth-dependent species. The proposed revisions ignore scientific recommendations, and the process appears to have been manipulated by Bush administration officials in Washington.

According to the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy (NCCSP), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the early 1990s drafted but never approved a recovery plan to protect under the Endangered Species Act the northern spotted owl, threatened by extensive logging of old-growth forests. In 1994, the Clinton administration used the NWFP as the de facto recovery plan for the owl. In 2003, FWS was sued to force completion of a recovery plan.

In 2006, FWS convened a diverse group to develop a recovery plan, although the group was unable to reach consensus on specific habitat provisions. According to NCCSP, "Rather than send the draft recovery plan out for scientific peer review to resolve these disagreements, the draft recovery plan was rejected by high ranking officials within the Bush administration as not 'flexible' enough to allow the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to push through forest plan revisions that reduced old-growth protections." Officials in Washington ordered the group to develop a plan that didn't rely on the network of protected forests even though there was no scientific basis for the change in the conservation approach embedded in the NWFP.

There are a variety of forest management decisions tied to the recovery plan and the NWFP. On Aug. 10, BLM released for public comment a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions, part of the NWFP. According to an Oct. 18 New York Times article, the revisions call for a three-fold increase in logging in western Oregon. Logging interests and local governments, which share in the proceeds of timber sales, believe the revisions restore "the rightful primacy of logging on these tracts."

Scientists and environmental groups, however, argue that the revisions change the priorities established in the NWFP and will harm species dependent on old-growth areas for survival and threaten salmon stocks. Since the owl recovery plan is linked to the NWFP, scientists fear the revisions will dismantle habitat protections included in the plan. For example, 113 scientists sent a letter to Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on Oct. 2 requesting he withdraw the revisions to the recovery plan and "assemble a team of scientists to redraft a recovery plan based on best available science."

In addition, the scientists requested that the participation by Bush administration officials in the rejection of the recovery plan be reviewed. Kempthorne commissioned a review of Endangered Species Act decisions as part of reforms to improve how FWS handles these decisions. The need for the review was sparked by the improper influence of Julie A. MacDonald, a former deputy assistant at FWS, in how certain decisions were made. (See The Watcher article of May 15.) MacDonald was part of the Washington [DC] Oversight Committee that rejected the 2006 draft recovery plan.

According to NCCSP testimony before the House Committee on Natural Resources May 9, this Oversight Committee ordered the group to develop an alternative to their conservation-based plan, one that did not rely on a network of forest habitat reserves. The new alternative "was not based on sound science but was designed to give the Forest Service and the BLM the discretion to exempt public forests from the NWFP."

The Oversight Committee also ordered the group to change the scientific studies used as the basis of the recovery plan and to "de-link the recovery plan from the Northwest Forest Plan," according to the testimony.

The result of the process described above is BLM's Draft EIS. In addition to increasing logging in western Oregon generally, the plan would double the area of old-growth forests allowed to be logged, according to a summary of the draft written by NCCSP. It also eliminates the forest reserve approach to protecting habitat and designates logging as the primary value of BLM land, according to Oregon Heritage Forests (OHF), an association of conservation groups. The plan would also allow logging closer to rivers and streams, potentially affecting drinking water as well as sedimentation and water temperature, both of which affect native fish stocks. "Shockingly, the BLM claims minimal or no effect on fish, floods and sediment despite a massive increase in clearcut logging," OHF writes on its website.

The Draft EIS is open for public comment until December 10, 2007.