DURING HIS FINAL month in office, President Bill Clinton acted like something of the antithesis to Paul Bunyan, swinging his pen to keep giant swathes of land off-limits to cutting and development. In spite of these protective measures, local environmentalists continue to fret over the fate of Oregon’s lush forests. In fact, environmentalists say that recent changes in the Northwest Forest Plan (NFP) call for a major upswing in the cutting of old-growth timber.
On January 12, the U.S. Forest Service amended their original “survey and mange mitigation measures.” These rules mandate that, before logging, the Forest Service must deal with species dependent on old growth habitats. These rules set up the conditions that halted many timber sales around the state two years ago.
The recently announced amendments make several significant changes: They drop 63 species from a list of 409 the Forest Service must look for in old growth forests before offering those lands for timber sales, and they change buffer zones required for some species.
According to Forest Service spokesman Rex Holloway, the amendments were adopted because of lessons learned during six years of implementing the NFP. “This will allow us to better manage those species related to old growth,” Holloway explained.But, environmental groups are crying foul. “Make no mistake about it, this is about getting old growth timber to the sawmill,” said Ivan Maluski, Northwest organizer for American Lands Alliance. “It’s a matter for them that these species are in the way of old growth sales.”
According to the Forest Service’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, indeed timber sales will soar, from 200 to 760 million annual board feet. This translates approximately to an additional 40,000 old growth trees cut each year.
But environmentalists are not planning to give up without a fight. “Remember Eagle Creek?” asks Donald Fontenot, spokesman for the Cascadia Forest Alliance, referring to a patch of Forest Service land on the flank of Mt. Hood that has served for the past two years as a heated battleground. Four protestors are still camping in the trees at Eagle Creek. Fontenot intoned that when sales begin this spring so will a new round of protests.