Environmentalist Wisdom: Shoot One Owl to Save The Other

The feds take sides in the battle between spotted owls and barred
owls.

By JAMES L. HUFFMAN

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different
results. So what is 20 years of failed efforts to save the northern
spotted owl followed by a new plan that is equally unlikely to
succeed? Does the Endangered Species Act allow us to accept failure—or
must we press on without regard for the likelihood of success and the
economic and human costs of the effort?

Clearly, the federal government and environmentalists believe we must
press on. Two decades after millions of acres of federal forests in
the Northwest were virtually closed to logging, with devastating
consequences for a once flourishing timber industry, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service has issued its "final" plan to save the owl.

No one really expects the strategy to work—not even those who first
brought attention to the plight of the spotted owl. As Forest Service
biologist Eric Forsman told the New York Times last month, "If you'd
asked me in 1975, 'Can we fix this problem?' I'd have said, 'Oh yeah,
this problem will go away.'" But he says he's grown "much less
confident as the years have gone by."

And for good reason. Despite a 90% cutback in harvesting on federal
lands (which constitute 46% of Oregon and Washington combined), the
population of spotted owls continues to decline, as do rural
communities that once prospered across the Northwest. In some areas,
spotted owls are vanishing at a rate of 9% per year, while on average
the rate is 3%.

In the 1980s, before the owl was listed as threatened, nearly 200
sawmills dotted the state of Oregon, churning out eight billion board
feet of federal timber a year. Today fewer than 80 mills process only
600 million board feet of federal timber. In Douglas County, for
example, several mills dependent on federal timber have closed. Real
unemployment in many Oregon counties exceeds 20%, double the national
average.

Meanwhile, vast unmanaged federal forests have become immense fire
traps. The 2002 Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon and northern
California burned 500,000 acres, cost $150 million to fight, and
destroyed $5 billion worth of timber. It also resulted in the deaths
of an estimated 75 pairs of spotted owls.

The final Revised Recovery Plan, issued on June 30, calls for
expanding protections for owls beyond the nearly six million acres
currently set aside. Ironically, it also calls for the "removal"—i.e.,
shooting—of hundreds of barred owls, a larger and more adaptable rival
of the spotted owl that competes for prey and nesting sites, and
sometimes breeds with the spotted owl.

How much will it cost to implement this plan? The Fish and Wildlife
Service says the species could be rejuvenated over the next 30 years
at a cost of about $127 million. But that money will do little if
anything to rejuvenate the depressed rural communities of the
Northwest where still more timber land will be off limits to
harvesting.

The truth is that no one fully understands why the spotted owl
continues to decline. The rise of the barred owl poses an unexpected,
but not surprising, complication. If the natural world would just
remain static, species preservation and ecological management would be
far simpler. But Mother Nature relishes competition, and the barred
owl is a fierce competitor. Are we really prepared to send armed
federal agents into Northwest forests in search of barred owls? And
what will groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have
to say as the carcasses pile up?

In the early 1990s, when the spotted-owl controversy reached its peak,
people desperate to save their jobs and communities joked about having
spotted-owl barbecues. Today it seems that the joke is on those who
believed science always has a solution.

And even assuming the spotted owl can be saved, is there no cost too
high? How many millions of acres of forest must be abandoned? How many
rival birds must be killed? Would anybody really notice if barred owls
displaced and interbred with every last spotted owl in the Northwest?

For most Northwesterners it was never really about the owls anyway. It
was about preservation, in some pristine state, of some of the
planet's most productive forests versus the management of those
forests to serve the interests of mankind. But even preservation
proves to be an elusive goal as forests age and debris accumulates to
feed the next forest fire.

The spotted-owl saga provides convincing evidence that it's time to re-
examine our objectives and methods in species protection, followed by
appropriate amendments to the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. Huffman, dean emeritus of Lewis & Clark Law School, is a member of
the Hoover Institution's task force on Property Rights, Freedom and
Prosperity.

Posted by Bob Zybach

Ending environmental hubris: Logging -- yes, logging -- can fuel Oregon comeback

The Oregonian

Published: Saturday, July 30, 2011, 4:30 AM

By Guest Columnist Robert S. Smith

While still struggling with 9 percent unemployment, the powers that be in the great state of Oregon have done a remarkable job ignoring the obvious concerning job creation.

Due to abundant rainfall and a mild climate, Oregon is one of the best places on Earth to grow trees. Before federal timberlands were placed off limits because of the northern spotted owl, the Willamette National Forest was the most productive in the world in terms of softwood lumber.

We may have been willing to tolerate this environmental conceit 20 years ago, but it is a luxury we can ill afford today. Yes, demand for wood in North America collapsed after the housing bust of 2008. But there has been a surge in demand from across the globe, primarily from Asia, Japan, South Korea and China that is driving up demand for timber from the United States. And as the growth of these emerging economies continues to outstrip that in the West, they are going to use a lot more timber.

Oregon is uniquely situated to benefit from the newly ascendant Pacific Rim economies. With our vast supply of world-class softwood lumber, an experienced workforce and window on the North Pacific, we can meet this demand more efficiently than anyone else.

Worldwide demand for softwood lumber rose 18 percent in 2010, continuing a trend that started in early 2009. In the first quarter of 2011, global wood consumption is up 20 percent compared with the same period last year. Environmental hubris should not prevent us from taking full advantage of this opportunity.

Support for this argument can be found from sources as far afield as legendary value-investing guru Jeremy Grantham. He claims that timberland is the single-best long-term investment there is. According to Grantham, timber has risen steadily in price for more than 200 years and has returned an average of 6.5 percent a year over the past century.

Grantham is not alone in his enthusiasm for timber. During the past few decades, top university endowment and pension funds have plowed an estimated $40 billion into timberland. The Harvard Endowment Fund currently has about a 9 percent weighting in timber. This only makes sense when you consider that trees continue to grow through bear markets, financial meltdowns, recessions and wars. Furthermore, unlike other agricultural commodities, trees do not have to be harvested. If prices or markets are not quite right, wood can simply be "banked on the stump."

And let's not forget that timber is a hard asset. It is increasingly important for individuals and institutions to be hedged against inflation with a portion of wealth stored in real assets.

But what good does all this stored value do if the vault remains locked? Let's tell the political class to simplify things: This is Oregon. What do we do better than anyone else? We grow trees. So let's put the "folks" back to work and make some real money harvesting trees and processing lumber.

Time is of the essence. Douglas fir logs rose 19 percent in price in the fourth quarter of 2010 alone. This will only be exacerbated by this year's tsunami in Japan. Once ports, roads and power are working there again, demand for lumber and plywood will explode. Supplying Japan's rebuilding needs will be a global undertaking. This could employ much of rural Oregon for years to come.

The supreme irony here is that in the wake of the Great Recession and disillusionment about jobs and the future, Oregon is actually in a position to have one of the nation's best economies rather than one of the worst.

What we need to do is to shake off the chains of an old, failed ideology and forge a new business paradigm based on Oregon's rich natural resource endowment and burgeoning global demand. We have what the world wants.

Let someone else worry about turning switch grass and cow poop into energy.

Robert S. Smith is president of Peregrine Private Capital Corp. Smith has been a registered investment adviser and financial planner for 24 years. Contact him at www.PeregrinePrivateCapital.com.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden under fire from environmental groups for bills on logging roads, industrial pollution

Published: Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 7:21 PM     Updated: Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 7:23 PM

By Scott Learn, The Oregonian

View full sizeRoss William Hamilton, The Oregonian/2006Pollution from roads serving timber harvests, such as this one near Tillamook in 2006, would get more Clean Water Act scrutiny under an appellate court ruling issued last year.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is in hot water with environmentalists for co-sponsoring two bills in recent weeks that protect timber owners from increased federal regulation and delay air pollution rules for industrial boilers.

The bills, including one titled the "EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011," aren't what's expected of an Oregon Democrat rated highly on environmental scorecards, say Wyden's sometime allies.

The timber bill "came like a bolt out of the blue to us," said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild, which worked with Wyden on his compromise plan for eastern Oregon logging.

The bill on industrial boilers and incinerators would delay for at least 3 years a rule "we've been already been waiting on for 10 years," said Mary Peveto, co-founder of Neighbors for Clean Air in Northwest Portland. "It's sort of astounding that Wyden would take this position."

Wyden's moves come as the Republican-controlled House is pushing hard to roll back environmental rules. Environmental groups expect the Democrat-controlled Senate to thwart what they see as extreme legislation.

But Wyden isn't apologizing. Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, also supports backing off increased regulation of logging roads. The Senate's industrial boiler bill is more environmentally friendly than a House version, Wyden said, and would protect Oregon's fledgling efforts to burn wood "biomass" for power.

Wyden, who isn't up for reelection until 2016, noted he has bucked environmental groups before. In 1999 the Sierra Club dubbed his bill on federal timber payments to rural communities and schools "clearcuts for kids."

"What I'm doing in both these bills is what I've done for 15 years," he said, "and that is work with folks on all sides -- scientists, environmental folks and industry people -- to find common ground."

At loggerheads

The logging road bill would overturn a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision last year that said loggers in western states, even on private lands, need Clean Water Act stormwater permits for roads that drain to streams.

Congress excluded irrigation runoff from farms as a "point source" under the 1970s act, but not logging operations, the court noted.

Timber groups -- along with Kitzhaber and Wyden -- say the court decision would result in a spate of lawsuits to stall logging.

Environmental groups say the threat of citizen lawsuits is overblown -- Oregon's aggressive activists file one or two a year for all industries, they say -- and increased regulation of non-federal logging is long overdue.

State rules cover logging road construction and maintenance. But a federal permit would prompt more road improvements, environmental groups say, such as redirecting water to roadside swales, improving culverts and hardening road sections vulnerable to landslides and blowouts.

Accusations fly

The debate over logging roads quickly turned personal.

Josh Kardon, Wyden's chief of staff until January, lobbied Wyden and other members of Congress on the issue this year on behalf of the National Association of Forest Owners.

That quick transition "exemplifies why there is such broad public disdain with the revolving door policy on Capitol Hill," said Mark Riskedahl, director of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, which filed the suit that led to the 9th Circuit ruling. He called Wyden's bill "a special exemption for a big-moneyed interest group."

Wyden said he would have co-sponsored the bill without Kardon's involvement.

Kardon, who worked for environmental groups in the past, said he took the lobbying job to prevent "the same flood of litigation" in private forests that has stymied logging in Oregon's federal forests, reduced forest health and cut timber jobs.

"Riskedahl and his deep-pocketed, politically powerful funder are using personal attacks to try to intimidate me into dropping my client, and it won't work," Kardon said.

The "funder" is Peter Goldman, director of the non-profit Washington Forest Law Center. Goldman is a Democratic donor whose family wealth strikes fear in timber interests.

Goldman figures law center attorneys contributed roughly $250,000 worth of work to the logging roads case. But the goal is oversight of roads, he said, not lawsuits on individual projects.

Washington has a mandatory program for improvement of logging roads, he noted. Oregon's similar program is voluntary, with more than 3,000 miles of roads improved since 1997.

Wyden said he will convene all sides to come up with a solution, introducing more legislation if any side balks. Environmental groups say removing the threat of increased regulation would give timber owners no incentive to negotiate.

Boiling points

Wyden says the bill on industrial boiler pollution merely gives the Environmental Protection Agency the 15-month delay it requested.

That request came after industry groups said a new rule proposed last year would boost costs dramatically.

Earlier this year, a federal court rejected further delays, noting that there had been numerous delays since the Sierra Club first brought the lawsuit in 2001. The rules will help reduce emissions of fine particulates, a big health hazard, activists say.

The bill goes beyond the EPA's request, said James Pew, an Earthjustice attorney representing the Sierra Club.

It calls for a delay of "not earlier than 5 years" between the rules' introduction and when they take effect, pushing implementation from 2014 to 2017.

It also contains a list of substances burned to produce energy that the EPA can't consider solid waste. Many of them are biomass materials, such as agricultural waste and logging slash. Also included: creosote-treated wood, tire scraps and turpentine.

Wyden said the list may need changes. He negotiated with a fellow co-sponsor, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to include a list at all.

Without the list, he said, "we wouldn't have transparency and we couldn't have the debate."

-- Scott Learn

Timber country and you

Published: Saturday, July 23, 2011, 4:09 PM

By The Oregonian Editorial Board  

 

Every Oregonian has a stake in the loss of federal payments to counties
and a court ruling that threatens the future of private forestry in the state
 
It's already tough out there in the Other Oregon, with double-digit unemployment and a housing market flat on its back. But if nothing is done to avert the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal timber payments or respond to a potentially devastating court ruling, it's going to get much worse.

The issues -- county payments, O&C lands, logging roads, the Clean Water Act -- may sound like none of your concern. But they are central to the Oregon economy and integral to school funding. And how they are resolved will shape the future of Oregon forests.

The federal program that sends several hundred million dollars annually to 33 Oregon counties and the state school fund will expire Sept. 30. This money isn't charity: The payments uphold the century-old obligation to rural areas where the federal government owns more than half the land, crimping local tax bases and economies.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and other lawmakers are fighting for an extension of county payments. At best they may win a couple of years of reduced payments. If the money is cut off, rural counties could plunge into insolvency. State Rep. Bruce Hanna, R-Roseburg, fears a cascade of counties failing and collapsing their neighbors under the weight of new obligations.

Oregon also is threatened by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that stormwater runoff from forest roads should be treated under the Clean Water Act as a discrete point source of runoff, like an industrial pipe.

If the ruling stands, it would require tens of thousands of permits for new and existing forest roads, on both public and private lands. And because the Clean Water Act allows citizen lawsuits, virtually every logging project anywhere in Oregon could be challenged. That's the last thing that the Oregon timber industry needs as it struggles to compete with timber producers in other parts of the country and the world, none of which face this regulation of forest roads.

Why should you care? The Oregon economy still relies on the timber industry, which provides 125,000 direct jobs and tens of thousands of related jobs. Moreover, where private forest owners go, so go Oregon forests. Already owners are resisting forces pushing them to sell their timberland for development. A burdensome new regulation that makes Oregon timber less competitive will cost more private forests.

Congress must get engaged both in the clean water ruling and county payments. Wyden and several co-sponsors have introduced legislation to take Clean Water Act regulation of forest roads back to the previous standard as non-point-source runoff. Some environmental groups claim the bill would roll back protections, but in fact it would simply continue the regulation that has been in effect for 35 years.

But Wyden and the rest of Congress need time. Oregon Attorney General John Kroger should seek a stay of the 9th Circuit ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio and others are pursuing a long-term plan to provide consistent timber revenue to the counties. The idea is to separate the 2.4 million acres of federal O&C lands into two trusts. The remaining old-growth and environmentally sensitive areas would be part of a conservation trust and permanently protected. The other lands would be in a timber trust, and subject to active management and logging. Leases of the timber trust lands could supply crucial funding to the local communities.

It's not an economic solution for all of rural Oregon, but it's the most promising idea we've heard for managing the forests, creating rural jobs and helping fund schools and other public services. In timber country, there's no greater priority.

New round of pesticide tests

Triangle Lake residents confront state and federal officials with questions on contamination allegations

By Susan Palmer

The Register-Guard

Published: (Friday, Jul 15, 2011 04:25AM) Midnight, July 15 

TRIANGLE LAKE — State and federal officials met with a standing-room-only crowd of residents from the Highway 36 corridor on Thursday to invite them to participate in an investigation of herbicides in the local environment, and to confront a range of tough questions in a session that lasted well over three hours.

The meeting at Triangle Lake Grange, an aging community building beside Triangle Lake School, included representatives from the state Agriculture, Forestry and Environmental Quality departments, and the Health Authority. Federal representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry also attended.

Officials plan to test people’s urine, their drinking water, their garden plants and the milk and eggs produced on their land, said Jae Douglas, a manager with the Oregon Health Authority.  

The tests will be run twice — with the first round occurring this summer prior to any likely application of herbicides on nearby private forestlands, to get some baseline data, Douglas said.  “Based on what we learn and what we see in those tests, we’ll do another round of testing in the spring,” she said.  

The state hopes to test as many as 36 people from the local area, and another four people from outside the corridor as a kind of control group, Douglas said.  State officials have conducted previous exposure investigations, but the scale of this inquiry is larger than usual, Douglas said.

Those who sign up for the testing will be given the results as soon as the state has them, she said. A final report on the investigation’s results will be released sometime in the summer of 2012, she said.  “What we’re trying to do is assess whether or not exposures are happening to people in the Triangle Lake/Highway 36 area,” she said.

Dozens of people, from among the 100 of so who attended the meeting, posed some tough questions for the governmental visitors: How can you get my landlord to stop spraying Round-up? How do other communities with these same concerns get your attention? Why don’t you just ban these dangerous chemicals? How can we trust the state agriculture and forestry departments when they have been fighting us tooth and nail?

Also: Why aren’t you testing the air?  Douglas said some air testing will be done, but the details of when and how are still being developed.

Local resident Dan Gee said he’s not waiting for the state and has already made plans to do his own air testing. Gee said he’s already tested his water and it’s clean. Like many other people in the room, he said he believes local exposure is happening through aerial spraying.

Low Pass Road resident J.D. Bell said he is grateful that the state and federal agencies are embarking on the study. Bell, who is retired and has lived in the area for more than 40 years, said everyone in his family has suffered a number of ailments over the years. His wife has a brain tumor and he has a tumor intertwined with his intestines that weighs 8 pounds and that his doctors don’t really understand, he said. All of his children have been plagued with health problems all their lives, he said.  “I’m glad it’s being done. We’ve needed this for some time now,” he said.

Day Owen, whose group Pitchfork Rebellion has been agitating about suspected herbicide drift for the past seven years, said he was cautiously optimistic about the study, but he posed a question that the state and federal officials didn’t have a clear answer for: “If you determine what the pathway (for exposure) is, will you close the pathway?”

The inquiry by state and federal officials came about after testing by a respected researcher earlier this year found traces of herbicides that are commonly used to kill weeds in forest clearcuts in the urine of more than 30 people in the Highway 36 corridor. Some of those tested a second time, following aerial spraying of herbicides in April, showed even more herbicides than had been found in the initial tests.

Pesticides — a category of chemical products that includes herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and rodenticides — are so pervasive in the country that studies have shown most people have detectable levels of them.

But Dana Barr, the researcher who analyzed the Triangle Lake area residents, found 2,4-D and atrazine in all the samples. Nationwide, those chemicals are found in just 2 percent to 4 percent of the population, Barr said.

According to state records from 2008, the last year that Oregon collected such information, atrazine and 2,4-D were among the most common pesticides applied, with 2,4-D ranked seventh and atrazine 18th on the list of 100 most used pesticides.

In the North Coast region that runs from just south of Dunes City north to Cannon Beach and encompasses the Coast Range, 2,4-D and atrazine were the second and third most used pesticides, according to the state list.

Forestry is the target of just 4 percent of statewide pesticide applications. The vast majority of the products are used in agriculture.

Atrazine has been shown to damage the body’s hormone system. Some research shows that in very low concentrations it has altered the biology of frogs, converting males into females, who can mate with other males but who only produce male offspring.

In humans, some research suggests a link to prostate and breast cancer and infant mortality. Some evidence suggests that 2,4-D can cause cancer.

Reps. Greg Walden, Peter DeFazio wade into treacherous waters to save county timber payments

 By Charles Pope, The Oregonian

The Associated Press

 

Some Republicans in Congress want to increase logging in federal forests as a way to provide funds to local communities. That is just one idea offered as a substitute to the expiring county payments program that gave federal funds to counties.

 

WASHINGTON -- With crucial federal support for rural counties set to expire Sept. 30, a House subcommittee on Thursday examined possible solutions for an almost impossible question -- how to prop up local governments surrounded by federal forests without adding to the nation's swollen deficit.

Republicans on the House Resources Subcommittee for Forests had a ready answer: Soften environmental protections and dramatically increase the amount of timber harvested from federal forests.

The administration has set aside $328 million for the county payments program for the next fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. But a senior official with the Forest Service told lawmakers that the agency has no specific proposal for how the program would be financed. Under current budget rules, the money must come from new sources of revenue or by cutting an equal amount from some other federal program.

"The answer to the question about funding," Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska., said, "would be to harvest more trees. That's the answer."

But Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., whose massive and rural district relies on federal county payments to finance public education and other critical local services, said he is open to other ideas along with boosting production of timber from federal lands that dominate the rural communities.

The Associated Press  

 

Rep. Greg Walden want's lawmakers to "think outside the box" to find a successor to the county payments program that expires Sept. 30.

 

"I think we can all agree that the status quo doesn't work and won't work going forward," Walden told the subcommittee during a hearing that marked the beginning of what promises to be an arduous effort to renew the legislation.

 

"Our communities don't even want the status quo," he said. "They don't want the handout that has made them dependent on the federal government. They want jobs. They want healthy forests. They are tired of the catastrophic fire and the bug infestation. They are sick of the budgeting uncertainty that comes with not knowing if Uncle Sam will pay his fair share."

One idea being considered is to put certain federal lands in trust status. Some of the lands would be used to raise revenue that would go to local communities while other lands would be more highly protected as wilderness sites. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., formulated the idea and is working with Walden as well as others in the delegation and Gov. John Kitzhaber to refine the idea.

"I am trying to find some way through the forest wars," DeFazio said in an interview. 

DeFazio's proposal focuses on the so-called O&C lands in Oregon, 2.4 million acres of federally-owned forest lands in 18 western counties that are designed to support local communities. 

One idea DeFazio is pursuing is setting aside some of the O&C lands for seperate uses. One would be enrolled as a conservation trust and would be protected. It still could generate revenue, however, by selling carbon credits from the old growth trees inside the boundary.

Another would be a timber trust, open to more active management and logging with leases and upfront payments to bring revenue and create jobs. The idea, DeFazio said, would be to create financially self-sustaining units that would funnel dollars to local communities and, in the best case, even return money to the federal Treasury.

"Trusts also work. Nationwide, land trusts annually return billions to beneficiaries from resources on states land," Walden said, noting that Washington state is successfully using the tool.

According to Walden, 2.9 million acres managed in Washington state produced gross revenues of nearly $300 million in 2005.

 

"On a nationwide basis, trusts could help keep the school doors open, keep the roads in good repair, and keep the sheriff's deputies on patrol while families sleep at night," he said.

The county payments programs was created in 2000 to reimburse counties for lost income from the sale of timber on federal lands. The funding is critical because in most of the counties, the federal government owns more than 50 percent of the land, pinching the tax base and in some cases limiting the ability of local officials develop their local economy.

The payments were also acknowledgement that the federal government should help local governments after logging on federal land was reduced. Counties receive 25 percent of the revenue from timber sales but when logging plummeted, so did revenue. By law, the money was to be used to finance public education. In 2008, $250 million poured into 33 Oregon counties from the program.

The Oregonian

 

 Rep. Peter DeFazio is exploring putting federal land in a public trust as a way to generate income while also maintaining protections.

In an interview after the hearing, Walden said is not convinced the trust approach is best. What is certain, he said, is that the current system of giving federal funds directly to local communities is no longer tolerable in fiscal or political terms.

"There are a number of options we're looking at. That is certainly one where there's a model of success in the states. Managing public lands in healthy and active ways have benefited the citizens of those states for their schools, principally.

"I'm not going to get into detail on the rest because we don't have it all worked out. I'm just trying to get people to think outside the box because what we have been doing is neither working well for the communities nor sustainable for the taxpayers," he said.

No matter what solution is picked, getting it through Congress is no guarantee. Since 2000 the program has been renewed three times, which each becoming a near-death experience. In 2008, a compromised appeared to be reached only to have it stripped from must-pass legislation in the waning days of the Congress.

With local communities preparing -- or in some cases actually -- laying off police and teacher, closing libraries and releasing inmates from local jails, Congress finally attached language to renew county payments to the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program to save the crashing financial sector. That 2008 law extended county payments until Sept. 30 of this year.

Since then the economy has only gotten worse and political pressure has intensified to cut federal spending and shrink the deficit.

Walden said he has no doubt about the difficulty facing him and other supporters this time.

"I think it will be pretty difficult as it has been in each time we've enacted or reauthorized Secure Rural Schools," he said, using the official name of the program.

"The last authorization took place on TARP. This is not easy to accomplish even in the best of times. The message really, here, is it's time to do it differently so we get certainty for the long run and get people back to work in these forested communities," he said.

-- Charles Pope

Greg Walden champions long-term solutions for county payments

Sometimes a Great Notion

	Sometimes a Great Notion (1970)   114 min  -  Drama | Action | Adventure   -  31 December 1970 (USA)     7.0/10   Users: (1,284 votes) 22 reviews | Critics: 9 reviews A family of fiercely-independent Oregon loggers struggle to keep the family business alive amidst changing times. Director: Paul Newman Writers: Ken Kesey (novel), John Gay (screenplay) Stars: Paul Newman, Henry Fonda and Lee Remick

Storyline

Hank Stamper and his father, Henry Stamper own and operate the family business by cutting and shipping logs in Oregon. The town is furious when they continue working despite the town going broke and the other loggers go on strike ordering the Stampers to stop, however Hank continues to push his family on cutting more trees. Hank's wife wishes he would stop and hopes that they can spend more time together. When Hank's half trouble making brother Leland comes to work for them, more trouble starts.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
	Paul Newman	...	Hank Stamper
	Henry Fonda	...	Henry Stamper
	Lee Remick	...	Viv Stamper
	Michael Sarrazin	...	Leeland Stamper

The Nature Conservancy & Future Forest (Joint Op-ed)

Source – The Nature Conservancy
By Patrick Graham/Arizona State Director,
The Nature Conservancy, and Rob Davis/Partner, Future Forest LLC

As the smoke clears on Arizona’s largest wildfire in history, the Wallow fire, many are left wondering if this catastrophic wildfire could have been prevented or at least better controlled. Some of the breathtaking scenery has been changed and will never be the same in our lifetime. Valuable resources such as clean water and healthy watersheds may take decades to recover.

The Wallow fire, along with many other wildfires, has burned almost 1 million acres across Arizona in the last month alone. It is a stark reminder that our forests are in dire need of being restored. A fling of a cigarette butt out a window sparks yet another fire in the White Mountains. This one, the Wash fire, raged over the weekend near Heber, closing highways, and doubling in size in one night. How can we keep up? We need to do something and we need to do it now.

A collaborative effort to restore the forests in the White Mountains, the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, was put into affect back in 2004, partially as a result of the Rodeo-Chediski fire which burned just under ½ million acres and was then known as the largest wildfire in Arizona’s history. Under the WMSC, Future Forest was charged with managing the reduction of tree densities to more natural levels within 150,000 acres of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest over a 10-year term. In its 7th year of the contract, Future Forest has treated only 50,000 acres, due to a change of commitment and resulting reduction in funding. Even so, it has still built an infrastructure to perform restoration, support the use of the wood residue, including renewable energy, and has created more than 300 jobs directly and indirectly. It accomplished the tree thinning around the towns of Alpine, Greer and Eagar that were in the middle of the Wallow fire and became the true testament that treatment works. The Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, Future Forest, legislators, and other environmentalists and scientists recently toured the areas devastated by the wildfire. What we witnessed was amazing; a ring of green, healthy trees where treatment had taken place. These trees and communities were saved by the work completed by the WMSC. This is our silver lining; this ring of green in the midst of a charred forest. But our time is short.

A decade-long drought and winds, along with overgrown and overcrowded forests, have created unnatural, large-scale fires that torch and rage through tens of thousands of acres in a day. It is time to widen that ring of green; to help our forests become resilient against fires, insects and disease. We have demonstrated the solution in large-scale restoration with the White Mountain Stewardship Contract that is being succeeded by the unprecedented Four Forest Restoration Initiative. An initiative aimed to restore all 2.4 million acres across Arizona’s four forests by thinning 1 million acres over 20 to 30 years. But, time is of the essence, and the initiative is slow going with outdated processes and lack of funding.

We ask congress to focus funding on proactive restoration efforts instead of fighting wildfires and post- fire rehabilitation. Fire officials estimate the cost just to fight the Wallow fire at $80 million.

But the real cost of these fires could be up to 30 times more than what is initially calculated, according to a 2002 report by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, comprised of state and federal forestry officials.

In its report, “The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.,” the coalition figured the total cost of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, which scorched more than 467,000 acres, was more than $308 million. The costs included the $122.5 million for loss of homes and property, $139 million for rehabilitation to stabilize the vegetation stripped by the flames and $8.1 million in indirect costs in the form of sales tax revenue and job losses. And none of these values our lost trees and resulting degradation of air and watersheds. When you see these staggering figures, restoration not only makes ecological sense, but economic sense.

Healthy forests are vital for Arizona’s economy, wildlife and for everyone’s quality of life. Businesses invest in wood products and other resources, such as clean energy, created from the trees we harvest. Forests serve as home for wildlife and serve as a playground for many of us, where families experience the outdoors together and create memories that last a lifetime. Forests also act as nature’s water reservoirs, soaking in snow and rain and slowly distributing it into our streams and rivers for Arizonans’ clean drinking water, as well as a natural air filter for the fresh air we breathe.

We know restoration works. The collaborative efforts create healthy forests, safer communities and stable economies. To clear a path forward there must be funding, long-term commitments and quicker processes to help ensure industries can confidently invest in these projects.

We can save our forests with the help from Congress.

We need congress to support full funding for the implementation of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act and Southwest Forest Health and Wildfire Prevention Act so we can get effective, science-based, large-scale restoration.

Congress must continue to fund the White Mountain Stewardship Contract, supporting the existing industry that is vital to continued work in the White Mountains as well as larger scale, across all public lands across Arizona.

Congress needs to enable these processes to move faster by streamlining the environmental assessment process allowing for on-the-ground monitoring instead of completion of all assessments upfront.
It’s time for a new approach. Fire won’t wait for the current National Environment Policy Act procedures and review process. We need government agencies to work collaboratively through the NEPA procedures and move through the process faster. We’ve seen it first-hand the devastation of a slow process.

Now that we have proven results that restoration works and we’re all together on the same page as what needs to happen, we must act quickly. Our beautiful forests, a precious resource for everyone, are burning up before our eyes. We need to do something before it’s too late.

BLM's withdrawal of western Oregon logging plan resets the argument

By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian 

 

Abandoning a logging plan for Bureau of Land Management forests in western Oregon either repairs a Bush-administration mistake or shows Pres. Obama is "unfriendly" to rural America, depending on your perspective.

No surprise -- environmentalists and the timber industry have vastly different takes on the BLM's recommendation that a federal judge toss out the Western Oregon Plan Revisions.

Conservation groups welcomed the news, saying the logging plan was legally flawed. An industry group said the decision ruins five years of planning and called it “outrageous.”

Meanwhile, the BLM says the action won’t immediately affect timber sales, which are already low, one way or the other.

The 2008 plan, known as WOPR and invariably pronounced "whopper," would have increased logging on about 2.2 million acres of BLM forests in western Oregon.

But it's been booted back and forth in the federal courts ever since. It was withdrawn in 2009, restored by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. in March 2011 and now may be killed by a federal judge in Portland. In papers filed in U.S. District Court late Friday afternoon, the BLM said the plan should be remanded and vacated -- kicked back and tossed out.

The filing was in response to a lawsuit brought by a coalition of conservation groups, including Pacific Rivers Council and Oregon Wild.

The WOPR issue is a second example of how settlement of the Northwest's critical natural resource issues was delayed by the Bush administration "trying to cut corners scientifically and legally," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice in Seattle.

A northern spotted owl recovery plan, drafted under Bush, was remanded in 2010. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which had written it, agreed the owl plan was scientifically flawed, marred by political manipulation and legally indefensible. It was revised and released last week.

On the WOPR, the Obama administration agreed the logging plan should have been reviewed by Fish & Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Failing to do so violated the Endangered Species Act, U.S. Justice Department attorneys said. The BLM "sees no choice but to concede error" and vacate the plan, federal attorneys wrote.

"They should have been consulted on how this affects habitat, critters and water," Earthjustice attorney Boyles said. "Had they done that some time ago, we might be beyond this."

But the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council said the filing destroys "five years of the best planning and science" and leaves the BLM with "no clear direction going forward."

"I can only use the word 'outrageous' for the filing the BLM made on Friday," said group spokeswoman Ann Forest Burns. The council represents forest product manufacturers and landowners.

"In the current economy, with rural economies on their knees and with the administration saying what it really wants is to create jobs, what jobs are going to be created? More government jobs?" Burns asked.

The BLM could have consulted with the wildlife and fisheries agencies at any time in the past couple years, Burns said, and the plan could have been remanded without killing it.

Meanwhile, BLM spokesman Michael Campbell said the legal maneuvering won't affect timber sales in the short-term. Anticipating a forest management "transition" as WOPR replaced the Clinton administration's Northwest Forest Plan, the agency planned timber sales that would be allowed under either.

However, the BLM acknowledges falling short of its western Oregon harvest target of 200 million board feet annually. Since 1995 the agency has averaged about 140 million board feet per year, Campbell said.

The legal gridlock places greater emphasis on three BLM pilot projects begun by veteran forest experts Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin. The restoration projects near Medford, Roseburg and Coos Bay are intended to find the balance between harvest and habitat.

"We understand we're obligated to look at different ways to put forth some timber," Campbell said. "At the same time, we recognize the need to protect species and habitat."

Burns, of the American Forest Resource Council, said the pilot projects demonstrate a particular silviculture system but have limited application to forest management.

The BLM's western Oregon forests, spread over 18 counties, once belonged to the Oregon & California Railroad. Federal legislation in 1937 put the O&C lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior, with the stipulation that they be managed on a sustained yield basis to produce a permanent timber supply and revenue for the counties. The legislation also directed the department to protect watersheds, regulate streams and provide recreational facilities.

--Eric Mortenson

Shotgun conservation: The new spotted owl plan

Published: Tuesday, July 05, 2011, 3:55 PM     Updated: Tuesday, July 05, 2011, 4:03 PM

By The Oregonian Editorial Board

It's hard to be optimistic about the latest federal spotted owl recovery plan,
which includes experimental killing of a rival species, the barred owl 

It wasn't supposed to turn out this way with the northern spotted owl, its numbers still plummeting two decades after the government shut down vast areas of federal forests to logging.

PATRICK KOLAR/U.S. Geological Survey

The aggressive barred owl (pictured) is now seen as a serious threat to the recovery of the endangered Northern spotted owl.

 

Now comes another iteration of a federal recovery plan, this one doubling down on protections of old and intact forests that the spotted owls need and suggesting a double-barreled solution to the latest and most severe threat -- invading barred owls taking over the forest neighborhood.

The new recovery plan is chock-full of the latest best science, but here's a wild guess: It won't be enough. Owl numbers are plunging at an alarming rate of 9 percent annually in some areas of the Olympics and the Cascades; they are declining at 3 percent a year across their range in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

It's hardly encouraging that the newest tool in spotted owl conservation is a 12-gauge shotgun. The federal plan suggests experimental shooting of barred owls, the bigger, more adaptable species driving out spotted owls, interbreeding and even occasionally killing male spotted owls. Maybe that will help spotted owls survive in selected areas -- and sure, let's give it a go -- but is the federal government prepared to hunt down and shoot barred owls for the rest of time?

Of course, there's no choice but to keep trying to save the spotted owl. The Endangered Species Act, thankfully, doesn't allow Americans to get frustrated and walk away from trying to preserve a species. And while we are pessimistic about the owl's future, we think the Obama administration's owl recovery plan is the best effort so far to save the owl from extinction and allow some logging on national forests in the Northwest.

It builds on 20 years of research on spotted owls, and more carefully and knowledgeably defines high-quality owl habitat. It also more clearly describes forests -- particularly young and overcrowded forests -- that are not suitable for owls and can and should be available for commercial logging.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not yet released its precise maps of critical habitat. Nor is the agency clear on what it means when it suggests that for the spotted owl to survive, older forests on state and private lands also need to be protected. The American Forest Resource Council, an industry group, claims the plan would impose "massive new restrictions on both federal and private lands." We don't read it that way, and federal officials say they have no intention of imposing owl regulations on private land but instead hope to collaborate with landowners to voluntarily conserve habitat.

It is too soon to give up on the spotted owl. The Northwest has already sacrificed so much -- thousands of jobs, entire rural communities -- to create a survivable space in old growth forests for this species. And yes, everyone needs to understand and appreciate that the long, long battle to save the owl has preserved clean water, air and habitat for countless other species.

But it is still deeply frustrating and humbling to learn, 20 years into this wrenching experiment, that we have come to a place where both the spotted owl and the Northwest timber industry seem to be trapped on the same sad flight path.

BLM Defies Court and Moves To Abandon Scientific Plan and Rural Oregon

PORTLAND, OR—In an eleventh hour filing today , Justices Department officials representing the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) filed a response in the Pacific Rivers vs. Salazar case  asking the Court to grant judgment for the plaintiffs and to vacate all of the 2008 Resource Management Plans Records of Decision better known as the WOPR.   Tom Partin, President of the American Forest Resource Council said this action by BLM completely destroys any hope for the future of Oregon’s forest products industry and rural communities that depend on BLM timberlands.  With this filing, five years of the best science and planning completed by the BLM in 2008 is destroyed and that agency has no clear direction going forward.  This is a clear example of an Administration unfriendly to good forest management and rural America making a political decision to pull a good forest plan.


Earlier this year the American Forest Resource Council and the Carpenters Industrial Council prevailed in a suit in District Court in Washington DC challenging the Secretary of Interior’s illegal withdrawal of the WOPR without public comment and the required plan amendment. The court reinstated the WOPR and we believe this latest action is an end-run by BLM around the court decision directing it to follow the public participation procedures before it amends or withdraws the WOPR.  

“At a time when our mills need this timber to survive, it is outrageous that the Obama Administration is directing the BLM not to sustainably harvest.  Instead, these forests are being allowed to become overcrowded and prone to devastating forest fires that will destroy wildlife habitat and threaten water supplies.  The situation our mills find themselves in is like starving to death in a refrigerator full of food,” said Tom Partin, AFRC President.

The American Forest Resource Council represents forest product manufacturers and landowners throughout the west and is based in Portland, Oregon.  www.amforest.org

Justice department must address troubles

From: Salem Statesman Journal

Since the election of our current Oregon attorney general, for some reason there have been a lot of negative stories printed in our newspapers.

I can't look back far enough in our history and find the type of problems we are having today.
How many lawyers in this department have made serious decisions that have left them no other choice but to resign or be fired? Maybe they should have been fired to set an example so others wouldn't make the same mistake.

Where is the leadership that is supposed to set the example and make this part of our government one we can be proud of instead of having to cover up one bad decision after another?

Why does this department still have many hundreds, maybe thousands, of email messages under lock and key that should be open to the public? This department has championed legislation that makes all agencies supposed to have a "transparent" policy for open records available for the public, but they can't abide by their own rules.

I feel it's time for the attorney general to get this department back on track if it isn't too late.
— Bill J. Kluting, Monmouth