In the Washington woods, managers face a catch-22
by Lissa James
In Washington state, the federal government is close to
approving a grand compromise aimed at safeguarding both imperiled
fish and timber companies. The proposal has reopened a debate,
however, over how to balance the needs of wildlife with the wants
of industry.
The so-called "Forests and Fish" plan dates
back to 1997, when Washington’s timber industry,
environmental groups and Indian tribes sat down with state and
federal agencies to rework the state’s logging rules (HCN,
4/23/01: Plan protects foresters, not fish). They were trying to
avoid the possibility of a forest shutdown caused by the listing of
wild salmon populations under the Endangered Species Act. Logging
impacts salmon because it removes trees that might otherwise fall
into streams and create fish habitat, and can clog streams with
silt.
In 1999, the stakeholders released a report
recommending new rules for building roads, spraying herbicides, and
logging around sensitive areas on Washington’s 8 million
acres of private forestland. The state Legislature accepted the
rules and told state forestry officials to roll them into a
"habitat conservation plan" (HCP) for approval by the federal
government. Habitat conservation plans allow some imperiled animals
to be killed in exchange for broad habitat protections that
presumably will save the species as a whole (HCN, 11/10/03: San
Diego’s Habitat Triage).
The state released a draft
habitat plan in December. If the Fisheries office of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA Fisheries) OKs it, the
state, and landowners who follow the state’s rules, will be
exempt from Endangered Species Act lawsuits for the next 50 years.
But as the approval deadline approaches, critics argue that the
deal contains an impossible catch-22: It allows state wildlife
managers to change the rules to reflect evolving science, but at
the same time promises timber companies that they won’t be
subject to further land-use restrictions to protect salmon: a
policy that Clinton-era Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt dubbed "no
surprises."
But no one knows what science may uncover
about the needs of wild salmon, says Peter Goldman, executive
director of the Washington Forest Law Center, an environmental
nonprofit. "There is no such thing as ‘no surprises’ in
salmon country, and the HCP has to make that very clear." Some
flexibility is built into the rules, in a process called "adaptive
management." The plan creates buffers, for example, that protect
swaths of land up to 200 feet wide around streams.
Environmentalists, and some agency biologists, are convinced that
the buffers are barely acceptable, and say that studies will
eventually call for tighter rules.
The problem, says
Goldman, is that once the plan gets federal approval, the state
will have little incentive to follow through with the science
needed for adaptive management. The state promised to complete
approximately $30 million of studies before 2010, but federal
funding for the program ends next year, so the cash-strapped state
Legislature will probably have to come up with the money.
Environmentalists want the HCP to set strict regulations from the
beginning, for things like logging on steep slopes and around small
streams. Convincing the state to change its rules has already
proven tricky: Agency scientists have completed two studies since
1999 that show that the Forests and Fish rules need to be stricter,
but the Department of Natural Resources has yet to institute any
changes.
Supporters of the plan, including the Washington
Forest Protection Association, a timber-industry organization, say
that the Forests and Fish logging rules are already some of the
strictest in the nation. Because they are designed as an HCP, they
protect not just salmon, but 49 species of unlisted fish and seven
stream amphibians. So they give small, non-salmon streams —
home of sculpins, sticklebacks, and mudminnows — much the
same protection as larger rivers and creeks.
Environmentalists, tribes and the timber industry are scrambling to
submit comments on the habitat plan before a May 12 deadline. NOAA
Fisheries is expected to release a final decision sometime this
fall.
The author writes from Lilliwaup,
Washington, where her family owns a tree
farm.