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Feature article - Fall/Winter 2007 Conservation Connection
FEATURE ARTICLE
WHAT WOULD WOPR DUMP? ...The Northwest Forest Plan - a standard for conservation planning
by Cindy Deacon Williams, Director of Aquatic Science & Education Programs, and Rich Nauman, Conservation Scientist, NCCSP
Launched by Presidential mandate, the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan remains to this date one of the most ambitious conservation planning efforts ever undertaken. It reflects the combined wisdom of scientists from numerous federal agencies in the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Labor, and Commerce as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Office on Environmental Policy, Office of Science and Technology, National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisors, and Office of Management and Budget.
All were mobilized in a massive 14-month "Manhattan Project"-like undertaking coordinated through three interagency working groups (the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team, and the Agency Coordination Team). The result was the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative and the Northwest Forest Plan.
The Economic Initiative, launched in December 1993, provided transition assistance for people affected by reduced federal timber harvest. The Forest Plan, adopted by the agencies in April 1994, was a comprehensive forestry program designed to be scientifically sound, ecologically credible, and legally responsible. That Plan still guides management on 24 million acres on 19 National Forests and 7 BLM Districts.
While it satisfied the courts, Judge Dwyer's 1994 opinion upholding the Northwest Forest Plan noted that the compromise between logging and old growth protection was the bare minimum needed to comply with laws protecting endangered species. Dwyer also rejected challenges originally brought by the Association of O&C Counties and the forest industry and ruled that the Plan does not unlawfully prefer environmental concerns over timber supply - a precedent ignored by the government-timber industry settlement agreement that gave birth to WOPR.
Strength of the Plan
Born out of a desire to break gridlock, the Plan was embraced as a way to balance resource production with conservation of old-growth forest ecosystems and the organisms that depend on them. Fundamental principles of ecosystem management, conservation biology, and sustainable economics - applied on a scale never before witnessed - became the Plan's core elements.
It also established the use of adaptive management to respond to new scientific insights and changing world conditions. Regionwide federal land management allocations and strategies (including late-successional and riparian reserves, and key watersheds, as well as riparian management objectives, watershed analysis, watershed restoration, and survey and management) were incorporated for managing forests, protecting sensitive species, conserving aquatic resources, planning timber sales and harvesting timber.
Despite never being fully funded (the BLM would need an additional $17 million/year for full implementation), the Forest Plan did usher in sweeping changes in federal lands management. It did break the deadlock. And, it did help maintain the Northern Spotted Owl, Marbled Murrelet, and Pacific salmon and steelhead.
Six years after its adoption, the Northwest Forest Plan came under the scrutiny, priorities, and vision of a new administration; one that since has made numerous, so far unsuccessful, attempts to weaken or eliminate key plan elements. It remains to be seen if the efforts now underway by the Bureau of Land Management to throw the Plan out and try something different will be as successful - ecologically, socially or legally.
Photo Credit: Ken Crocker
