Comments pour in on agency’s plans to increase logging

By Susan Palmer
The Register-Guard
January 10, 2008

At the Bureau of Land Management, the in-box is filling up fast.

The public comment period on the agency’s controversial plan to increase logging in Western Oregon forests ends Friday, and most people have waited until the last minute to have their say.

By Tuesday, the agency had received about 7,000 comments on the draft environmental impact statement for the Western Oregon Plan Revision. By noon on Wednesday that number had almost tripled with 20,000 comments received, said agency spokesman Michael Campbell.

The comments span the expected gamut from individuals and organizations eager for increased logging revenues to those who worry about the loss of some of the state’s most spectacular old growth.

Some groups have submitted substantive documents raising questions about science, Campbell said, while some individuals have clipped newspaper editorials and scribbled a simple note saying they share the published point of view.

The BLM manages 2.2 million acres of forests in Western Oregon and since 1994 has reduced logging under the directive of the Northwest Forest Plan, which was designed to preserve habitat for species at risk of extinction such as the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet.

But the original federal mandate for the BLM’s unique 1-acre checkerboard of Oregon forests — established in the 1937 Oregon and California Lands Act — was to manage for a sustainable harvest as a way to provide revenue to the counties where the forests are located.

That act recognized the financial hardship for counties where the federal government owns substantial land. In Lane County, for example, just under 43 percent of the land is privately held. Most is owned by the U.S. Forest Service. The BLM manages about 9 percent.

An industry lawsuit challenging the logging limits imposed by the Northwest Forest Plan on BLM land was settled by the Bush administration, with the BLM agreeing to develop a new management strategy.

The draft environmental impact statement of that plan lists three options, and the BLM has indicated a preference for the one that triples the timber harvest, with many old-growth stands targeted for clear-cutting.

That alternative, known as option two, reduces acreage reserved for owls, allows clear-cutting and narrows forest buffers along waterways. The BLM estimates $108 million in annual payments to counties — 50 percent of the revenue from the estimated 727 million board feet of timber cut.

Environmental groups say the proposal fails to protect at-risk species and will wind up being challenged in court.

Many cash-strapped counties say the logging revenue is the only thing that will keep police on the streets and libraries open, since the federal payments replacing lost timber revenue ended last year.

Coos and Douglas counties, for their part, are forwarding to the BLM comments drafted by the Association of O&C Counties, a group that supports the agency’s preferred option.

Lane County won’t submit any comments, both because there’s disagreement about the plan among commissioners, and because the plan itself is likely headed to court, said Commissioner Bobby Green.

Among those still finalizing their comments on Wednesday: Eugene’s Cascadia Wildlands Project and the American Forest Resource Council.

Cascadia — an environmental nonprofit agency — is still refining its objections to the BLM plan in a document it will file on behalf of a dozen different conservation groups, said conservation director Josh Laughlin.

The American Forest Resource Council — a timber industry group — plans to emphasize the less restrictive needs of the northern spotted owl in its southern range, the preference of species such as deer and elk for younger forests and the importance of short-term thinning projects to reduce the potential for catastrophic stand-replacing fires, said spokesman Chris West.

The BLM has a legal obligation to address substantive comments in its revised plan, agency spokesman Campbell said.

That final version of the Western Oregon Plan Revision, known by the acronym WOPR, will be available for public review this summer.

Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski will be given 60 days to review the plan. The BLM expects a final Record of Decision to be in place by December, Campbell said.

The 1,700-page plan is still available online for review and comment at www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr.