What’s next for the revised BLM forest plan?

Pro: The plan is very much alive and still being revised:

In reference to an editorial in the April 1 Register-Guard regarding the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Oregon Plan Revision, I would like to set the record straight. The plan is very much alive and is progressing as prescribed by law and regulation to find the best way to manage the BLM-administered lands in Western Oregon in compliance with federal laws.

The BLM is grateful for the comments received by the science review team. This information will help the BLM to improve the plan as we progress from the draft to the final plan. It means the process is working as it should!

Based on my 30-plus years of experience with forestry and the BLM, I have never seen a planning effort that reached as far as the Western Oregon Plan Revision process in its efforts to involve and inform the public.

We have invited outside scientists and government agencies to the table as important decisions have been made.

From the beginning, we have maintained an open process with the public, sharing an unprecedented amount of information with the public on our Web site, in publications and through numerous public meetings.

In 2005, the BLM convened a team of scientists to work closely with BLM staff scientists and experts as they prepared a Draft Environmental Impact Statement examining several alternatives for future management of the BLM-administered land in Western Oregon.

From the very beginning, we asked the science team to provide a critical review and analyze whether all the relevant scientific information was considered; whether all the significant assumptions were acknowledged; whether risks were adequately and fairly documented; and whether the conclusions were consistent with known science.

The BLM then took the best information we had and published a draft plan, looking at several possible alternatives, and provided a draft EIS revealing the possible effects of those alternatives for public review. We received almost 30,000 comments from the public, including comments from the federal and state regulatory agencies and the science team. The science team presented its review of the draft EIS to the BLM in March. The BLM posted the entire science team review on the project Web site. Details about the work of the science team can be found at: www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/science.php.

The BLM is using the input received from the science team, other governmental agencies and members of the public to make adjustments from the draft to the Proposed Resource Management Plan and Final Environmental Impact Statement. That’s the way the process works, as defined in the National Environmental Policy Act, and that’s the process that we are following.

Ultimately, the NEPA process is about making informed decisions. Toward that end, the BLM has gone the extra mile to involve the public and gather input beyond the minimum requirements prescribed in NEPA.

Critical comments are important to help the BLM to be better informed and to make better decisions.

I am confident that this process will result in the best decisions, based on the best science, consistent with the federal laws we must follow.

Edward Shepard is the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Oregon/Washington state director. He has 32 years of experience working for the BLM.

Con: Plan would only reignite the 1980s’ forest wars:

The Register-Guard got it right in its April 1 editorial: The Western Oregon Plan Revision is a dead plan walking.

Early on in the Bureau of Land Management’s process, I expressed concern to the agency that ramping up old growth logging by ignoring the best available science would return us to the forest wars of the 1980s and ’90s. It was baffling to me that the BLM was spending millions of dollars responding to a sweetheart settlement of a lawsuit that had already been lost twice before. I felt compelled to give the BLM and WOPR proponents a history lesson:

In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prepared the first recovery plan for the spotted owl, based on dubious science called “the Jamison Plan.” Six BLM timber sales that used this science prompted the only spotted owl jeopardy opinion ever issued under the Endangered Species Act. The subsequent litigation led to court-ordered injunctions that shut down timber harvests across the entire Pacific Northwest.

Only with the advent of the Clinton administration’s infamous Northwest Forest Plan were the injunctions lifted, more than two years later. In the meantime, jobs had been lost. Trust in the agencies was shattered. Gridlock was the name of the game, and it has taken us almost two decades to begin to work our way out of the mess that the Jamison Plan created.

Still, the promised solution to that mess — the Northwest Forest Plan — has been far from perfect. I opposed the Clinton Forest Plan in 1994 because I believed it would not solve two key problems: It would not provide certainty in timber supply to the timber industry and rural communities, and it would not protect the small amount of remaining old growth in our forests, which was important to environmental groups.

At the time, I proposed a compromise that would have both provided a predictable supply of timber to local mills, and would have protected the remaining old growth while assuring a certain timber supply from second growth and managed lands. Unfortunately, that compromise was rejected by both the environmental community and the timber industry. I am currently working to revise that proposal as a way to provide a predictable harvest while protecting old growth and improving forest health.

I predicted the Northwest Forest Plan would fail, and it has. Timber harvest revenues continue to decline, counties have had to eliminate services for lack of funds, uncertain timber supplies threaten forest and mill jobs, judges referee fights over the last scraps of old growth, and the health of our forests continues to decline.

However, the solution to this continuing problem is not to ramp up logging of the remaining old growth forests in our region. About a year ago, I attended the timber industry’s annual meeting in Washington state. During that talk, I outlined my concerns with the existing regulatory and statutory framework for managing the public forests in our region, and I expressed a great deal of skepticism over the Bush administration’s attempts — exemplified by WOPR — to reignite the forest wars. I reminded those present that they should remember their history, and what happened with the Jamison Plan: When the government ignores sound science and engages in political interference, the courts will intervene, and responsible forest management will come to a screeching halt.

The science that the BLM is relying on for its proposed increase of half a billion board feet in logging has failed scientific peer review at least five times, and is likely to fail yet again. The BLM’s own scientists have now flunked WOPR as well, and it seems highly unlikely that the agency will be able to fix those flaws since they are grounded in science — and you can’t “fix” science, unless you ignore it in a misguided attempt to do a favor for your supporters. And we’ve been there before. As Yogi Berra said, it’s déjà vu all over again.

Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, represents Oregon’s 4th District in the House.