The Clinton Administration's Forest Plan
for the Pacific Northwest

Ross W. Gorte
Specialist in Natural Resources Policy
Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division

July 16, 1993

93-664 ENR

INTRODUCTION

On April 2, 1993, President Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise by convening a forest conference in Portland, OR, to address the gridlock over management of the Federal forestlands in the Pacific Northwest and the resulting effects on communities and the regional economy. Many interests and ideas were heard by the President, Vice President Gore, numerous Cabinet Members, and other Presidential advisors. At the close of the conference, the President committed to preparing a plan within 60 days to address the problems.

Intensive efforts following the forest conference led to development of a background paper with 10 options. This paper has not been distributed, because elements of it are still being discussed and modified, but briefings and press reports have disclosed many of the pieces. "Option 9" of the background paper appears to be the basis for the proposal released by the White House on July 1, 1993: The Forest Plan for a Sustainable Economy and a Sustainable Environment. This plan is composed of three major pieces: forest management, economic development, and agency coordination.

FOREST MANAGEMENT

The forest management segment of the plan was based on a presumption that current legal requirements for Federal land management would not be altered. The plan is described as using watersheds as the fundamental building blocks for planning and decisionmaking. It proposes reserve areas, adaptive management areas, and a total harvest level for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). While congressional insulation of the plan from judicial review was discussed, such protection was not proposed in the plan.

To resolve the legal challenges and lift the existing injunctions against the Forest Service and BLM, the forest management segment of the plan must be approved by the courts as fulfilling the land management laws: the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), et al.. The plan will be part of a draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, which will be submitted to Judge Dwyer of the Federal District Court for Western Washington for the injunction against the Forest Service. It is unclear, at this time, whether the court will find that the plan meets the legal requirements, and how the plan and Judge Dwyer's decision might affect other lawsuits and the recovery plan for the spotted owl.

Reserve Areas

The plan proposes reserve areas based on watersheds, old growth forests, and "designated conservation areas to protect specific species." While State-level maps of the reserve areas exist, the plan does not specify the acreage reserved or the distribution of that acreage by Federal unit (national forest, etc.).

The plan proposes "very limited activities" in the reserves, but allows timber salvage and thinning "where the primary objective ... is to accelerate the development of old growth conditions." Environmental groups have expressed concern about the potential misuse of salvage and thinning -- to produce timber for industrial production, with little regard to ecosystem health. This concern is bolstered by a report from the Office of Technology Assessment noting that the Forest Service financial and managerial control systems focus on timber output and that the agency does not have adequate measures of ecosystem health.(1) Thus, while such operations might promote old growth conditions, concern over their level and control to achieve the stated purposes may be warranted.

Adaptive Management Areas

The plan proposes 10 adaptive management areas of 78,000 to 380,000 acres each. As with the reserve areas, State-level maps show the adaptive management areas, but the plan itself does not identify the total acreage or the distribution of the adaptive management areas by Federal unit.

The adaptive management areas are intended to provide "intensive ecological experimentation and social innovation to develop and demonstrate new ways to integrate ecological and economic objectives and allow for local involvement in defining the future." A "rigorous monitoring and research program" is proposed to assess the results and effectiveness of the efforts.

Implementation is the key to whether this approach is successful. The Forest Service and BLM are both currently required to include public participation in their planning and management decisions, but local and national disagreements on management direction still exist. Furthermore, Forest Service monitoring of forest plan implementation, required by NFMA, has been weak, at best.(2) Thus, the agencies' abilities to achieve the stated goals are uncertain.

Harvest Levels

The plan proposes "a sustainable timber harvest of 1.2 billion board feet annually on the spotted owl forests." Presumably, this includes not only the national forests west of the Cascade crest, but also the BLM lands in western Oregon, and national forests in northern California and east of the Cascade crest that contain spotted owl habitat. This harvest level apparently excludes harvests from some of the national forests in Washington and Oregon and most of the national forests in California. The distribution of this harvest by agency and Federal unit, however, is not specified.

This sale level is substantially below sales and harvests from the affected Federal lands over the past 30 years. However, some decline from peak harvest levels of the late 1980s is clearly not due to spotted owl protection.(3) Sale levels in the current forest plans have also been criticized as being unsustainable. Nonetheless, the proposed sale program is only about half the level that was projected under the recommendations of the Interagency Scientific Committee (the ISC or Thomas Report).(4) On the other hand, it is nearly double the sale program that has been achieved under the current injunctions. It is unclear, and not documented in the proposed plan, whether this decline either is larger than necessary or is even sufficient to meet the legal obligations of the agencies.

Regardless of whether the courts view the plan as adequate to lift the injunctions, generally imposed because of apparent violations of the land management laws, proposals for Federal actions (including timber salvage sales and thinning) must still be submitted for consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).(5) In general, Federal actions cannot jeopardize threatened or endangered species or adversely modify their critical habitat. Thus, the forest plan must be submitted for consultation under ESA; or more likely, agency actions taken under the plan will probably be submitted for consultation, since the consequences of the plan may be insufficiently detailed to assess jeopardy or adverse habitat modification. Because the plan differs markedly from previous owl conservation plans (e.g., the ISC Report and the draft recovery plan), and because it might affect spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and listed salmon populations, consultations on the plan or on actions under the plan could be time consuming.

The plan proposes four additional steps to ease the impact of the reduced timber supplies from Federal lands. One is an unspecified new rule from the Fish and Wildlife Service to ease timber harvesting restrictions on non-federal lands inhabited by spotted owls; however, this may be inconsistent with the ESA, at least until a recovery plan has been completed. The second is Federal assistance for backlogged timber sales on Indian reservations, but where, why, and how many sales are backlogged is unclear. The third step is to restrict the use of certain tax expenditures, to curtail tax assistance for log exports.

The fourth step is to accelerate the sale of dead and dying timber in eastern Washington and Oregon. Many eastside forest ecosystems have allegedly been damaged by past management practices and prolonged drought, and accelerating the salvage program is proposed as a way both to improve the health of these ecosystems and to provide timber. However, the traditional focus on timber outputs, the inadequate measures of forest health, and the results of past mismanagement raise concerns about the effectiveness of the proposal, and whether it would be conducted within the current national forest planning process.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative is the segment of the President's forest plan aimed at assisting the economic transition in the Pacific Northwest. The controversy between industry and environmental groups over the past several years has centered on forest management issues, with less attention to the subsequent and related economic adjustment. Nonetheless, the debate over the economic transition has raised concerns about the level of funding needed, the distribution of assistance, and the effectiveness of the delivery system.

The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative targets four groups for assistance: workers and families; communities and infrastructure; business and industry; and ecosystem investment. In addition, the plan proposes a Northwest Economic Adjustment Fund, with discretion for the States on how best to use the funds. Proposed funding for the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative is $1.2 billion over 5 years, including $270 million for FY1994. The FY1994 funding is probably based on the President's budget request; the amount needed to achieve the desired levels may be higher (or lower) than these estimates, depending on the changes made in the agencies' budgets by Congress. Some of the funding may be additional appropriations, but some will be redirected from other program and other regions.

Finally, the plan supports terminating the authority to use certain general export tax expenditures for the export of unprocessed timber, as noted above; the Senate included a provision to enact this change in the tax laws in H.R. 2264, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, but a conference must still resolve this and other differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. It is unclear whether any of the budget savings from this change in the tax laws has been included in the proposed $1.2 billion for the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative.

Workers and Families

The plan proposes an increase in funding under title III of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) for assisting job searches and retraining and relocating workers; this assistance is available for all displaced workers, not just those in the timber industry. For FY1994, a 110-percent ($22 million) increase in funds is proposed for the Northwest.

Communities and Infrastructure

The plan proposes stable payments to the counties, in lieu of property taxes for the tax-exempt Federal lands, to replace the timber receipt-sharing system that has provided widely fluctuating annual payments. Additional funding for the Northwest is proposed through the Rural Development Administration, Community Development Block Grants, and other programs; for FY1994, the increase is to be 25 percent ($75 million) over the original budget request for these programs. These funds are intended to assist communities in planning for economic development and diversification and in providing the necessary infrastructure for such development.

Business and Industry

The plan proposes a 47-percent ($77 million) increase in funding for the Northwest through the Rural Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, and other business assistance programs for FY1994. The funds in these programs are intended to improve access to capital, to expand technical assistance, and to enhance access to domestic and global markets.

Ecosystem Investment

The plan proposes to increase funds for watershed maintenance, ecosystem restoration and research, environmental monitoring, and forest stewardship. Most of these efforts will be aimed at Federal lands, but forest stewardship will include assistance for private, nonindustrial forestlands. For FY1994, the proposed increase is 19 percent ($82 million), funded through the Forest Service, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Environmental Protection Agency.

AGENCY COORDINATION

Improving agency coordination is the third major segment of President Clinton's forest plan. The plan states that this segment is essential, because the various agencies have been seen as acting "in isolation or even at cross purposes in managing federal forest lands."

The plan proposes "forest planning based on watersheds and "physiographic provinces"" with analyses by "provincial-level teams" that include the relevant Federal and State agencies and tribes and that would involve "all affected parties in the discussions." The benefits of watershed-level planning have been long debated in land management literature. However, it is unclear how this new planning will mesh with the existing land and resource management planning proced ures for units of the National Forest System under NFMA and for BLM lands under FLPMA. The current procedures are embodied in regulations that are binding on the two agencies.

The plan also proposes "a new inter-agency Geographic Information System [GIS] data base." GIS systems are indeed useful in coordinating data collection and analysis, and this will likely improve interagency coordination. Furthermore, GIS technology has advanced rapidly in the past few years. However, the hardware and software needed to use GIS systems are expensive, and the plan provides no information on how the initial investment and annual maintenance of the database will be funded.

Finally, the plan proposes revising the consultation process under ESA to include the relevant agency -- the Fish and Wildlife Service and/or the National Marine Fisheries Service -- early in the planning processes of the other agencies, and possibly at a scale larger than individual projects. Early involvement can certainly help avoid many of the problems and apparent contradictions in the existing process. However, early involvement is already feasible and available, and it is unclear what specific changes in ESA or its implementing regulations might be offered. It is also unclear how "the use, where appropriate, of regional consultations" would mesh with existing planning and decisionmaking processes of the Forest Service and BLM.

CONCLUSIONS

President Clinton's forest plan is an attempt to resolve the continuing controversy over forest management in the Pacific Northwest. Because of the longstanding polarization of interests, it is virtually impossible to craft a plan that would be widely accepted. The proposed harvest level is a very substantial drop from record levels of the late 1980s, but whether the decline is sufficient or is more than necessary to meet the requirements of environmental laws and regulations is unclear. Moreover, the plan might be sufficient to lift the current injunctions, but the plan or the subsequent activities must still be submitted to the Fish and Wildlife Service and/or the National Marine Fisheries Service for consultation under ESA.

The reserve areas and adaptive management areas, though not yet clearly identified, appear to be based on reasonable scientific principles of forest management. However, their proper implementation is essential, and many critics do not trust the agencies to implement the plan to achieve the specified goals. Substantial funding over 5 years is proposed for workers, communities, businesses, and ecosystem investment, but whether the funding levels and delivery mechanisms are adequate and attainable is unknown. The efforts to improve coordination among agencies are desirable, but previous efforts at interagency coordination have often proven ineffective.

Endnotes

1 . U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Forest Service Planning: Accommodating Uses, Producing Outputs, and Sustaining Ecosystems. OTA-F-505. Washington, DC: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., Feb. 1992.

2. Ibid,

3. See: U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service. Economic Impacts of Protecting Spotted Owls: A Comparison and Analysis of Existing Studies. [by Ross W. Gorte.] CRS Report for Congress 92-922 ENR. Washington, DC: Dec. 7, 1992.

4. Ibid.

5. For more on this situation in the Northwest, see: U.S. Library of Congress, Con-gressional Research Service. Spotted Owls and Northwest Forests. CRS Issue Brief IB93015. Washington, DC: updated periodically.