[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
FAILED FEDERAL FOREST
POLICIES: ENDANGERING JOBS,
FORESTS AND SPECIES
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS
AND PUBLIC LANDS
of the
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Monday, May 21, 2012, in Longview, Washington
__________
Serial No. 112-112
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
or
Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
DOC HASTINGS, WA, Chairman
EDWARD J. MARKEY, MA, Ranking Democratic Member
Don Young, AK Dale E. Kildee, MI
John J. Duncan, Jr., TN Peter A. DeFazio, OR
Louie Gohmert, TX Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, AS
Rob Bishop, UT Frank Pallone, Jr., NJ
Doug Lamborn, CO Grace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA Rush D. Holt, NJ
Paul C. Broun, GA Raul M. Grijalva, AZ
John Fleming, LA Madeleine Z. Bordallo, GU
Mike Coffman, CO Jim Costa, CA
Tom McClintock, CA Dan Boren, OK
Glenn Thompson, PA Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Jeff Denham, CA CNMI
Dan Benishek, MI Martin Heinrich, NM
David Rivera, FL Ben Ray Lujan, NM
Jeff Duncan, SC Betty Sutton, OH
Scott R. Tipton, CO Niki Tsongas, MA
Paul A. Gosar, AZ Pedro R. Pierluisi, PR
Raul R. Labrador, ID John Garamendi, CA
Kristi L. Noem, SD Colleen W. Hanabusa, HI
Steve Southerland II, FL Paul Tonko, NY
Bill Flores, TX Vacancy
Andy Harris, MD
Jeffrey M. Landry, LA
Jon Runyan, NJ
Bill Johnson, OH
Mark Amodei, NV
Todd Young, Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel
Jeffrey Duncan, Democratic Staff Director
David Watkins, Democratic Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND PUBLIC LANDS
ROB BISHOP, UT, Chairman
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Democratic Member
Don Young, AK Dale E. Kildee, MI
John J. Duncan, Jr., TN Peter A. DeFazio, OR
Doug Lamborn, CO Rush D. Holt, NJ
Paul C. Broun, GA Martin Heinrich, NM
Mike Coffman, CO Betty Sutton, OH
Tom McClintock, CA Niki Tsongas, MA
David Rivera, FL John Garamendi, CA
Scott R. Tipton, CO Vacancy
Raul R. Labrador, ID Edward J. Markey, MA, ex officio
Kristi L. Noem, SD
Mark Amodei, NV
Doc Hastings, WA, ex officio
------
CONTENTS
----------
Page
Hearing held on Monday, May 21, 2012............................. 1
Statement of Members:
Hastings, Hon. Doc, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Washington........................................ 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Herrera Beutler, Hon. Jamie, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Washington............................... 4
Prepared statement of.................................... 6
Statement of Witnesses:
Connaughton, Kent, Regional Forester, Pacific Northwest
Region, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Portland, Oregon.............................. 32
Prepared statement of.................................... 34
Fox, Tom, President, Family Forest Foundation, Ethel,
Washington................................................. 10
Prepared statement of.................................... 12
Friedman, Mitch, Executive Director, Conservation Northwest,
Bellingham, Washington..................................... 36
Prepared statement of.................................... 38
Kreps, Kelly, Kreps Ranch LLC, White Salmon, Washington...... 46
Prepared statement of.................................... 48
Mealey, Stephen P., Vice President of Conservation, Boone &
Crockett Club, Leaburg, Oregon............................. 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Nelson, Tom, Washington Timberlands Manager, Sierra Pacific
Industries, Mount Vernon, Washington....................... 50
Prepared statement of.................................... 51
Niemi, Ernie, Senior Economist, ECONorthwest, Eugene, Oregon. 40
Prepared statement of.................................... 41
Pearce, Hon. Paul, Commissioner, Skamania County, Washington,
on behalf of the National Forest Counties and Schools
Coalition.................................................. 7
Prepared statement of.................................... 9
Salwasser, Dr. Hal, Cheryl Ramberg and Allyn C. Ford Dean,
College of Forestry, Oregon State University, Corvallis,
Oregon..................................................... 17
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
U.S. Department of the Interior, Statement submitted for the
record..................................................... 65
Additional materials supplied:
List of documents retained in the Committee's official files. 69
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON ``FAILED FEDERAL FOREST POLICIES:
ENDANGERING JOBS, FORESTS AND SPECIES.''
----------
Monday, May 21, 2012
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands
Committee on Natural Resources
Longview, Washington
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:00 a.m., at
the Cowlitz County Expo and Conference Center, 1900 7th Avenue,
Longview, Washington, Hon. Doc Hastings presiding.
Present: Representatives Hastings and Herrera Beutler.
The Chairman. The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests,
and Public Lands will come to order. I'm Congressman Doc
Hastings. I'm the Chairman of the Committee on Natural
Resources. I come from the other side of the State. What you
are experiencing here with rain we call inventory on our side
of the State so thank you for doing that. I'm very pleased to
be in the Third Congressional District, and I'm very pleased to
have here with me Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler. Without
objection, she will sit with me at the table.
The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public
Lands meets today to hear testimony on a hearing entitled
``Failed Federal Forest Policy: Endangering Jobs, Forests and
Species.''
Can you hear me by the way? Is that better? Is that better?
OK. I apologize for that. I won't start over. I could start
over, but I won't start over. But we are here today to hear
testimony on a hearing entitled ``Failed Federal Forest
Policies: Endangering Jobs, Forests and Species,'' but, first,
before we start, I want to defer to my distinguished colleague,
the Congresswoman from the Third Congressional District for the
purposes of flag and introductions.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
being here. We're privileged to have, and I'm going to read
their names, Steven Wallace, Alex Wallace, Dane Kitchens for
Boy Scout Troop 319, and Eric Kolditz and Carl Kolditz from Boy
Scout Troop 883 to post the colors and lead us in the Pledge of
Allegiance, so please stand.
[Pledge of Allegiance.]
STATEMENT OF THE HON. DOC HASTINGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
The Chairman. Before hearing from our panel, I and
Congresswoman Herrera Beutler will have an opening statement. I
want to thank Congresswoman Herrera Beutler for hosting this
and for joining me here today. This hearing comes more than 20
years following approval of a Northwest Forest Plan and after
the Northern Spotted Owl was listed as endangered under the
Endangered Species Act.
To put it simply, the Northwest Forest Plan has failed. It
has failed on health of national forests, it has failed on the
economic well-being in rural counties and schools, it has cost
tens of thousands of Northwest timber-related jobs and the
closure of hundreds of mills and affected wood product
industries, and it has failed, probably more importantly, to
recover the Spotted Owl.
Nationwide, Federal agencies are not managing the land that
they are required to manage. Amidst our nation's $15.5 trillion
debt, the Interior Department and Forest Service's own
estimates reveal $22 billion in maintenance backlogs for lands
managed by the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management,
the U.S. Parks Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Worse, since the Northwest Forest Land, an average of 355,000
acres per year of Northwest national forests has been destroyed
by wildfires; yet agencies continue to request and spend more
money to contain wildfires and acquire even more land.
In the State of Washington, the Forest Service is already
responsible for managing over 9 million acres of forest land
contained within seven national forests. Timber harvest of
those forests has declined by 84 percent over the last decade,
84 percent, resulting in a loss of jobs and economic certainty
and a breach of the Federal Government's commitment to rural
forest communities.
Each year Washington's national forests grow three times
faster than they die. The Forest Service harvests just 2
percent of new growth, which yields about $13 million in
revenue. In contrast, the State of Washington, which manages
the trust about one-fourth the size of the Forest Service
lands, produces seven times more revenue than the Forest
Service for their local communities and, of course, those funds
go to our universities and school construction fund.
Despite the Administration's promises to streamline
regulations on Federal lands, it instead finalized the National
Forest Planning Group that de-emphasizes active management and
statutory multiple use requirements.
Let me just interrupt here for a moment to say when I
became Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, which has
broad jurisdiction over all Federal lands, I viewed my
responsibility to uphold what I think was the first reason for
having public lands to be multiple use unless Congress
designated otherwise, and unfortunately, we have gotten away
from that notion, and multiple use, by the way, is not confined
just to recreation. It also means commercial activity.
The EPA has also failed to define its longstanding rule
exempting forest management activities from the Clean Water Act
permitting requirements and is pressing ahead with imposing yet
another damaging and burdensome regulation on forest
management.
Most concerning, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued
sweeping critical habitat proposals for the Spotted Owl that
amount to a huge land grab in Washington, Oregon and
California, some 13 million acres, including nearly 2 million
acres of private property. The proposals of these largely
outdated data from the '90s, they don't include an economic
impact analysis and they do little, if anything, to address the
concern of the Spotted Owl's decline, mainly another predatory
owl called the Barred Owl.
Earlier this year Secretary Salazar toured an ``ecological
pilot timber sale project'' as part of the Bureau of Land
Management's ``Western Oregon Strategy.'' The project, ``Pilot
Joe,'' produced only enough timber to run a single mill for a
week. I expected to inquire about the status of the BLM sales
but BLM, unfortunately, declined to participate in this
hearing.
One constant undercurrent is the Endangered Species Act.
Extreme groups file lawsuit after lawsuit to block human or job
creating economy activity tied to the forest, yet the results
are more catastrophic wildfires, more diseased and dying trees,
and destruction of the owl and the species' habitat.
Private landowners seeking safe harbor either can't afford
or don't trust the Federal Government's discretion, which
appears driven by the constant threat of more lawsuits, so
action must be taken to protect rural communities and private
property from these burdensome regulations.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today and
receive constructive input on how to go forward to improve our
forests' health and to recover the Spotted Owl.
With that, I'll recognize the gentlelady from Washington,
as we say in the other Washington, Ms. Herrera Beutler.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hastings follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Doc Hastings, Chairman,
Committee on Natural Resources
I thank Congresswoman Herrera Beutler for joining me here today.
This hearing comes more than twenty years following approval of the
Northwest Forest Plan and after the Northern Spotted Owl's listing
under the Endangered Species Act.
To put it simply, the Northwest Forest Plan has failed. It has
failed the health of national forests. It has failed the economic well-
being of rural counties and schools, has cost tens of thousands of
Northwest timber-related jobs and the closure of hundreds of mills and
affected wood-products industries. And, it has failed to recover the
Spotted Owl.
Nationwide, federal agencies are not managing the land they are
required to manage. Amidst our nation's current $15.7 trillion debt,
the Interior Department's and Forest Service's own estimates reveal $22
billion in maintenance backlogs for lands managed by the Forest
Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Park Service and the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.
Worse, since the Northwest Forest Plan, an average of 355,000 acres
per year of Northwest national forests has been destroyed by wildfire.
Yet, agencies continue to request and spend more money to contain
wildfires and acquire even more land.
In Washington, the Forest Service is already responsible for
managing over 9 million acres of forest land contained within seven
national forests. Timber harvests of those forests declined 84 percent
over the past decade, resulting in a loss of jobs and economic
certainty, and a breach of the federal government's commitments to
rural forest communities.
Each year, Washington's national forests grow three times faster
than they die. The Forest Service harvests just 2 percent of new
growth, yielding about $13 million in revenue. In contrast, the State
of Washington, which manages in trust about one-fourth the amount of
the Forest Service's lands, produces seven times more revenue than the
Forest Service for local governments, universities and state school
construction.
Despite the Administration's promises to streamline regulations on
federal lands, it instead finalized a National Forest Planning Rule
that de-emphasizes active management and statutory multi-use
requirements. The EPA has also failed to defend its longstanding rule
exempting forest management activities from Clean Water Act permitting
requirements and is pressing ahead with imposing yet another damaging
and burdensome regulation on forest management.
Most concerning, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued sweeping
critical habitat proposals for the Spotted Owl that amount to a huge
land grab in Washington, Oregon and California--13 million acres--
including nearly 2 million acres of private property. The proposals are
based largely on outdated data from the 1990's, don't include an
economic impact analysis, and do little, if anything, to immediately
address the main cause of the owl's decline--another predatory owl--the
Barred Owl
Earlier this year, Secretary Salazar toured an ``ecological pilot
timber sale project'' as part of the Bureau of Land Management's
``Western Oregon Strategy.'' The project--``Pilot Joe'' produced only
enough timber to run a single mill for a week. I expected to inquire
about the status of BLM's sales,'' but BLM unfortunately declined to
participate in today's hearing.
One constant undercurrent is the Endangered Species Act. Extreme
groups file lawsuit after lawsuit to block human or job-creating
economic activity tied to the forests, yet the results are more
catastrophic wildfires, more diseased and dying trees, and destruction
of owl and species habitat. Private landowners seeking ``safe harbor''
either can't afford or don't trust the federal government's discretion,
which appears driven by the constant threat of more lawsuits.
Action must be taken now to protect rural communities and private
property from these burdensome regulations. I look forward to hearing
from our witnesses today and to receive constructive input on how,
going forward, we can improve forest health, create jobs and recover
the Spotted Owl.
______
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JAMIE HERRERA BEUTLER,
A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for your leadership on this issue. This is incredibly important
to my region and I appreciate you taking time and effort to
bring this congressional hearing to Cowlitz County.
I want to welcome everyone. This is our home, so welcome to
the folks who aren't from here to Southwest Washington. And I
want to start really quickly by recognizing the elected
officials and dignitaries who have joined us today. If I say
your name, please stand so that I know I've got you. I don't
mean got you, but got you.
The first one is Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt;
Skamania County Commissioner Paul Pearce, who is one of our
witnesses; Lewis County Commissioner Lee Grose; Cowlitz County
Commissioner George Raiter; Cowlitz County Commissioner Mike
Karnofski; Cowlitz County Commissioner Jim Misner, Wahkiakum
County Commissioner Dan Cochran; and a government official from
the Cowlitz Tribe, Chairman William Iyall. Thank you all for
joining us.
Now, today we're going to consider the policies and
practices that affect our forests, our wildlife, our economy
and the entire communities that surround this region. Those
things make up our identity, and folks across the spectrum are
recognizing that those things that we value are in jeopardy.
That's why we're here today.
Almost 20 years ago, the Northwest Forest Plan was written
into law. I was entering high school. The stated goals of the
plan were very laudable: Balance a healthy forest economy with
the protection of wildlife. Makes sense. But before a new plan
is adopted that doubles down on the current practices, we need
an honest science-based assessment of how the plan has worked
over the past two decades.
What we'll hear today will be based on science, expert
analysis and the testimony of community members who have been
left to deal with the consequences of these policies. I believe
what we'll hear is that the reality has been very far
different, far removed from what even the plan's architects had
intended.
Former U.S. Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas was the
primary author of the Northwest Forest Plan. Ten years after he
stated that the plan is not working and has failed to fulfill
its promises to the people as well as the to environment he
stated, quote, ``I've got real terrible concern whether we're
taking care of the land.''
Here's what we've seen: Federal forests like the Gifford
Pinchot have been locked away from the economic activity and
species like the Spotted Owl have plummeted in number. Setting
aside 80 percent of our forests in some places has still failed
to protect the Spotted Owl. Plans to undertake environmentally
sound forest harvest projects and even very small projects have
been arrested by lawsuits and a thicket of Federal laws and
hoops to jump through and a failure of the U.S. Forest Service
to defend those projects.
Those I hear from, regardless of political party, want a
better plan for management of our forests and sustaining our
community. They're not asking for anything unreasonable, just a
plan that's based on science that manages for all the wildlife
species, including the one that's most important to me, which
is the endangered American wage earner.
Unfortunately, mismanagement by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service has led to the decline of species like elk, deer and
multiple species of bird that are dependent on the diversity of
habitat. In the Northwest for generations, use of our forest
for economic activity has been part of who we are. We have
necessarily adopted and changed to become more sustainable and
responsible. That's great.
I've worked with Members of Congress from both parties to
protect common sense in our forest economy. For instance, my
colleague who wasn't able to join us today Kurt Schrader from
Oregon and I are working to keep 35 years of forest and water
protection in place instead of allowing the onerous Forest
Roads Rule from locking up even more of our forest economy.
I've worked with business, labor, Republicans, Democrats on
this issue because make no mistake about it, jobs are at stake,
communities will be affected.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about
the need for better science and more balance in our forest
management practices. For two decades the mismanagement of our
beautiful forests have put them at grave risk of destruction
from disease, insect devastation and catastrophic wildfires.
Just last December the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
admitted during a congressional briefing that managing for one
species only has harmed other wildlife, it hasn't protected the
Spotted Owl and it most certainly hasn't protected the jobs
that our community so desperately needs, so I believe we can do
better. Our wildlife and economy can both be protected.
Treating those two goals as mutually exclusive simply hasn't
worked. Our forests and our communities are sounding the alarm
and it's time for us to listen, so with that I look forward to
the testimony.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Herrera Beutler follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Jamie Herrera Beutler,
a Representative in Congress from the State of Washington
I want to welcome everyone to my home, Southwest Washington.
I'd like to start by recognizing those elected officials who took
the time to join us today.
Today we consider the policies and practices that affect our
forests, wildlife, economy, and entire communities in this region.
Those things make up our identity. And folks across the spectrum are
recognizing that those things that we value are in jeopardy.
Almost twenty years ago, the Northwest Forest Plan was written into
law. The stated goals of the plan were laudable: balance a healthy
forest economy with the protection of wildlife.
But before a new plan is adopted that doubles-down on the current
practices, we need an honest, science-based assessment of how they have
worked over the last 2 decades.
What we'll hear today will be based on science, expert analysis,
and the testimony of community members who have been left to deal with
consequences of these policies. I believe what we'll hear is that
reality has been far different from what even the plan's architects
intended.
Former U.S. Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas was a primary
author of the Northwest Forest Plan. Ten years after, he stated that
the plan is not working and has failed to fulfill its promise to the
people, as well as the environment. He stated: ``I've got real terrible
concern whether we are taking care of the land.''
Here's what we've seen: federal forests like the Gifford Pinchot
have been locked away from economic activity, and species like the
Spotted Owl have plummeted in number. Setting aside 80% of our forests
in some places have still failed to protect the Spotted Owl.
Plans to undertake environmentally sound forest harvest projects,
even very small projects, have been successfully arrested by lawsuits
and a thicket of federal laws and hoops to jump through, and a failure
of the U.S. Forest Service to defend these projects.
Those who I hear from, regardless of political party, want a new
plan for managing our forests and sustaining our communities. They're
not asking for anything unreasonable; just a plan based on science that
manages for all of the wildlife species. Unfortunately, mismanagement
by the US Fish and Wildlife Service has led to the decline in species
like deer, elk, and multiple species of birds that are dependent on
diversity of forest habitat.
In the northwest for generations, use of our forests for economic
activity has been part of who we are. That has necessarily adapted and
changed to become more sustainable and responsible. But I have worked
with Members of Congress from both parties to protect common sense in
our forest economy. For instance, my friend Kurt Schrader from Oregon
and I are working hard to keep 35 years of forest and water protection
in place, instead of allowing the onerous ``Forest Roads Rule'' from
further locking up our forest economy. I've worked with business,
labor, Republicans and Democrats on this issue because, make no mistake
about it, jobs will be lost. Communities will be harmed.
I look forward to from hearing from our witnesses about the need
for better science and more balance in our forest management practices.
For two decades, mismanagement of our beautiful forests have put them
at grave risk of destruction from disease, insect devastation, and
catastrophic wildfire.
Just last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service admitted
during a congressional briefing that managing for one species has
harmed other wildlife. It hasn't protected the Spotted Owl, and it most
certainly hasn't protected the jobs that our community so badly needs.
I believe we can do better. Our wildlife and our economy can be
protected. Treating those two goals as mutually exclusive simply hasn't
worked.
Our forests and our communities are sounding the alarm. It is time
for us to listen and respond.
______
The Chairman. And I do want to remind the audience that--
first of all, let me thank all of you for being here, but this
is an official congressional hearing and for any of you that
would like to submit testimony, we would absolutely welcome
that testimony, and if you have any questions on precisely how
that process comes about, you can contact any of the people up
here that are part of the community. So we look forward to your
testimony. The idea of this Committee is to get testimony from
various people.
We do have a distinguished panel here, and let me introduce
them. First you have, who's already been introduced, The
Honorable Paul Pearce who's the Skamania County Commissioner.
Mr. Tom Fox is the President of the Family Forest Foundation,
and starting from your left to the right--I guess it would be
from my right to the left, which probably I prefer to do it
that way, third we have Dr. Hal Salwasser, Dean of College of
Forestry for Oregon State University; Mr. Steve Mealey, Vice
President of Conservation Boone and Crockett Club; Mr. Kent
Connaughton, Pacific Northwest Regional Forester U.S. Forest
Service; Mr. Mitch Friedman, the Executive Director of
Northwest Ecosystem Alliance; Mr. Ernie Niemi, Senior Economist
of EcoNorthwest; Mr. Kelly Kreps from Kreps Ranch, LLC; and Mr.
Tom Nelson, the Washington Timberlands Manager of the Sierra
Pacific Industries.
Let me explain for those of you that have not testified in
front of the Congressional Committee, first of all, your full
statement will appear in the record, and in every case, I
think, of the statements that I have reviewed, your statements
are longer than five minutes, which is fine, but your full
statement will appear in the record, but you have in front of
you a device that we call a timing light. It's on a five-minute
clock, and I hope that you keep your remarks to five minutes,
and the way that works is, when the green light is on, that
means you're doing extremely well. When the yellow light comes
on, it means you have one minute left, and I'd like you to wrap
up your remarks. And then when the red light comes on, you
really don't want to know what happens at that point. But if
you can confine yourself to that timing light, I'd very much
appreciate it. Obviously, if you're in a thought toward the
end, that discretion will be there, and I certainly do
recognize that.
So with that, let me start the testimony, and I'll
recognize Committee and County Commissioner Paul Pearce. Paul,
you're recognized for five minute.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. PAUL PEARCE, CHAIRMAN, SKAMANIA COUNTY
COMMISSIONER, STEVENSON, WASHINGTON
Mr. Pearce. Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairman
Hastings and Congresswoman Herrera Beutler. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear on behalf of the National Forest Impacted
County Control.
Skamania County is over 90 percent impacted by Federal Land
management. Since the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl we've
witnessed the wholesale destruction of an industry and economy.
From 1970 to 1990 Gifford Pinchot Forest produced on average
350 million board feet of timber yearly. The forest growth rate
is 1.1 million board feet and the mortality rate is 218 million
board feet.
In 1990 there were 1,200 jobs in the Gifford Pinchot, 350
with the Forest Service employees. We had four mills operating
in the county. Today there are few timber jobs and one mill.
They import mostly non-Federal logs from outside the county.
From the Canadian border to mid California you hear the same
stories from national forest impacted counties.
1992 saw Congress pass Owl Guaranteed payments for the
counties and schools hit with the loss of their economy to
allow agencies to plan for resuming some level of sustainable
harvest. This did not happen. SRS/County payments was passed
from 2000 through to the last payment in 2012. The payments
kept the county governments and the schools operating but also
turned many of us into the largest employers in our community.
Skamania's general fund budget this year was reduced from
$14.5 million to $10 million. We face another $4 million cut
next year. Our budget is 80 percent people. We have very little
land available for property tax. Our school districts are
facing a similar fate. Enrollment has dropped by 28 percent
over 20 years. We average 60 percent free and reduced lunch,
which is a key indicator of poverty, and on top of that, three
counties in Oregon currently face insolvency.
With Fish and Wildlife Services' suggestion of doubling
critical habitat from 6 million to 14 million acres, the
counties have simply had enough, especially when the Service
indicates that the greatest peril to the Spotted Owl is from
the Barred Owl. My county in Washington, Douglas County in
Oregon, Siskiyou County in California are the lead counties of
this fight on behalf of all affected communities in our state.
First, the counties have requested of the Secretary a 90-
day extension of the public comment deadline. We've had no
official reply. The Service tells us they will not have their
economic or environmental report done until late May, leaving
barely 30 days to comment only because they moved their
deadline 30 days. Their economic impact report will begin with
this new Critical Habitat and will not look at historical
impacts.
The Service complained an extension is impossible because
they're under court-ordered deadline of November 15th. This is
a gross misstatement of fact, as a quote from the Federal
Register shows. On October 12, 2010, the Court remanded the
2008 Critical Habitat rule and adopted the Service's proposed
schedule to issue a new rule for public comment by November 15,
2011, and a final rule by November 15, 2012.
The Service created the schedule, missed the deadline for
public comment by seven months, moved the deadline 30 days and
can certainly move the comment deadline an additional 90 days.
Second, the counties have no faith in this economic study
and have commissioned our own at the cost of the county. In the
'92 Final Plan, the Service estimated that only 27,000 jobs
would be lost. Oregon alone has lost in excess of 40,000. The
estimated impact to the Federal Treasury is $50 million per
year. The number is closer to $700 million per year.
Third, this morning the counties filed for legal
recognition as cooperating agencies on the final habitat plan.
We're closer to the social and economic issues surrounding this
proposal than any other Federal agency which would, without our
expertise, be acting in a vacuum again. I want to note that
this Critical Habitat Plan would make the provisions of
Chairman Hastings' bill impossible to implement across the
landscape, and as said by Chairman Hastings', DNR has 23
percent of the acreage and harvests 465 percent of the volume.
Finally, as I speak to public lands impacted, County
Commissioners, I find that no matter their political
persuasion, for the most part they have the same message: No
more wilderness or other set-asides of these public lands until
we've settled the active management and significant economic
questions before us.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for your testimony,
Commissioner Pearce.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pearce follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Paul Pearce, Commissioner, Skamania County,
Washington, on behalf of the National Forest Counties and Schools
Coalition
Good morning Chairman Hastings and Congresswoman Herrera Beutler.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you as National Forest
Counties and Schools Coalition Vice President, NACo's Public Lands
Steering Committee Vice Chair, and most importantly as the Chair of the
Skamania County Board of Commissioners, a county 90% impacted by
Federal Land management.
Since the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl we have witnessed the
wholesale destruction of an industry and economy. From 1970 to 1990
Gifford Pinchot Forest alone produced on averaged 350 million board
feet of timber yearly. The forests mortality rate is 218 million board
feet and the growth rate is 1.1 billion board feet. Harvest even at
that level barely surpassed the mortality rate.
Beginning in 1992 with Critical Habitat, followed by the 1994
Northwest Forest Plan we saw the continued loss of timber jobs and
infrastructure at an incredible rate. In 1990 there were 1200 jobs on
the Gifford Pinchot Forest, 350 of them were forest service employees.
There were four full time mills operating in my county alone.
Today there are few timber jobs and only one full time mill. And
they truck logs in, mostly from non-federal lands. You'll hear the same
stories from Counties containing National Forests from the Canadian
border to mid California.
Congress passed Owl Guarantee payments for those counties and
schools hit with the loss of their entire economy so as to allow
agencies to get their act together resuming some level of sustainable
harvest. This did not happen and SRS/County Payments was passed from
2000 through this last payment in 2012. These payments kept the county
Governments and the Schools operating but also turned us into the
largest employers.
Our general fund budget for 2012 was cut from 14.5 million to 10
million. We face another 4 million cut in 2013. Like most public land
counties we only have a small sliver of land available for property
tax. Our school districts are facing a similar fate. Enrollment has
dropped by 28% over 20 years. We average 60 percent free and reduced
lunch, a key indicator of poverty. Our unemployment rate is still near
12% with an underemployment rate much higher.
Three counties in Oregon face insolvency. These statistics are true
for the highly public land dependant counties in all three states and
across the country.
So as the Service now suggests doubling Critical Habitat from 6
million to 14 million acres in Washington, Oregon and California the
counties have simply had enough. Especially when the Services indicates
that the greatest peril to the Spotted Owl is from the Barred Owl.
Skamania County in Washington, Douglas County in Oregon and
Siskiyou County in California are the leads for their sister counties.
We have requested a 90 day extension of the public comment deadline. We
have had no official reply to as yet.
The Service tells us they will not have their economic or
environmental reports done until late May which leaves barely 30 days
to reply. We are informed that their economic impact report will begin
on the day this new Critical Habitat is final and will not look at
historic impacts.
Members of the Service unofficially complain that an extension is
impossible because they are under a court ordered deadline of November
15th. This is a gross misstatement of fact
I quote from the federal register at page 1408:
``On October 12, 2010, the Court remanded the 2008 critical habitat
designation. . .and adopted the Service's proposed schedule to issue a
new proposed revised critical habitat rule for public comment by
November 15, 2011, and a final rule by November 15, 2012. . ..''
The Service created the schedule then missed the deadline for
public comment by seven months. They can certainly move the other
deadlines by 90 days.
The Counties have no faith in the economic study and have
commissioned our own. In the 1992 Final Plan at page 1815 the Service
makes a number of estimates as to the impacts of the listing and
critical habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl. They estimate that only
27,000 jobs would be lost stating that this was only 3% of timber
related jobs nationwide; as if the owl were listed nationwide. We know
that Oregon alone lost in excess of 40,000. They further estimate the
impact to the federal treasury at $50 million per year. We know based
on actual payments prior to the listing that this number is closer to
$700 million per year.
Also the three counties I mentioned above have this morning filed
for Cooperating Agency status on the final plan on behalf of all
affected counties.
This Critical Habitat makes the provisions of Chairman Hastings'
``Federal Forests County Revenue, Schools, and Jobs Act of 2012'' House
Bill 4109 impossible to implement across the landscape of these Owl
impacted Forests.
Timber harvest by the Forest Service and BLM is abysmal. Department
of Natural Resources in Washington State manages the counties timber
lands. DNR has a Habitat Conservation Plan including the Spotted Owl.
DNR manages 2.2 million acres. The Forest Service 9.3 million. From
2008 through 2010 DNR sustainably harvested 1.8 billion board feet of
timber. The Forest Service harvested 387 million board feet. DNR. . .at
23% of the acreage. . .harvested 465% of the volume as compared to the
forest service.
Finally as I speak to public lands impacted County Commissioners I
find that no matter their political persuasion; for the most part they
have the same message. No more wilderness, wilderness like, roadless,
roadless like, natural preserves or other set asides, of these public
lands until we have settled the active management, and significant
economic questions before us.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call on Mr. Tom Fox, the President
of the Family Forest Foundation.
Mr. Fox, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF TOM FOX, PRESIDENT,
FAMILY FOREST FOUNDATION, ETHEL, WASHINGTON
Mr. Fox. Thank you.
In Washington state there are 215,000 family forest
landowners. Although the parcel size is the average of 40
acres, family forests account for over 20 percent of the 16
million acres of forest land in the State of Washington. Family
forests are working for us, managed and nurtured with the care
and attention that only personal commitment and stewardship and
a unique love of the land.
Family forests generate nearly one-third of the state
timber harvest, contributing to the economic, social and
environmental health of the rural communities, but certain
implications of the ESA and the failed Federal policy are
forcing small landowners out of business.
Congress amended the ESA in 1986 to mitigate the impacts of
the Act by creating Section 10. Under the Habitat Conservation
Planning process you're supposed to be able to negotiate a plan
with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and National Marine Fishery
Services to provide for the economic viability of the landowner
and the habitat species need. This has worked OK for industrial
landowners in the State of Washington to the extent that there
are four companies that have HCP.
The State of Washington State Lands has an HCP and the DNR
Forest and Fish HCP. Most of these HCPs are working well, but
from the prospect of most family forest landowners, the HCP,
the Forest and Fish HCP is not working very well and is not
meeting major portions of the agreement such as developing low
effect prescriptions, providing adequate funding for the
forestry occurring easement, which is mitigation for the taking
that was promised to small landowners in the agreement.
In 1997 the Federal Government came to four small forest
landowners and asked them to do HCPs. In 2004 I was the only
family forest landowner out of the original four that was
successful after six years of working with the Services and
paying an eight-year HCP on my 45 acres of family forest. I
have a Safe Harbor Agreement, a conservation agreement with
assurances and a low fixed HCP.
In 1997, shortly after the original four began their
individual HCPs, the Services realized its small forest
landowners were having a hard time participating and that the
significant work load for the services, so this U.S. Fish and
Wildlife came to Lewis County government and a small group of
family forest Landowners in Lewis County to develop and to
participate in a pilot program that would develop a science-
based, county-wide programmatic HCP for small landowners. It
was a voluntary process. People that didn't want to participate
didn't have to.
In 2007, ten years later, after investing over $4 million
in public and private funds and during countless meetings,
participating in independent scientific review, the Family
Forest Foundation in those counties submitted the Family Forest
Habitat Conservation Plan. The response from the Services was
to sit on the application for an additional three-and-a-half
years before issuing a Notice of Receipt, not a Notice of
Intent but a Notice of Receipt. I requested public comment on
the proposal in early 2011.
Halfway through 2012, nearly 15 years later, the process of
the process, the Service has yet to render a written decision.
Requests from Lewis County and the Family Forest Foundation on
the written comments have been ignored. This is clearly a
conflict of the intent of Section 10 of ESA.
The recent U.S. proposal to shotgun Barred Owls to save
endangered Spotted Owl cousins defies common sense, logic and
cross into a murky moral morass of human playing God. This full
notion that we should and can try to shoot and control these
species with a shotgun is ludicrous.
Mr. Chairman, this probably has been made even worse by
U.S. Fish and Wildlife's recent Spotted Owl designation of
critical area habitat on 150 acres of private forest land.
Also, with the forest land not having any harvest of the larger
trees, we've lost our milling infrastructure and small
landowners are now forced to grow their trees on a shorter
rotation.
Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure how to address this problem, but
we're hoping that Congress can help us fix it. At a minimum I
would like to recommend creating an accountability and
appointing an omnibus coupled with an independent scientific
review team, change agency culture and staff in addition to
providing adequate fundings and combining two ESA
responsibilities for two agencies into one.
Thank you very much for allowing me to speak.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Fox. I appreciate
your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Fox follows:]
Statement of Tom Fox, President, Family Forest Foundation
Sadly, too many politicians and agency administrators are unaware
that not all forest land is owned by an industrial company, a public
agency, or a Native American tribe. Far from that is the truth. In
Washington State there are over 215,000 family forest landowners that
own nearly 20% of the state's 16.1 million acres of commercial forest
land. Nationwide, the number is 59%. These family-owned forests are
nurtured and managed with the care and attention that comes only with
personal ownership and love of the land. These family forests
contribute immensely to the economic, social and environmental health
of local communities.
One might logically believe that fostering the vitality and
vibrancy of family forests would be an imperative goal of our nation's
federal forest management policies. If in fact that is true, our
federal forest policies of the last three decades have failed
miserably, resulting in the endangering of jobs, forests and species.
In this testimony I will describe 1.The failed Family Forest
Habitat Conservation Plan (FFHCP), 2. The effects of the failed federal
agencies policies, and 3.The effects of the failed Northwest Forest
plan and it economic and social ramifications to the rural counties in
which these forests are located.
The first is an example of our federal agencies stubborn refusal to
embrace and fully employ the processes embedded in the HCP provisions
of the Endangered Species Act to support and incentivize ownership and
sustainable management of family forests.
Designating additional acres of critical habitat for the Northern
Spotted Owl (NSO) as the U.S Fish and Wildlife suggest in their current
public registry notice is the wrong path to follow. That type of action
will only create disincentives for landowners to grow and maintain NSO
or for that matter any type of species habitat. Forest land owners are
getting weary of the federal services inability to work cooperatively
with them, and see this current habitat designation as another
misguided policy that will backfire causing additional species habitat
loss across the landscape.
Until recently, a more rational approach to species conservation
was utilized by the Services and landowners. Under the Habitat
Conservation Planning (HCP) process landowners and Services staff
negotiated numerous conservation plans that allowed sustainable forest
management while creating and maintaining species habitat.
In 1997, the Services invited a small dedicated group of family
forest landowners in SW Washington State to participate in developing
an HCP on their individual forest ownership. Four family forest
landowners stepped up to work with the services at the services
request. I was the only family forest landowner out of the original
four in that was successful and endured the over 6 years of working
with the services in 2004 in obtaining a HCP for my then 144 acres of
forest land in SW Washington. In fact I believe I am the only family
forest landowner in the nation that has been successful in receiving a
multi-species 80 year HCP in 2004 after working with the Services for
over 6 years. My forest land is named the Tagshinny Tree Farm, which is
a Gallic term that meaning ``Home of the Fox''. Our agreement includes
a combination of a Safe Harbor Agreement (SHA) that covers the NSO,
Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) with USFW, and
a Low Effects HCP (LEHCP) with NOAA.
The reasons I was determined to get my HCP was because I wanted to
provide my family with a long term forest management plan into the
future that provided certainty to my family. But also I and my family
truly want to provide certainty for the species that currently did or
could inhabit my land in the future. I didn't want to be managing my
forest land in the fear of having ESA species on my ownership but
rather I wanted to be able to welcome any and all species that lived or
came on my ownership. I had seen the ESA listing in the 1990's when the
NSO was listed and how it had affected the psyche of forest landowners
by driving them to ``Manage by Fear''. Fear that a species would
inhabit their property and that their property and investment would
become worthless. Also fear that if they created and providing habit
for ESA listed species on their property they would be punished for
doing the right thing.
My children as many other forest land owner's children have been
discouraged by what they see as a very negative image of being a forest
landowner that continues to be betrayed by many out of touch
environmental organizations. The continued lies and miss-truths that
those groups have and continue to spread have poisoned future
generations minds. The continual misrepresentation of forest landowners
has twisted the truth to a point where many heirs don't want anything
to do with forest ownership as they have been brainwashed that growing
and then harvesting trees in a sustainable manner is a bad thing.
In 1997 after the four original forest landowners in Lewis County
Washington stepped up to work with the Services it quickly became
apparent to the Services that they didn't have the staff or ability to
take on the HCP planning process on a one on one bases with family
forest landowners. So the Services suggested that the Family Forest
Foundation (FFF), Lewis County government work with the services and
the family forest landowner in that county to develop a County wide
programmatic HCP. The concept was that Lewis County would be the
permittee of the HCP and willing landowners would be included into the
plan with the use of a certificate of inclusion. Landowner
participation into the HCP would be on a volunteer basis and those
landowners that were not interested in participating would simply
continue to follow the current set of rules and regulation that they
were already following. The Forest and Fish agreement which is the
state wide HCP that was implemented in 2000 included a clause that
allowed landowners that entered into HCP's to replace portions of the
state wide HCP with their negotiated prescriptions. After investing
over $4 million of public and private funds, enduring countless
meetings and participating in independent scientific review processes
the Family Forest Foundation in cooperation with Lewis County submitted
the Family Forest Habitat Conservation Plan (FFHCP) to the Services in
2007. After sitting on the application for nearly three and a half
years the Services issued a Notice of Receipt (NOR) and requested
public comment on the proposal in early 2011. Lewis County and the FFF
have not received any communications from the services about the
results of the NOR. Lewis county and the FFF have repeatedly requested
copies of the NOR comments that were submitted, but the Services refuse
to allow us copies of the written comments. How and why have the
services been allowed to stonewall us and not provide us with that
information? We even filed a FOIA request in an attempt to find out the
breath of the comments submitted on the NOR but the services have only
provided us with minimal amounts of information. The Services are
clearly not following the intent of Section 10 of the ESA or the
written policies of the Services as stated in the HCP Handbook. When
and who is going to make the Services accountable? The FFHCP, if
implemented, could provide an enormous incentive to Lewis County
landowners to help encourage them to keep growing trees while providing
quality species habitat across the landscape rather than develop their
land to other nonforest uses. Family forest landowners are struggling
to stay on the landscape and need an alternative to the ``one size fits
all'' Forest and Fish agreement, like the customized FFHCP if they are
to continue to keep their land in forests.
I believe the Services are negligent in their duty by not working
with Lewis County and willing landowners to develop the FFHCP. Rather
they undermine and demoralize the very land owners they are charged to
work with. Additionally the Services are negligent in their duty to the
species by not understanding that continuing to not provide incentives
and alternatives that the ESA is designed to provide only drives
landowners to not manage their property for increased species habitat.
I do believe that sustainable working forests are compatible with
species protection but a landowner that is growing a crop for 50-70
years needs to have some level of certainty in order to feel
comfortable about continuing to invest in forest ownership for decades.
Here we are almost half way through 2012 and the Services to date
have yet to render a decision on the FFHCP. Off the record we have been
told that there will be no more forestry HCP's for coverage of aquatic
species on private lands in Washington State because of the state wide
Forest and Fish HCP agreement. We were also told by the Services that
family forest landowners don't need a HCP because we don't have any ESA
species issues. Now we have the Services wanting to designate
additional NSO habitat on private land. Clearly, the HCP process in
this region is broken. It's not that the ESA has changed, but rather
it's because the Services staff and leadership has changed and they
have decided they don't want to do HCP's with family forest landowners
in Washington State. They don't want to abide by the ESA as it was
intended to be implemented. They have decided in some dark room
somewhere that they are not going to work with landowners that are
interested in doing HCP's. Rather the current staff and leadership have
taken upon themselves to basically rewrite the ESA and deny what is
rightly due willing landowner. We need new leadership in these agencies
that will work with and not against forest landowners with voluntary
incentive based solutions. Putting a gun to our heads demanding more of
our forests is not going to work. When are you the Congress going to
hold these out of control bureaucrats accountable for their actions?
Aquatic species conservation in Region 1 (Washington, Oregon and
Idaho) is an enigma to say the least. Salmon lead the list of species
under protection and spend the majority of their life cycle in the
ocean. As an example when they swim inland up the Columbia River
regulations vary greatly depending on the direction of travel. If the
fish swims into Washington State the regulatory rule book for aquatic
species conservation is four inches thick. Site potential tree height
buffers as wide as 200' protect even water that doesn't have fish but
could in the future be potential fish habitat. If the species swims
south into Oregon the rules are considerably less, and if the fish can
make their way past all the dams to their home in Idaho the regulations
are even less.
Where is the credit for Washington forest landowners for stepping
up and agreeing to the Forest and Fish agreement HCP? The riparian
buffers that are being left along all the streams in Washington State
in perpetuity should be considered as available habitat for the NSO.
Washington's agreement is called the ``Forest and Fish Agreement'' and
as such does and will forever provide habitat for many upland species
and should be part of the equation when calculating future available
habitat for the NSO.
In the last 12 years since the NW Forest Plan (NWFP) implementation
the Forest Service has done a dismal job of meeting their allowable cut
goals of the plan only producing 2% of what was agreed to in the NWFP.
Continued pressure and threat of lawsuits from out of touch enviro
groups have paralyzed the Forest Service. Comparing the Washington
State DNR state lands average return of almost $400 per thousand board
feet to the Forest Service's average return to the US Treasury of less
than $10 per thousand board feet, one has to conclude that Forest
Service management has been a disaster. As a result of the Forest
Service's inability to harvest the timber that they should be
harvesting the large log milling infrastructure of the state has been
decimated by the lack of available timber volume. Consequently private
forest landowners in Washington State don't have any place to sell
their large logs. Previously, growing your timber older, larger, and
longer was better. Better in the since that a landowner would get more
for their logs at the mill and they could grow bigger and better
habitat for the species. But because of the lack of milling options
today landowners actually are penalized and get paid less for their
larger logs. This phenomenon is driving landowners to grow their tree
on a shorter rotation or be punished by reduced income for growing a
longer rotation. In the past many family forest landowners enjoyed and
were more than willing to grow their trees to 70 or 80 years of age
creating older succession type timber. Today with the lack of large log
milling infrastructure the incentive to grow timber on a longer
rotation has disappeared.
From the perspective of private forestland owners, federally driven
constraints on management of forests both private and government
controlled has been a dismal failure. Evidence the serious increase in
mill closures since 1990 reported by Ehinger and Associates. Mill
closures have mostly been caused by drastically reduced National Forest
timber sales due to the listing of the NSO. With this precipitous drop
in milling infrastructure thousands of jobs have been lost and the NSO
has not been recovering in numbers or increased its range.
Private forest landowners have been forced to stop growing what
could have been ideal NSO forest habitat. Large log sawmills are
closing and the forest industry has had to retool to cut smaller, more
uniform saw logs to remain competitive in the global marketplace. The
loss of a sustainable supply of large saw logs from USFS lands forced
the milling industry to adapt to milling only smaller logs; logs which
come from smaller trees, younger forests. These younger forests,
smaller trees, and reduced NSO habitat are then a direct result of the
failure of the NSO Recovery Plan!! Evidence all of the habitat
destruction caused by stand replacement wildfire that has occurred on
USFS lands since 1990. Evidence the Arizona and Colorado wildfires
burning out of control today, May 2012! Forests are dynamic and ever
changing; so by them setting aside or ``preserving them in perpetuity''
does not guarantee the `banking' of that habitat.
By restricting USNF timber sales of large logs, in a misdirected
attempt to save the owl, the government agencies have actually reduced
the available acreage of potential NSO habitat except on Habitat
Conservation Plan (HCP) Lands.
Over time the cumulative effects of increasing regulatory
constraints on forest management reduce yield and the incentive for
private forest landowners to continue providing the goods and services
society has come to expect from them (clean air, water, wood products,
tax receipts, etc.) Private forestlands in the United States exist in
our capitalist, democratic country because of the rights bestowed us in
our US Constitution. The incentive to profit from the production of
forest products is what drives investment in forestland. This is the
American way!
If the profit motive is taken away by the piling on of more and
more regulations, ultimately these ever increasing constraints will
eventually render forest management uneconomic and these forestlands
will be converted to other uses that provide greater economic
opportunity. These alternative uses normally degrade wildlife habitat
quality from that provided by managed forests.
There are ways to overcome these blunders.
Promote HCP's; individual or programmatic (provide
fast track templates)
Include economic analysis of costs in terms of
harvest yields and other costs
Mitigate these losses and compensate for government
takings of private property
Minimize constraints on private lands
Promote incentives to provide habitat
Below is information that shows the impact on Washington's working
forest and was derived from the State Wide Data Base. In summary the
information below shows that there are currently a total of 1,615
landowners that own 10 acres or more that would be affected by the
additional 150,000 acres of habitat that USFW is currently proposing.
The economic effects, in an already dismal employment picture, of
increasing the critical habitat designation will be the further
crippling of already struggling rural counties.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.002
.epsFor every 1,000 acres of working forest 12 jobs are supported
paying $523,000 in wages and $19,000 in taxes and fees, annually.
After the proposed exclusions of HCPs and other federal agreements,
nearly 150,000 acres of privately owned land remains within the federal
critical habitat designation in Washington State.
150,000 acres of working forests supports 1,800 jobs.
150,000 acres of working forests impacts 1,615
landowners.
150,000 acres of working forests produces $2.1
million in annual sales
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.003
.epsThe premise underlying the Services decision to shoot sea lions
to save salmon was shaky at best. The more recent decision to shotgun
barred owls to save its endangered spotted owl cousin defies common
sense, logic and crosses into a murky moral morass where humans attempt
to play god and choose which cousin shall survive. So what about the
fact that spotted owls and barred owls are now cross breeding. How will
the services shooters know if it's a spotted, barred or spard owl. This
whole notion that we can control these species with a shot gun is
ridiculous.
Natural resource agency consolidation needs to be a top priority of
the Congress. Negotiating a HCP with two different agencies with two
different policies is mind boggling. All they do is point fingers at
each other and won't cooperate with you or each other. I believe the
Congress should cut their budgets, consolidate agencies and develop an
all lands approach to species conservation!
If we can't accomplish some major changes to the current system
then we can look forward to a future where the nights are spent shot
gunning innocent barred owls and we can watch the further fragmentation
of family forest habitat by day.
Scientific efforts in political processes have taken a beating. We
clearly lack processes where by the preponderance of scientific
information can move forward while acknowledging dissenting opinions in
a transparent manner. Instead scientific approaches fail in stakeholder
processes built on consensus models where political posturing is
confused for scientific debate and progress is measured in years and
strict adherence to protocol. The effect of this confusion is never
more evident that in the Interdisciplinary Team review process
currently utilized in the implementation our State's Forest Practices
HCP. This costly and ungainly process entails representatives from
USFWS, NOAA Fisheries, Ecology, Washington Department of Fish and
Wildlife, affected Tribes and is spearheaded by the Department of
Natural Resources Forest Practices forester. Any deviation from the
current Forest Practice rule requires a visit from and ID team to
determine whether or not the proposed deviation provides ``equivalent
function'' to the current rule. These determinations often mire down in
agency infighting over whose fish is the best fish etc., and rarely
improve the proposed forest practice while spending thousands of scare
resource dollars per visit.
The time for regulation by committee has passed. We simply cannot
afford this sort of agency redundancy in order for our regulatory
system to function correctly. Forest practice foresters are highly
qualified individuals well equipped to make functional determinations
in the field. If additional resources are needed to make such
determinations then field foresters can reach out to qualified resource
professionals on a case by case basis.
Federal critical habitat designation is the wrong conservation
mechanism for private forestlands. Washington's private forests are the
economic engine of the forest industry. You need to remove federal
critical habitat designation on private working forest lands;
otherwise, we will destroy the very landowners that should be
encouraged to stay on the landscape. If the landowner and working
forests become extinct none of the species will survive.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call on Dr. Hal Salwasser, Dean of
the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and let me
explain why you are speaking this way. You will notice a little
bit of an accident and there's some question on what the
accident was. Some of your friends said it was other activity.
You said you fell, so we'll take your word for it. At any rate,
you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF HAL SALWASSER, PH.D., CHERYL RAMBERG AND ALLYN C.
FORD DEAN, COLLEGE OF FORESTRY, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY,
CORVALLIS, OREGON
Dr. Salwasser. Thank you, Chairman Hastings and
Representative Herrera Beutler. I'm Hal Salwasser. I'm
testifying here today as a private citizen. I have almost 20
years of experience, starting as a wildlife ecologist in
California and culminating as a senior executive in the
Washington office, the Northern Rockies and California. For the
past three decades I've been engaged with an agency trying to
change in response to changing societal values and science.
If I were to give what I have to say today a title it would
be Restoring Federal Forests for Prosperity in the American
West. In my brief time I'm going to touch on four things that
are expanded upon in my written testimony. The first is the
Grand Societal Resource Challenge--Meeting the needs of 30
percent more people by mid-century with no more land or water
than we have now and probably less access to fossil
hydrocarbon. The Economist call this the 9 Billion People
Challenge. It translates here in the Pacific Northwest to 30
percent more people in the Nation to 30 percent and global with
30 percent.
The second is the problem in the west. Western Federal
forest lands no longer make significant contributions to the
grand challenge for natural resources at any geographic scale.
They no longer serve their statutory purposes. They're becoming
a substantial liability to the states, their rural communities
and American taxpayers and they are now a growing threat to
adjoining landowners due to vulnerability, to fire, insects and
disease.
Third thing is the inadequacy of current legislative
approaches. While well intended, recent legislative proposals
do not address the larger problems of statutory dissonance,
governance dysfunction and long-term sustainability of new
directions. The trees keep growing and dying, victims of client
change, invasive species, uncharacteristic fire, insects and
insufficient funds or social license to change course.
My last theme is Options Forward. Sooner or later society
has to confront the consequences of Federal forest land
management dysfunction, declining land, rising health costs,
poverty stricken rural America, hanging on through Federal
payments because the Nation refuses to empower the responsible
agencies to sustainably use public lands and their natural
resources to generate wealth and jobs while improving
environmental benefits. Meanwhile, the nation's dependence on
foreign natural resources increases, so it's past time to try
some novel grand experiments.
And here are some that are being talked about right now:
The first is technical and managerial, and the examples are the
pilots being done on Oregon and California lands in southern
Oregon, the Johnson Franklin ecological restoration project.
The problem with these is that they don't address the
fundamental ill, the lack of clarity on a mission.
There are also some discussions about changes in
governance. Dan Kemmis, for example, suggests local
collaboratives, but it's going to take Cabinet or Congressional
level authority to make those work. Several people have
suggested a Presidential commission with broad authority to
suggest maybe changes in policy. In my view that would merely
kick the can down the road. What is necessary is congressional
clarification of the statutory purposes and clear roadblocks to
effectiveness. The core issue is not failed Federal forest
policies, nor is it failing Federal agency. It's failure of
Federal forest laws to address the environmental economic and
community aspirations of western states.
The last is to transfer the alliance to somebody else to
manage without the current Federal policy hurdles. Oregon
congressional delegation has proposed transferring some of the
BLM lands to a trust. Others have suggested to transfer them
back to the original stewards, the tribes, who have the
capacity in many places and can provide the kind of protection
and integrated management that meets their needs as well as
other people.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify and I look
forward to further discussions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Dr. Salwasser.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Salwasser follows:]
Statement of Hal Salwasser, Cheryl Ramberg and Allyn C. Ford Dean,
College of Forestry, Oregon State University
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am Hal Salwasser, Cheryl Ramberg and Allyn C. Ford Dean of the
College of Forestry at Oregon State University. I testify today as a
private citizen, with over 20 years of experience with the US Forest
Service, starting as a wildlife ecologist in California and culminating
as a Senior Executive. I was the Director of New Perspectives and
Ecosystem Management in the Washington Office, Regional Forester in the
Northern Region and Director of the Pacific Southwest Research Station
in California. In my latter two roles I provided executive guidance to
the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project and the
Framework for Revising National Forest Plans in the Sierra Nevada.
During the first decade of the 21st century, I served on the National
Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry and was chair from 2003-
2005. I have been Dean at OSU since 2000.
For the past three decades I have been engaged with an agency
trying to change in response to changing societal values and science,
first as one of its leaders and later as a concerned colleague and
citizen. If I were to give what I have to say today a title it would be
this:
Restoring Federal Forests for Prosperity in the American West
In my brief time here I will talk about four themes that, in my
experience are relevant to your task:
The Grand Societal Resource Challenge--Meeting the needs of 30%
more people by mid-century with no more land or water than we have now
and perhaps less access to fossil hydrocarbon: the 9 Billion People
Challenge (30% more in PNW, 30% more in US, 30% more in world).
The Problem in the West--Western federal forestlands no longer make
significant contributions to the grand challenge for natural resources;
they no longer serve their statutory purposes; they are becoming a
substantial liability to the states, their rural communities and
American taxpayers; and they are a growing threat to adjoining
landowners due to vulnerability to fire, insects and disease.
The Inadequacy of Current Legislative Approaches--While well
intended, recent legislative proposals do not address larger problems
of statutory dissonance, governance dysfunction, and long-term
sustainability of new directions. The trees just keep growing and
dying, victims of climate change, invasive species, uncharacteristic
wildfires, insect outbreaks and insufficient funds or social license to
change course.
Options Forward--Sooner or later society must confront the
consequences of federal forestland management dysfunction, e.g.,
declining land health, rising costs, a poverty stricken rural America
hanging on through federal payments because the nation refuses to
empower the responsible agencies to sustainably use public lands and
their natural resources to generate wealth and jobs while improving
environmental benefits. Meanwhile the nation's dependence on foreign
natural resources increases. It is past time to try some novel grand
``experiments.'' The following are among those suggested:
Technical/managerial, e.g., Franklin/Johnson,
ecological restoration emphasis; but this will not address
underlying problem of lack of clarity on agency mission
Governance, e.g., Kemmis, local collaborative; but it
will take Secretary or Congressional authorization
Presidential Commission with broad authority to
suggest major change in policy (like the recent Entitlements/
Deficits Commission); to me this just kicks the can down the
road;
Congressional clarification of the statutory purposes
and to clear roadblocks to effectiveness; the core issue here
is not failed federal forest policies, not is it failing
federal forest agencies. It is the failure of a suite of
federal laws to address the environmental, economic and
community aspirations of those whose lives are so deeply
affected by what happens on federal forests. Only Congressional
action can fix this.
Transfer the lands to someone else to manage without
current federal policy hurdles, e.g., land trust or tribes with
capacity--the original stewards, or at minimum charter as
appropriate to provide anchor forests for protection of tribal
forest values; this is a slippery slope that once started could
end up with divestiture of federal lands outside
Congressionally designated Wilderness Areas, National
Monuments, and Wild and Scenic Rivers.
Context: The 9 Billion Challenge
We live in a world that has twice as many humans as when I was a
kid; I am 66. We humans consume more space and resources and produce
more pollutants than many ecosystems can sustain over the long term. To
support this many people has required re-plumbing river systems,
massive conversion of forests, woodlands and grasslands to agriculture,
development of hard infrastructure, depletion of marine resources, and
exhaustive mining of minerals and hydrocarbons. In the US, we thrive
off the material production of others, often in exploitive ways. And,
we tolerate a widening gap between the truly wealthy and the truly
poor, a social justice problem that belies our rhetoric about equality.
We are clearly not on a sustainable trajectory, let alone poised to
handle 9-10 billion humans. But that is only the dark side. How about
the upside?
Most humans now live longer. Most are healthier. Many are better
educated. We have not exhausted all renewable natural resources due to
sustainable, science-informed professional management. These statements
are not true for all people or resources, but things are better in many
ways than just 50 years ago. In other words, things are not as bad as
they might have been. So, where do forest management and forest and
other natural resource professionals fit in this complex picture?
Those now in their 20s and early 30s will be asked to meet the
needs of 30% more people before their careers are over; as The
Economist put it last year, addressing the 9 billion people question.
They will be expected to do this with no more forested land than now
exists, perhaps even with less. Using much of that land to grow a
renewable material and provide substantial ecosystem service benefits
in economically feasible and socially acceptable ways will be critical
to future human well-being. Meeting the challenge will require highly
skilled and motivated professionals. Producing these individuals and
the discoveries that will help them be successful is our business at
America's Land Grant Universities.
But merely meeting the material needs of a growing human
population, while necessary, will not be sufficient. Social and
environmental justice must be part of the future to prevent societies
from tearing themselves asunder, just as we see today where those needs
are lacking. Future industrialized societies must also transition from
a hydrocarbon-dependent economy to a carbohydrate-augmented economy,
and not just in what we eat, wear and how we travel. Wood and cellulose
will be major factors in that transition. So will optimizing every acre
of forest for its best service to society, not every acre for wood but
more than we currently employ in the U.S. Optimally all forests, local
to global, should have science-informed, owner-values based
professional management. That will not come from those who believe
forests should be managed only for wood or those who believe they
should be left to nature. The former is socially and environmentally
unacceptable in our nation and in many others and the latter option
disappeared with population growth and affluence enabled by the advent
of agriculture 10,000 years ago, though some still live in denial of
the reality of what it takes to support so many people on planet earth.
So, why focus on western U.S. federal forests? They are not
industrial forests, where wood production takes precedence in desired
outcomes. A major reason is they dominate the Western forest scene and
they no longer play productive roles for meeting the grand societal
challenges of the 21st century at any geographic scale from local to
global. Further, what happens on federal forests affects others in more
ways than many people think. I suspect few urbanites realize the
conditions of ``their'' federal forests threaten other nearby
landowners and communities and that lack of management is the reason.
The Western Federal Forest Case
Western states have lived with federal management of almost half to
nearly all their forestland estate for over 100 years. Those forests
have shaped much of what Westerners and others think about forestry and
their states, not all, of course, but much. Federal forests have always
been the West's preeminent watersheds; this will continue far into the
future. They also are and will continue to be some of the West's
richest habitats for native plants and animals, prominent among them
Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, aspen, oaks, trout, salmon, elk, deer,
bears and an occasional owl or wolf.
Over time, federal forests have lost a few native species, such as
grizzlies and gray wolves which are now returning to a small part of
their original range and they have become significant recreation and
tourism assets. For a brief interlude, from around 1950-1990, Western
federal forests delivered nearly a quarter of the nation's softwood
lumber and panel production, and they supported hundreds of local rural
communities and hundreds of thousands of jobs related to forest
resources, significant sources for rural community vitality and
prosperity and, because wood products are in traded sector economies,
urban ones as well.
Many, but not all, of the economic, environmental and community
benefits from federal forests remain; timber supply and its associated
jobs and wealth creation are greatly reduced. But now, due to lack of
sustainable wealth creation from renewable resources, rising costs of
fire management, threats to private, state and tribal forests from
wildfires and insect and pest outbreaks and loss of wood processing
infrastructure, federal forests are becoming a substantial liability to
rural communities, western states, American taxpayers, and, in many
places, non-federal timberlands. These are all unintended consequences
of how environmental laws suited to the 1970s are interpreted and
implemented, most notably the Endangered Species Act and the Clean
Water Act.
The current costs of holding federal forests as a government
managed public trust far exceed the revenues generated, and expenses
related to fire management exceed all other investment needs. This was
not always the case. Who pays the bills? Every American taxpayer does.
Who bears the impacts? Mostly local people and communities in areas
near the forests and throughout the west. This is hardly an equitable
condition and certainly out of alignment with the social contract
between urban and rural America that began eroding in the 1980s.
Counties across the west are left begging for a federal transfer of
wealth in lieu of revenues from sustainable economic activities on
federal forests and they do not get federal timber-related jobs and
indirect businesses with their check. Continuing the check it is not a
path to prosperity; it is merely a bridge from the past to, well,
where? Meanwhile, the trees keep growing and, in fire-prone forests
dying, victims of climate change, invasive species, uncharacteristic
wildfires, insect outbreaks and insufficient funds or social license to
change course. I am not the first or only person to point this out.
Western federal forests are simply not sustainable on their current
trajectory; they are not ecologically, economically or socially
sustainable. Absent course correction, the situation will only worsen,
leaving political leaders at national, state and local levels literally
hamstrung for viable options, to wit, the suggestion by some that we
can thin our way to economic vitality or sustainability. To me we, as a
society, are ignoring the fundamental issue: What is/are the purpose(s)
of lands held and managed in the public trust by agencies of the
federal government? Marion Clawson wrote a still relevant book on this
in 1975: Forests for Whom and for What. That is still the question.
Very few people want to see species go extinct or water quality to
decline. So, any path forward must guard against those outcomes and the
latter will prove more feasible than the former. Declining political
support for the federal check in lieu of wealth creation from federal
forests shows that very few people support such a wealth transfer. So,
any path forward must deal with this issue as well. Thus, the critical
policy question must be: Are there ways to sustain/restore resilient
federal land ecosystems that deliver desired environmental, economic
and social benefits to society with less impact to economies and
communities than current approaches? If so, would laws need to be
changed? Yes and yes.
Let's drop back to what Congress has said are the original purposes
for federal forests. Three laws define the purpose(s) for national
forests (Organic Act of 1891, Multiple-Use, Sustained-Yield Act of
1960, and National Forest Management Act 1976 amendment to the
Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974), two for Public Lands (BLM)
(Oregon and California Lands Act of 1936 and Forest and Rangeland
Policy and Management Act of 1976). Other laws have overlaid purposes
not meshed with these organic statutes: Endangered Species Act of 1973
as amended (ESA), Clean Water Act (CWA), and Clean Air Act (CAA). Equal
Access to Justice Act (EAJA) and Administrative Procedures Act (APA)
give activist groups essentially a free ride to use those other laws to
subvert the statutory purposes of federal forests, with taxpayers
paying their bills.
Pioneering conservation leaders of the late 1800s and early 1900s
championed federal land tenure to promote protection and conservation
of wild places, wild life and waterways and the shared, sustainable,
ethical and productive uses of natural resources. There was tension in
the balance among these purposes from the very beginning of federal
land tenure and aggravated distortions appeared post World War II as
the nation increasingly relied on federal forests for its home
construction boom. The distortion now is the false notion that not
managing forests for some wealth creation is a form of protection. In
our nation's current financial situation it is actually a path to
degradation of a once prime asset.
Our current framework of resource and environmental policies,
suited to and based on 1960s issues, and science are simply not working
for 21st century challenges. Nor are they reflective of current
scientific understandings of ecosystem dynamics and resilience. Perhaps
it is time for a big Forest Policy Rummage Sale. Before a rummage sale,
you sort through the ``stuff'' in your attic to rediscover the
treasures you want to keep and identify the junk you want to jettison.
Along the evolutionary course of conservation on federal forests
several ``grand experiments'' have been, and some still are, carried
out (though they were not thought of as experiments in the true sense).
This is 2012, so I'll give you 12 that come to my mind. This is some of
the stuff in the attic.
1. Governance by scientifically trained managers in
consultation with local, state and legislative leaders (1905-
on),
2. Curtailment of the worst forms of domestic livestock
grazing and timber poaching (1905-on),
3. Eradication of top predators (done by 1920s),
4. Suppression of all wild-land fire (10 AM policy, post Big
Burn, 1910-on),
5. Development of recreation infrastructure (1920s-on),
6. Use of unemployed people to carry out conservation
projects (CCC, 1930s),
7. Engineering waterways for flood, irrigation and hydropower
control (generally 1930s-1960s),
8. Dedication to domestic timber supplies (1950s-1990),
9. Congressional creation of no-development Wilderness Areas
(1964-on) and agency dedication of de-facto wilderness, i.e.,
Roadless Rule (2001-?),
10. Protection and conservation of at risk species (ESA 1973-
on),
11. Widespread judicial enforcement of single resource
legislation, e.g., ESA, CWA, and CAA, at the expense of
multiple-use sustainability mandates, e.g., MUSY, NFMA, O&C
Act, and FLPMA, (mostly post 1970s) and lately
12. The era and euphoria of collaboration (1990s-on).
During the course of these ``experiments'' our human population
grew threefold and migrated from rural to urban settings, the climate
changed, economies and technologies changed, and policies and social
norms enabled a highly consumptive culture fed by non-domestic resource
production. Yet, we remain saddled with laws written during an earlier
time, based on antique science, and designed to solve yesterdays'
challenges. Some of yesterdays' challenges are still with us and some
or all of them may grow in magnitude. But the times are vastly
different and new science has shown that the vitality and resilience of
ecological, social and economic systems are ill-served by single-
species, single-industry, single-engine dominance, i.e., what we seem
to have high-centered on with federal forest management lately as
single-species protection is trumping all other purposes. With current
and pending climate change it may not be possible to ``save'' species,
one-by-one. If so, perhaps society should rethink ESA to focus on
conserving the ecosystems, the originally stated purpose, and try to
ensure their diversity, productivity and resilience.
Are we, as a nation or as citizens of western states, satisfied
with this situation? If yes, stay the course and bear the consequences.
If not, what must we do to change course? What outcomes would we likely
favor if options forward were put to a vote, with those most directly
affected by the outcome given the largest number of votes, i.e., those
living in closest proximity to federal lands? Assuming clarity of
purposes is possible, how might we act to further those purposes? These
questions call for more than timid legislative proposals to address
limited technical or managerial challenges.
The conundrum for western federal lands is not, after all is said
and done, merely forestry, environmental or resource management
challenges. It calls for what USFS Chief emeritus, Jack Ward Thomas and
the National Commission for Science on Sustainable Forestry called for:
Congressional action to clarify purposes and processes for more
efficient and effective stewardship of some of the world's most
remarkable natural land and resource assets. It may also call for
experimentation beyond how forestry or other resource management is
practiced, perhaps also experiments with more effective and equitable
models of governance, as called for by ex-Speaker of the Montana House
of Representatives Dan Kemmis. Or, as is currently being considered for
some federal lands in Oregon, it may just be time to stop the
incremental experiments and start transitioning federal lands and
policies for those lands to states, trusts, or back into the hands of
their original stewards. A majority of federal and perhaps even state
political leaders appear unwilling or unable to go there at this time
but sooner or later society must confront the consequences of federal
forestland management dysfunction: let me repeat, declining land
health, rising costs and a poverty stricken rural America hanging on
through at-risk federal checks because the nation refuses to use its
federal forest lands and resources to generate wealth and jobs. Rep.
Hastings and Reps. DeFazio, Schrader and Walden have some proposals on
the table. They deserve thoughtful consideration.
Among the options forward so far are the following. Drs. Norm
Johnson and Jerry Franklin, are championing pilot projects in fire-
prone forests on Public Lands in SW Oregon. It could be one option in
changing course. It involves restoration of stress-resilient forests
and structural class diversification through a combination of thinning
and modest regeneration harvests that would produce commercially viable
timber sales. Jobs and wealth would be created by both, though not in
the magnitude of management activities of the mid to late 20th century.
It is worth trying. But it may not be the only technical or managerial
option. Their pilots do not address the fundamental underlying issues:
lack of clarity on purpose, alignment of process to purpose, and
governance effectiveness (though the pilots do rely on local
collaboration). Other, well-thought proposals should also be tried, if
someone will be bold enough to create and present them. I suggest that
these so-called ``pilots'' not be ad hoc, anecdotal efforts; they
should be well designed ``grand experiments'' to test ecological,
social, managerial, and governance hypotheses.
The current course is not a rosy path for the future of Western
federal forest. It is certainly not focused on roles for federal lands
on the 9 billion people question (in Oregon it is a 4 million challenge
and in the nation it is a 500 million challenge). And it comes at a
time when Forest Service leaders are proposing yet another new
collaborative approach to forest planning. You may not agree with my
assessment. Perhaps the Forest Service and BLM will find a
collaboration pony in the pile of convoluted laws and legal precedent.
But for me it is a sober reality check and perhaps a wake-up call. It
is not too late to change course. It is never too late. But the longer
we wait the greater the challenges will become and the higher the costs
will be for future generations. Simply stated, we cannot thin our way
to sustainability for federal forests, we cannot save single species by
doing nothing in dynamic ecosystems, and no amount of collaboration
will ever satisfy those who see only one purpose for federal lands,
their purpose. So far, resistors won't let restoration happen fast
enough, large enough or heavy enough to make much of a dent in
disturbance vulnerability or effective governance. And if they did, one
must ask, ok, then what? Where's the money going to come from to
sustain mixed-use management when the federal treasury is drained every
year by defense, health care and social security payments? Is saving
single species even possible and would it be better for the future than
managing for resilient, dynamic ecosystems?
Closing Thoughts
When I was a kid my grandpa told me money doesn't grow on trees,
you have to work to earn it. He was a mechanic. He was brilliant but he
didn't know much about forestry. Experience has shown me he was half
right; he got the work part right. Many, though not all, Western
federal forests not only still have the potential to grow money, they
have the potential to grow jobs, productive wildlife, clean water,
happy fish and the greenest, most renewable raw material on earth. It
is time for federal forests to re-start doing their share for the
future well-being of our communities, states, and nation, and, yes,
even for the health of our federal forests. From many conversations, I
am convinced the people in our federal forest agencies would love to
chart a more sustainable course for their future as forest stewards, as
citizens of our communities and as contributors to addressing the 9
billion people challenge.
So, let's cycle back to where we started. Sustainable management of
renewable natural resources has always been one of the keys to human
well-being. It was and is key to all that is good about our current
lifestyle. But staying the course in a finite world with a growing
human population will not make the grade. We must seek continual
improvement and change course when evidence makes the need for change
clear. Our Endangered Species Act is not saving many species and, at
least here in the Pacific Northwest, its social and financial costs are
substantial. Something must change and the Congress is the only agent
capable of meaningful change.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call Mr. Stephen Mealey, Vice
President of Conserve Boone and Crockett Club.
Mr. Mealey, you're recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN MEALEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF CONSERVATION,
BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB, SPRINGFIELD, OREGON
Mr. Mealey. Thank you very much, Congressman. I'm pleased
to be here. The Boone and Crockett is the oldest hunting
conservation organization in American, founded by Teddy
Roosevelt in 1887. I too have a history of forest service
management as well as state and private management.
The Chairman. Could you pull that microphone closer to you?
I know it's awkward sometimes. We get the full benefit that
way.
Mr. Mealey. Thank you.
In the 22 years since the listing of the Northern Spotted
Owl there are many examples of failed Federal policies--I'll
share some today--but they're not the main problem. I'll share
testimonies which I see as the failure in Federal laws that
drive them. I want to give three examples of the Northwest
Forest Plan. First of all, the effects on deer black-tailed
deer and hunters and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Habitats since 1989 have declined by 90 percent, hunters by
34 percent, and I want to read a summary of the effects of
that. It's a powerful irony that Federal protection primarily
for one species and its associates is undermining North
American wildlife conservation that has restored wildlife to
Oregon and America and is likely the most successful wildlife
management model on earth. It is a particularly tragic irony
since the Northwest forest in 18 years has failed to halt the
decline in Northern Spotted Owl, indicating it's certainly an
insufficient response to the ecological challenges of NSO
recovery. While the costs to the Northwest Forest Plan of
Oregon is modeled by conservation and its hundreds are
significant and clear, the benefits for Northern Spotted Owl
recovery, its intended purpose, remain uncertain at best.
I want to give a couple of examples that are very specific
and I want to say in preface that I stay in touch with the
ranger district people, and I want to say that all the folks
I've been in touch with are as good as they've ever been. This
has to the Middle Fork Ranger District, the Willamette National
Forest, and I'm going to talk quickly about two projects, the
Jim's Creek Project and the PineGrass Project, both of which
were planned for forest restoration in the dry oak Savanna
ponderosa pine project of 25,000 acres.
Jim's Creek was planned as a test, if it was successful, to
apply to a broad area. The PineGrass Project was a restoration
of the plantation. The simple fact is that Jim's Creek Project,
while it had a very successful test, was precluded by a judge's
reinstatement of survey and management standards and guidelines
per red back bulls, and obviously there were too many bulls on
the site for the project to go forward.
And the PineGrass Project was precluded and planned for
thinning. It was precluded by an extension of the revised
Critical Habitat Rule which made it infeasible. So despite the
revised recovery plan and the proposed revision of the Critical
Habitat to facilitate forest restoration--in fact, in these two
cases it actually precluded tested, ongoing projects designed
exactly to achieve the objectives the two plans purported for
advance.
Let me say a quick word about Rachel Carson's and Silent
Spring. You all know that Silent Springs was published in 1962
and it was designed to stop things, and our whole body of
Federal law that followed that then were patterned after the
mentality of stopping things without ignoring the dimension of
time to deal with the omission, that is, omitted acts, and so
our whole body of Federal law that followed that reflected that
same precluding mentality.
And I just want to get to my recommendations very quick.
The first one is that the Northwest Forest Plan has been in
effect for 18 years with no significant external evaluation.
I'm suggesting that it's time for Congress to ask for an
evaluation of the Northwest Forest Plan, which would probably
assemble a group of experienced managers as well as team
members that wrote the plan in the first place to see if it's
achieved its intended objectives.
Another recommendation that I have is that for Federal
law--you probably--I know you know, Congressman, that the
Healthy Forest Restoration Act contains in Section 106(C)(3) a
provision for looking at the comparative risk of action and
inaction. There's no reason that that same provision couldn't
be included in the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air and
Clean Water Act and it would extend a broader precautionary
approach, which could be integrated simply by amending Section
7, consultation requirements to that agency balance the impact
to the ecosystem likely affected by the project and the short-
and long-term effects of undertaking agency action against the
short and long-term effects of not undertaking that action.
In addition, I want to quote Jack Thomas, who thinks that
it's over time now to assemble a group of folks to look at the
whole body of Federal law and determine their function and
dysfunction, make recommendations about how they should.
And one final--I've got just a couple of seconds. I want to
make a reference to Charles Darwin, who noted that individuals
less suited to the environment are less likely to survive and
less likely to reproduce. Individuals more suited to the
environment are more likely to survive and more likely to
reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future
generations, which produces the process of natural selection,
and this applied to the Barred Owl. I would observe that I
think Darwin would find it ironic and surprising that an
informed society would fund and enforce a requirement to thwart
such a fundamental evolutionary process by killing Barred Owls
in the name of ecosystem preservation. At least I think he
would likely find it another example of static versus dynamic
management.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Actually, you borrowed a few seconds from Dr.
Hal Salwasser. I'm keeping track over here.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Mealey follows:]
Statement of Stephen P. Mealey, Vice President of Conservation,
Boone and Crockett Club, Leaburg, Oregon
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am Steve Mealey, Honorary Life Member of the Boone and Crockett
Club, and Vice President for Conservation. I am currently retired in
Oregon. My professional career spanned 30 years and included wildlife
(grizzly bear) research as well as management and administration for
federal [U.S. Forest Service (USFS)], state (Idaho Department of Fish
and Game), and private (Boise Cascade Corporation) natural resources
based organizations. I am proud to represent the Boone and Crockett
Club here today which was founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887. It is
America's oldest hunter/conservationist organization with national
focus. The Club's mission is to promote the conservation and management
of wildlife, especially big game and its habitat, to preserve and
encourage hunting and to maintain the highest ethical standards of fair
chase and sportsmanship in North America. The Boone and Crockett Club
has a great legacy of protecting wildlife, especially big game, as well
as federal land habitat. It's fair to say the Club is the ``godparent''
of America's national forests, national parks and wildlife refuges
having worked long, hard, and successfully for more than a century for
their establishment, maintenance and improvement.
I come here today to express grave concern for:
1) The effect of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) on black-
tailed deer and hunting and on ecosystem restoration project
implementation in western Oregon;
2) The effect on ecosystem restoration project implementation
of the March 2012 proposal to expand critical habitat (CH) for
the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO); and,
3) The problems associated with major federal land/regulatory
laws underlying the NWFP and NSO protection rules and
proposals.
I'll offer some recommendations for repair.
Prelude
In 1993, a comprehensive NWFP was initiated to end the impasse over
management of federal forest lands in the Pacific Northwest within the
range of the NSO. With the signing of the Northwest Forest Plan Record
of Decision (ROD) in 1994, a framework and system of standards and
guidelines were established to guide management of 24 million acres of
federal forests in Oregon, Washington and northern California and
protect the NSO listed in 1990 as a threatened species under the
Endangered Species Act (ESA). The plan is a much less flexible version
of its precursor, ``Option 9'', developed by the Forest Ecosystem
Management and Assessment Team (FEMAT) led by then USFS Chief Research
Wildlife Biologist, and later USFS Chief Jack Ward Thomas. Twenty-two
years since listing, a Revised Recovery Plan for the NSO was issued
June 28, 2011 which recognized ``many populations of spotted owls
continue to decline. . .even with extensive maintenance and restoration
of spotted owl habitat in recent years. . .it is becoming more evident
that securing habitat alone will not recover the spotted owl. .
.competition from the barred owl poses a significant and complex
threat. . .''. Overall NSO numbers have been declining nearly 3%/year
leading to an estimated 40% decline over the last 25 years. In
February, 2012 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced a
proposal identifying nearly 14,000,000 acres in Oregon, Washington and
northern California as CH for the NSO. The proposal is a 62% increase
over that designated in the 2008 plan.
NWFP and Deer, Elk, Hunting, and Ecosystem Restoration in Western
Oregon
General
Since 1989, the year before NSO listing to present, timber harvest
on federal forestland in western Oregon has dropped from about 3.5
billion board feet/year to under .5 billion board feet/year, an 86%
decline owing to the effects of environmental litigation and an
emphasis on mature and old forest retention. Final harvest acres
declined from nearly 100,000/year to less than 10,000/year. Creation of
early seral (deer and elk) habitat has declined approximately 90%
annually. In response, black-tailed deer harvest and associated hunters
have declined dramatically. Numbers of deer hunters have dropped 34%
from around 170,000 to about 112,000 while harvest has dropped 67% to
around 20,000. Hunter success has declined 44% to about 18%. A similar
trend for Roosevelt elk and related hunting is likely. Elk numbers from
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) annual counts on the
Willamette National Forest in the McKenzie Unit have declined to 16 in
2012 from 114 in 2005, an 86% drop.
This loss of early succession habitat with the sharp drop in deer
and elk populations indicated in part by declining harvest, and
accompanying steep declines in hunter numbers all owing to the virtual
end of timber harvest following the listing of the NSO has been a major
contributor to the more general problem of declining hunter
participation in Oregon. Here, the participation rate of resident
hunters has declined nearly 30% from about 340,000 in 1986 to around
240,000 in 2011. Resident hunters as a percent of eligible residents
declined about 53% to 8% in the same period. Even though Oregon's
population has expanded by around a million during the period, the
number of licensed resident hunters has declined in absolute numbers.
There are similar declining trends in neighboring California and
Washington. Nationally hunting participation also declined during the
25 year period but only by about 5%--much less than in Oregon.
Declining game populations and habitat combined with increased license
fees to offset lost revenues from fewer hunters is generally seen as a
main reason for this disturbing trend which is a clear threat to
Oregon's and America's primary hunting heritage and legacy: the North
American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
The Model powered by hunters who have restored much of our nation's
wildlife and habitat and enabled everyone who wants to--to hunt holds:
1) Wildlife can be owned by no individual, but is held by the
states in trust for all people;
2) Trustee states have no power to delegate trust
responsibilities, and;
3) States have an affirmative duty to fulfill their trust
role: take care of wildlife for the people.
Coupled with the advocacy of sport hunters concerned with the
dramatic declines in wildlife in the late 19th and early 20th
Centuries, the Public Trust Doctrine, which mandates that states hold
and manage wildlife for its citizens, is the lynchpin of the Model and
is the legal bedrock for states to manage and regulate wildlife.
Hunters and hunting have been the reason for the success of the Model.
Hunters have been the main proponents of wildlife and have paid the
bills for wildlife conservation through purchases of licenses and
hunting equipment which have been the principal support for most state
wildlife agencies including ODFW. Through the loss of deer and elk
populations and habitat and the resulting loss of hunters causing
declining license fees to ODFW and its reduced ability to carry out its
Public Trust role, the NWFP is weakening the institution of wildlife
management in Oregon.
This is a powerful irony: that federal protection primarily for one
species and its associates is undermining the North American Model of
Wildlife Conservation that has restored wildlife to Oregon and America
and is likely the most successful wildlife management model on earth.
It is a particularly tragic irony since the NWFP has in 18 years failed
to halt the decline in NSO indicating it is certainly an insufficient
response to the ecological challenges of NSO recovery. While the costs
of the NWFP to Oregon's Model of Wildlife Conservation and its hunters
are significant and clear, the benefits for NSO recovery--its intended
purpose, remain uncertain at best.
Jim's Creek Restoration Project
While the NWFP standards and guidelines preclude most traditional
(pre-1990) timber harvest practices, silvicultural opportunities
including production forestry, ecological restoration and adaptive
management are provided for in ``matrix'' and other areas in the 1994
NWFP ROD.
Standards and guidelines include those for ``Survey and Manage''
(S&M) intended to reduce or eliminate potential effects of agency
actions on over 300 species including mosses, liverworts, fungi,
lichens, vascular plants, slugs, snails, salamanders, great grey owl,
and red tree voles. With some qualifications pre-disturbance surveys
for target species are required before proposed activities can proceed.
If evidence of a species is found (i.e. tree vole nest tree) proposed
projects are modified to meet species management requirements
(protection of 10 acres/Vole Habitat Area).
The Jim's Creek Project (JCP) on the Middle Fork Ranger District,
Willamette National Forest is a forest restoration project that has
been planned and nearly completed. The JCP Decision Notice was signed
in August 2006 and the project implemented through a Stewardship
Contract in June 2008. The following were cited as primary benefits of
the project and it's supporting Alternative:
1. Comprehensive and much needed ecological restoration of a
small part of the unique Oregon white oak/ponderosa pine
savanna ecosystem and gains in biodiversity;
2. Reduced wildfire risk;
3. Restored big game forage within a high emphasis Big Game
Management Area;
4. Monetary receipts for subsequent ecological restoration;
5. Economic values to local economies from harvest of about 10
million board feet of forest products;
6. Refugia for species associated with the oak/pine savanna.
The JCP was seen as a small scale ``test'' to work out the
restoration concepts and methods for subsequent application to other
nearby oak/pine savanna landscapes critically in need of broad scale
restoration. The project resulted in a non-significant forest plan
amendment. While it modified and/or removed habitat or diminished its
quality for use by NSO, the USFWS Biological Opinion found
implementation (and effects on red tree voles as a NSO food) would not
jeopardize the continued existence of NSO and that it could proceed.
The project was widely supported; there were no appeals or lawsuits.
In 2007 the USFS and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) eliminated
for the second time the S&M Mitigation Measure. Had this not occurred
the JCP could not have been implemented in 2008 because of the
abundance of red tree voles in the project area and beyond. Restoration
of approximately 455 acres of a potential 25,000 acre landscape
restoration project has been completed.
On July 5, 2011 U.S. District Court Judge Coughenour issued a court
order directing implementation of the settlement agreement restoring
the S&M requirement. The order was implemented by the USFS July 21,
2011. Resumption of the S&M Mitigation Measure precludes expansion of
the JCP restoration strategy across the broader 25,000 acre Middle Fork
Mixed Conifer Forest Type (which was an open forest type and has been
degraded by fire suppression and tree in-growth) because of the
abundance of red tree voles in the area (a 10 acre Habitat Area is
protected where one or more voles are known or assumed to occur).
Specifically, S&M measures for the red tree vole prevents
implementation of actions needed over a 25,000 acre landscape to save
historic Oregon white oak/ponderosa pine savannas threatened by
encroaching Douglas fir and ultimately uncharacteristic wildfire.
Inability to expand on the JCP success precludes reducing the risk
of habitat loss or degradation from stand replacing wildfire over a
broad fire-prone landscape, one of the four most important threats to
the NSO stated in the Revised Recovery Plan (vii). Not expanding the
JCP also contributes to the progressive loss of early forest succession
habitat and consequent declining elk and deer numbers on the Willamette
National Forest and other national forests in Region 6 of the USFS and
on BLM lands and resulting lost hunting opportunity. Its loss also
raises concerns about the likely adverse ecological effects of
shrinking early succession habitat on other early succession dependent/
associated species including neo-tropical migratory birds, reptiles and
amphibians. One predictable effect is reduced economic activity
associated with less hunting and wildlife associated recreation. A
related issue is that ODFW will likely be unable to maintain current
herd objectives for elk and deer on federal forestland habitats in the
Southern Willamette Watershed District because of rapidly declining
early forest succession habitat resulting from reduced timber harvest.
The reality of the Jim's Creek case defies common sense:
Reinstatement of S&M for the vole, a relatively abundant ``species of
concern'' has precluded expansion of the JCP restoration strategy while
the JCP Biological Opinion for the NSO, a beneficiary of voles as prey,
concluded NSO would not be jeopardized and the project could proceed.
The Middle Fork Ranger District covers roughly 725,000 acres with
about 60% unavailable for management because of protection reserves
(i.e. wilderness areas, Late Succession Reserves, roadless areas,
riparian conservation reserves, etc.). Only about 200,000 acres are
available for active management projects such as the JCP.
The JCP example shows clearly how the NWFP through application of
its S&M standards and guidelines or through related litigation
outcomes, acts as a barrier to active management of landscapes in need
of restoration even where proposed projects occur in the < 30% of the
District remaining for management.
One hopeful apparent change in guidance for implementing the NWFP
is the recognition in the Revised Recovery Plan in the section Habitat
Conservation and Active Forest Restoration (II-10) that ``Active
management for ecological values trades short-term negative effects for
long-term gains. . .Collaborative management must be willing to accept
short-term impacts and short-term risks to achieve long-term benefits
and long-term risk reduction; overly zealous application of the
precautionary principle often is a deliberate, conscious management
decision to forgo long-term increases in forest health and resilience
to avoid short-term responsibility or controversy.'' A recent paper by
Roloff, Mealey and Bailey [Comparative hazard assessment for protected
species in a fire-prone landscape in: Forest Ecology and Management 277
(2012) 1-10] provides a peer reviewed process for assessing and
comparing the short and long-term risks and benefits of management
options. Application of such an analysis to the JCP expansion would be
useful in determining whether to suspend the S&M Mitigation Measure and
tree vole management requirements as a short-term risk, in deference to
the long-term benefits of ecological restoration.
The Jim's Creek case leads to my first recommendation:
The NWFP has been in effect 18 years with no significant external
evaluation of its effectiveness in achieving its goals and objectives.
I believe it is long past time for a congressionally sanctioned
independent review of the NWFP. One option would be to engage a highly
respected science institution such as the National Academies in a
review. A better option would be to request a review by a select,
locally experienced group including past and present federal land
managers and members of various teams-especially the lead scientists-
that would include the Interagency Scientific Committee (ISC), the
``Gang of Four'' (Jack Ward Thomas, K. Norman Johnson, Jerry F.
Franklin, and John Gordon) and the Forest Ecosystem Management
Assessment Team (FEMAT).
Critical Habitat (CH) Expansion and Ecological Restoration
March 11, 2012 the USFWS announced in a press release, a ``science
based'' CH proposal for the NSO that revises a 2008 CH designation in
response to a U.S. District Court order. According to the release, the
proposal for 13, 962,449 acres of CH recommends substantially
increasing active management of forests, consistent with ecological
forestry principles.
PineGrass Plantation Management Project
February 28, 2012 the Middle Fork District of the Willamette
National Forest issued a scoping letter proposing restoration
treatments to maintain the historic vegetative diversity within 88
plantations totaling about 2,000 acres. The plantations with high fire
risk are within the same 25,000 acre Middle Fork Mixed Conifer Type as
the JCP, and were all regenerated after clearcutting 10-50 years ago.
The purpose of the project is similar to the JCP and is designed to
restore the forest type to its historic low density open forest
condition. Twenty percent of the proposed treatment area was CH under
the 2008 designation and would be managed to accelerate late forest
conditions.
Soon after the scoping letter was sent, the USFWS published its
proposed rule revising CH which now would cover about 80% of the
plantations proposed for restoration. Consultation with the USFWS on
the proposal under the 2008 CH designation has already occurred with a
determination that the proposal ``Would Not Likely Adversely Affect''
the NSO. The new rule changed the status of most of the area proposed
for treatment and requires project modifications to develop late forest
succession (fire-prone) conditions for NSO instead of restoring low
fire risk open forest conditions characteristic of the type. Project
modification to meet requirements for NSO would not meet the original
intent of the purpose and need for the project. District personnel are
considering reinitiating consultation on the project under the proposed
designation but consultation is considered ``complex'' and would likely
delay the project an ``indeterminate'' amount of time. For all intents
and purposes the forest ecosystem restoration project appears to be on
``long-term'' hold pending resolution of the CH proposed rule.
While the CH proposal for the NSO purports to support and encourage
active forest management to restore forest health, increase resilience,
and foster diversity in fire-prone landscapes, the immediate effect in
the case of the PineGrass Plantation Project appears to be the
opposite.
The Problem of Major Federal Land/Regulatory Laws
Summary
Management action and inaction or things we do and don't do
(acts of commission and omission), both have the potential to
cause serious environmental harm as well as good. On federal
fire-prone forests of the West, the focus of regulatory
environmental law has been mostly prevention of harm from
action. The potential for harm from inaction has largely been
ignored. This has contributed to the decline of the very
resources the laws are intended to protect. The scope of the
Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act
should be updated and expanded to include consideration of the
short and long-term effects of management inaction, and
comparing and balancing them with short and long-term effects
of action. These comparative assessments would allow managers
to consider the full ecological contexts over space and time in
environmental decision-making and offer improved prospects for
restoring and sustaining resources.
There are clear shortcomings in the federal forest policies
discussed above; importantly however they appear to reflect those of
the driving federal land and regulatory laws. Those difficulties are
well known and discussed, most recently by Jack Ward Thomas in his
article in the fall 2011 Boone and Crockett Club publication Fair Chase
titled The Future of the National Forests; Who Will Answer an Uncertain
Trumpet? In it Thomas writes ``Each of those [federal land/regulatory
laws: i.e., National Forest Management Act (NFMA), Endangered Species
Act (ESA), National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Clean Water Act
(CWA), etc.] must have seemed a good idea in the context of time and
circumstances. Yet in totality and considering interactions that
evolved (especially as variously interpreted by the courts) they formed
the threads of a now intractable Gordian knot (an intricate problem
insoluble in its own terms) rendering national forest planning and
management ever more costly and ineffective.''
Donald Floyd and others elaborated the problem of overlapping and
interacting federal land use laws in a 1999 Society of American
Foresters booklet Forest of Discord; and the American Wildlife
Conservation Partners a federation of hunting/conservation
organizations recommended to President Bush in 2001 in their Wildlife
for the 21st Century, Volume I, Recommendation to President George W.
Bush that he initiate an assessment of federal land laws to identify
legal and regulatory problems contributing to federal land management
``gridlock''.
Context: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
There is important context for the ``federal land/regulatory law''
problem. The American Ecology Hall of Fame states: ``In 1992, a panel
of distinguished Americans declared Rachel Carson's 1962 Silent Spring
the most influential book of the past 50 years. Many argue that Silent
Spring was instrumental in launching the American environmental
movement. Passage of NEPA in 1969 and establishment of the CEQ and EPA
in 1970 can be attributed to the environmental awareness that Carson
raised. Soon after NEPA, the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970, the CWA of
1972, and the ESA of 1973 were all passed, all traceable to the spirit
of environmental awareness and concern raised by Rachel Carson.
Common to Silent Spring and the federal regulatory laws that
followed, was concern for documenting and reducing environmental harm
man was causing through development actions. Environmental regulation
focused on proposals for major actions (acts of commission), their
environmental impacts, their adverse effects, and standards or
alternatives to prevent or mitigate adverse effects. Most regulatory
attention, especially related to fire-prone forests of the West, has
been on preventing short-term adverse effects of fuels treatment
proposals with little attention to the short or long-term consequences
of inaction (acts of omission). The applicable theory in regulatory
law, regulations and their implementation appears to be that
significant environmental risks result from committed acts rather than
from their omission. Analyses supporting the theory continue to be
lacking.
Jack Ward Thomas, while addressing a conference in October, 2002 in
Bend, Oregon entitled ``Fire in Oregon's Forests'' commented on the
problem of ``dynamic vs. static management'' in fire influenced
landscapes covered by the NWFP. Thomas noted that the combined effect
of the environmental laws of the 1970s, especially the ESA, was the
predominant use of preservationist strategies defined as static or
``hands off'' management to protect listed species (and water quality).
He observed that reliance on static management minimizing immediate
risks of activities has been routinely reinforced by federal court
decisions that favor preservation. Thomas concluded that serious
problems with static, near-term risk averse management are emerging
because ecosystems are dynamic and change is constant in preserves. In
fire-prone forests, unabated fuel accumulation leads to
uncharacteristic wildfires that can ultimately harm listed species and
water quality. Thomas saw these long-term effects of management
inaction as either ignored or downplayed.
In the 50 years between Silent Spring and ``static vs. dynamic
management'' how could laws intended to protect the environment,
actually put environmental assets at risk in fire prone forests of the
West? A look at the precautionary nature of the ESA, and by inference
the CWA and CAA, is instructive.
The ESA takes a strong but narrowly defined precautionary approach
in the face of uncertainty about risk to species. It focuses on and
seeks to prevent ``take'' by prohibiting mainly near-term potential
and/or uncertain harm or risks. In consultations, proponents must
demonstrate proposals would not be harmful regardless of timeframe,
apparently dismissing ecological change over time. The ESA and its
application do not commonly distinguish the time dimension of risk:
i.e., that some short-term risks to species can result in longer term
benefits to those same species, or that short-term risk avoidance can
lead to long-term increased risk. Rather than documenting mainly actual
or probable risks or comparing and balancing the short and long-term
risks and benefits of proposals and then regulating, the law takes a
more narrow precautionary approach. In summary, the ESA compels
regulating where any risks are believed to be likely.
This restrictive precautionary philosophy is apparent in the
definitions in the 1998 Consultation Handbook that governs Section 7
consultations. The phrase ``Is Likely to Adversely Affect'' is defined
as the appropriate finding if any adverse effect to species may occur.
Any immediate non-beneficial, measurable effect with any possibility of
harm, regardless of magnitude and regardless of potential offsetting
longer term benefits is ``Likely to Adversely Affect'' the species.
Such a finding triggers a formal and usually expensive and time
consuming process to determine jeopardy or how to avoid it by making
modifications to the project. To avoid the process, proponents must
propose projects with no immediate risk. In fire-prone forests, this
often excludes projects with long-term benefits to listed species.
Inability to reduce fuels in fire prone forests occupied by NSO only to
see the trees in those forests killed by intense fire and the resulting
vegetation return to brushland, unsuitable for owls, is a case in
point.
NWFP and NSO Recovery
In 2002, regulating agencies issued a policy that ESA Section 7
consultations should balance the ``long term benefits of fuel treatment
projects''. . .``against any short or long-term adverse effects.'' It
is a hopeful sign that the 2011 Revised NSO Recovery Plan now reflects
this direction. There is no clear evidence however that management
agencies have responded by routinely completing comparative ecological
risk/hazard assessments, comparing the short and long-term effects of
proposals with the short and long-term effects of their absence, as
part of the consultation process.
In the absence of such analysis, regulating agencies often appear
to ``default'' to the highly precautionary conclusion that any short-
term adverse effects are harmful and should be avoided. In summary, in
fire prone forests of the West, especially lands under the NWFP,
precaution in the ESA is most often narrowly applied to acts of
commission: management is discouraged unless there is certainty that no
immediate harm will result, ignoring without inquiry the potential harm
from omitted acts.
When the USFWS completed its status review of the NSO in November
2004, uncharacteristic wildfire was found to be the greatest cause of
habitat loss during the nine year review period. Uncharacteristic
wildfire remains a major cause of NSO habitat loss today. Jack Ward
Thomas, when reviewing implementation of the NWFP in northern
California in 2003, found that the restrictive application of the
precautionary principle in the NWFP had increased the risk of fire and
the risk to NSO by discouraging management to mitigate fire risks to
NSO and their habitat. The USFS identified ESA requirements for
consultation as a main reason for Thomas's findings. Differences with
regulators over the importance of short-term adverse impacts versus the
longer term benefits of treatments were a big factor. The USFS
acknowledged designing projects to align with the risk averse
philosophy to reach a ``Not Likely to Adversely Affect'' conclusion and
avoid formal consultation. This often eliminated projects that had
long-term benefits for owls and fish resulting from reduced fire risk
in Late Succession Reserves and in riparian areas, but also had some
near-term adverse effects.
Highly restrictive precaution embedded in standards and guidelines
as those for S&M has been a barrier to restoration management to reduce
fire risk and an obstacle to achieving conservation goals. This calls
into question the evolved practice in the West of attempting to
maintain essentially ``static'' unmanaged conservation reserves in
dynamic fire prone forests. Recent assessments of uncharacteristic
wildfire risks indicate that the absence of active management to
mitigate fire risks in such areas may be the greater risk to vulnerable
species. Ironically, continuation of highly restrictive precautionary
principle driven, short-term risk averse protection measures will
likely lead to the continued deterioration of the very resources the
environmental laws were intended to protect.
ESA case law resulting from NWFP litigation (i.e. Case No. 03-
35279, Gifford Pinchot Task Force v. USFWS) has generally reinforced
the precautionary features of the ESA and the requirement that
regulators implementing the act be averse to short-term risk in
decision-making (an exception is a May 2011 decision by the 9th Circuit
upholding the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan and stating ``it is the
prerogative of the Forest Service to determine that long-term effects.
. .remain desirable despite short-term harm''.). This essentially
``locks in'' an incomplete legal theory: one that fails to clearly and
specifically recognize that acts of commission and acts of omission
together are the necessary and sufficient source of environmental risk
and benefit. Changing and completing the theory will likely require
refining the ESA and other overly precautionary environmental laws.
Options for Broadening Ecological Context in Law
I acknowledge and compliment the USFWS for recognizing in the
Revised NSO Recovery Plan that management must accept short-term
negative effects for long-term gains. I also recognize that the
recovery plan is a ``guidance'' document and does not regulate. Agency
consideration of comparative short and long-term risks and benefits of
proposals will be certain only if required in law. Such a requirement
would also likely limit litigation which could follow agencies allowing
short-term negative effects without a legal mandate.
This leads to my second recommendation:
A broader precautionary approach should be integrated in ESA by
amending it to require in Section 7 consultations:
1) That agencies balance the ``impacts to the ecosystem likely
affected by the project, of the short and long-term effects of
undertaking the agency action, against the short and long-term
effects of not undertaking the agency action,'' as in Sec. 106
(c) (3) of the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act; and,
2) That agencies consider such assessments in related
decision-making.
Such language could also be incorporated into appropriate sections
of the CWA and CAA. With this mandate there would be no need to
``default'' to an overly restrictive application of the precautionary
principle. Not only would the standard for precaution be broadened, but
the ecological context of the ESA and other laws would be updated and
expanded as well.
America's laws regulating the environment were written mostly to
resolve the critical environmental problems of Rachel Carson's time,
projected forward: mainly to prevent or mitigate adverse consequences
of acts of commission. They were necessary then and remain necessary,
but they are insufficient for today's problems of omission, especially
in fire-prone forests of the West, and must be amended to address them.
Cleaving the Gordian Knot
Jack Ward Thomas, in the fall 2011 Fair Chase article offers a
solution to the Gordian knot problem of conflicting, overlapping and
incompatible federal land/regulatory laws with which I fully agree and
support.
This leads to my third recommendation:
As suggested by Thomas, Congress or the Administration should
select a group of knowledgeable individuals experienced in the
management of natural resources, public land law, and administration of
land management agencies, and charge them with developing potential
solutions with associated benefits and costs. The task should be
completed in a year or less. Recommendations should include focus on
revisions of present laws, repeal of those not current or redundant,
and new laws that clearly define the mission and expectations of the
USFS. Land use planning should be evaluated and new sources of revenues
explored.
A Final Note
The Revised NSO Recovery Plan in response to ESA Listing Factor E:
Other Natural or Manmade Factors Affecting its Continued Existence
identifies competition from barred owls (a natural factor) as one of
the three most important threats to NSO recovery. A major step in the
recovery strategy is to evaluate management options to reduce the
impact of barred owls on NSO since barred owls are seen as the ``most
significant short-term threat to spotted owl recovery.'' The barred owl
is included as an ``invasive'' animal species and is further described
as more likely to be a ``generalist'' than a ``specialist'' like the
NSO and able to adapt more successfully to a new climate than natives.
Ten Recovery Actions are devoted to protecting NSO from barred owls
(III-62 to III-69).
The cornerstone of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is the
concept of natural selection:
Individuals less suited to the environment are less likely to
survive and less likely to reproduce; individuals more suited
to the environment are more likely to survive and more likely
to reproduce and leave their inheritable traits to future
generations which produces the process of natural selection
I think Darwin would find it ironic and surprising that an informed
society would fund and enforce a requirement to thwart such a
fundamental evolutionary process by killing barred owls in the name of
ecosystem preservation. At least I think he would likely find it
another example of ``static'' vs. ``dynamic'' management.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll hear from Mr. Ken Connaughton,
Pacific Northwest Regional Forester, U.S. Forest Service.
Mr. Connaughton, recognize you for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF KENT CONNAUGHTON, PACIFIC NORTHWEST REGIONAL
FORESTER, U.S. FOREST SERVICE, PORTLAND, OREGON
Mr. Connaughton. Thank you, Chairman Hastings, and it's a
pleasure to meet with you and Congresswoman Herrera Beutler.
I'm Kent Connaughton, Regional Forester for the U.S. Forest
Service. I'm a forester and I've been with the U.S. Forest
Service for 33 years. My responsibilities are the 16 national
forest units here in Oregon and Washington and the Columbia
River Gorge National Scenic area.
I'll begin by observing that the purpose of the United
States Forest Service is to sustain the health, productivity
and diversity of the nation's forests for current and future
generations. Now, those words would mean nothing more than a
platitude if there weren't some philosophy and execution behind
them.
In 2009, the Secretary of Agriculture in Portland, Oregon,
observed that the Forest Service has to be concerned about more
than the national forest system, must look beyond the
boundaries of the national forest system, and take care of all
the nation's forests. That makes sense to me. How do we go
about doing that? One of the things I want to observe is our
dependence upon the forest products industry, the operating
industry and the communities in which we operate is in fact a
very necessary condition for success in conserving the nation's
forests.
One of the means that we have to go about conservation is a
current emphasis on forest restoration. We have in our
targeting an increase in forest restoration across the national
forest system for increase of some 20 percent in the next
couple of years. Here's what the reality is: In the United
States we have between 65 and 82 million acres of national
forest that are desperately in need of some kind of restoration
treatment.
Whether or not it's the protection from fire, insects,
disease or forest health purposes is that we're united in
dedicating ourselves toward these treatments. One of the means
to do this that is the Collaborative Forest Landscape
Restoration Act. In this year's appropriations we have some $40
million nationally dedicated toward execution of projects under
the act.
The provisions of that act require that when the program is
administered is that we jointly configure with elements of the
public through collaboration and local government is where
those treatments would be placed and to what ends they would be
dedicated. In my mind this makes very, very good sense. We have
five of these projects in the Northwest, two are in Washington,
three are in Oregon.
Around the United States, with $40 million, we currently
have 20 projects and we estimate that they provide more than
1,500 jobs. Here in the Northwest is a proportionate fraction
of somewhere around 130 jobs directly and probably 600 jobs
plus when one takes into account the indirect effects.
That is the Collaborative Forestry Restoration Act. It is
not the only element of Forest Service programs that are
relevant to the Northwest, but I bring it to your attention
because it represents a seed change in terms of the philosophy
of conservation appropriate to this nation and it makes some
very good sense to me.
Second is, I want to point out that we are using an
authority that Congress has granted us and been with us for
some time, and that is the use of Stewardship Projects. A
Stewardship Project does what? It permits us essentially to use
exchanged goods for services. If they're of value in a
particular project it can be used to pay for elements of the
project over and above what normal appropriations would do. In
other words, it's a leveraging of congressional appropriation.
In the Northwest, since we've had this stewardship
authority, we've had more than 200 projects. Over the last
couple of years, depending upon which year we're talking about,
between 20 and 30 percent of the timber volumes in providing
the national forest in Region 6 has come from Stewardship
Projects. For us this means a great deal because the magnitude
of work that needs to be done for restoration purposes is
great, so I do want you to know about the significance of that
stewardship for authority.
Third that I also want you to know is that following
procedures of National Environmental Policy Act, that by
statute, is your Forest Service and other Federal agencies must
follow is that we have been very interested in innovative means
that would streamline reduced costs, such that we can get more
work done faster.
I'll point out some work done over more than 200 thousand
acres in South Dakota that we are looking at closely here in
the Northwest as a model for taking a look at forest health
needs and restoration purposes when insects and disease
threaten our forests. If we can in fact do our work more
cheaply and faster, we need to do so.
Second is that we also are interested in expansion of the
categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy
Act essentially is the Council on Environmental Quality gives
us the authority to proceed for certain kinds of forest
practices without going through a more elaborative process of
evaluating environmentally fit. It makes sense to do this under
certain conditions and the expansion of that authority is
something that I welcome.
And my last point is, over the last five or six years, the
wood products industry has gone through a very, very severe
reality check with respect to the United States' economy.
There's been a dramatic downturn in housing. We're all familiar
with that. And we've also got a number of other factors that--
The Chairman. Mr. Connaughton, please wrap up--your time is
over, so please wrap up your thought.
Mr. Connaughton. Yes. I'm sorry, I overlooked the--thank
you very much.
So the Northern Spotted Owl is going to affect us. We've
been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and we're
looking forward to working with them further as that comes to
affect the Northwest.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Connaughton follows:]
Statement of Kent Connaughton, Regional Forester, Pacific Northwest
Region, Forest Service, U.S.Department of Agriculture
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to present the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
regarding Federal Forest Policies related to jobs, forest management
and wildlife. I am Kent Connaughton, Regional Forester for the Pacific
Northwest Region of the Forest Service.
Today, people understand forests provide a broad range of values
and benefits, including recreation, clean air, drinking and irrigation
water, and wildlife habitat. We have national forests in 42 states and
Puerto Rico which comprise a land area of nearly 193 million acres. Our
mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the
Nation's forests and grasslands for present and future generations. The
Forest Service does this through working with numerous federal, state,
and local partners, citizens, and industries.
The Forest Service also recognizes the need for a strong forest
products industry to help accomplish forest restoration work and
support local economies. A vibrant industry can provide the people and
the know-how necessary to undertake mechanical treatments and other
restoration activities. The forest industry also lowers the cost of
restoration to the taxpayer by providing markets for forest products.
The Forest Service is committed to increasing the number of acres being
mechanically treated by 20% over the next three years, through our
Accelerated Restoration Strategy, which was announced by USDA Secretary
Vilsack in February of this year. This strategy increases the pace and
scale of restoration and improves both the ecological health of our
forests and the economic health of forest-dependent communities.
Whether the threat comes from wildfire, bark beetles or a changing
climate, it is vital that we step up our efforts to safeguard our
country's natural resources.
For example, through implementation of the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program (including the use of stewardship
contracts), the proponents of projects anticipate creating or
maintaining 1,550 jobs nationally. Public lands and local communities
both benefit from robust forest industries. The Forest Service relies
on local forest contractors and mills to provide the work force to
undertake a variety of restoration activities. One study has shown that
for every $1 million spent on activities like stream restoration or
road decommissioning, 12 to 28 jobs are generated.
The Accelerated Restoration strategy will allow the Forest Service
to increase the number of watersheds restored, while supporting jobs
and increasing annual forest product sales to 3 billion board feet of
timber. A critical part of this effort is building public support for
forest restoration and management activities. To this end, the Forest
Service continues to emphasize the importance of collaboration with
diverse stakeholders when developing restoration projects on national
forest lands. Such collaboration not only results in better projects,
but it also reduces the risks of costly litigation.
The Secretary described his vision for America's Forests in a
speech given in Seattle in August 2009. He underscored the overriding
importance of forest restoration by calling for a ``complete commitment
to restoration''. Additionally, the Secretary highlighted the need for
pursuing an ``all lands approach to forest restoration'' and called for
close coordination with other landowners to encourage collaborative
solutions through landscape-scale operations. The Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Act provides a means to meet this vision.
The Forest Service is using $40 million from 2012 appropriations for 20
CFLR projects.
There are five landscape restoration projects selected in the
Pacific Northwest of which one CFLR project and one High Priority
Restoration project are located in the State of Washington. The Tapash
Sustainable Forest Collaborative and the Northeast Washington Forest
Vision 2020 are estimated to provide a minimum of 131 direct jobs and
634 total jobs in FY 2012.
One important tool the Forest Service uses to improve the health of
America's forests and create jobs is stewardship contracting. It is a
very successful and important program nationally, and particularly, in
the Pacific Northwest Region. Through stewardship contracting we have
been able to treat low value or dying vegetation caused by insect or
disease epidemics, or other low-value hazardous fuels. This tool allows
the Forest Service to offset the value of the services received with
the value of forest products removed.
Since the authority was originally enacted in 1999, the Pacific
Northwest Region has awarded more than 200 stewardship contracts and
task orders, treating approximately 106,000 acres. The benefits of the
program include implementation of more restoration projects, which
reduce fuel loading and address insect infestation. Restoration
projects yield significant sawlog and biomass material that supports
woods operations jobs and industry infrastructure. An excellent example
in Washington is the Colville Mill Creek Stewardship A to Z project,
wherein the community and the Forest Service are striving to get more
restoration work done through an innovative, broad, forest landscape-
level approach.
The Forest Service is constantly improving upon our National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. The Agency has initiated a
project to learn and share lessons of successful implementation of
streamlined NEPA analyses. The goal of this effort is to ensure the
Agency's NEPA compliance is as efficient, cost-effective, and up-to-
date as possible. Specifically we are looking at expanding the use of
focused environmental assessments (EAs) and iterative environmental
impact statements (EISs), expanding categories of actions which may be
excluded from documentation in an environmental assessment or an
environmental impact statement, and applying an adaptive management
framework to NEPA documentation. Our landscape-scale NEPA analysis will
also increase efficiencies by analyzing broad swaths of land, avoiding
piecemeal NEPA analysis. The recently released landscape-scale Black
Hills Mountain Pine Beetle Response Project proposes to treat 242,000
acres of high risk forest. This is approximately 5 times the normal
analysis area.
It is important to remember the Forest Service supplies about 2
percent of total domestic timber production annually. For the Pacific
Northwest, national forests supply about 6 percent of annual timber
production. Market conditions during the past several years have been a
severe departure from the era before 2005. Since 2005, the new home
construction market dropped 75 percent, resulting in the closure of
1200 mills nationwide and the loss of a million jobs in the forest
products sector. Today, the demand for lumber, plywood, and other
building materials are at low levels not seen since the 1960s. The
mills that remain open are often working only part-time because
builders aren't buying with new housing starts so low. During the
current down market, the Forest Service has been concentrating on
maintaining infrastructure through relief measures in existing timber
sale contracts, such as market-related contract term additions, and
rate redeterminations.
Concerning federal forest management related in the Pacific
Northwest, in April 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan Record of Decision
(ROD) amended the existing land and resource management plans for
national forests and BLM Districts within the range of the northern
spotted owl (NSO). The ``Northwest Forest Plan,'' as these amendments
were called was developed and implemented in part to protect and
enhance conditions favorable to late-successional and old-growth
related species, such as the NSO, and to respond to controversy,
litigation, and court injunctions over management of federal forest
lands in Washington, Oregon, and northern California. The ROD included
24 million acres of federal lands including all or parts of 17 National
Forests. The ROD changed the course of federal land management in the
Pacific Northwest to significantly increase protection for species that
depend on late-successional and old growth forests, while providing for
a reduced yet stable supply of timber. Over the past 18 years many, but
not all, of the stated objectives of the Northwest Forest Plan have
been met. For example, the aquatic conservation strategy has eliminated
many of the practices which led to degraded watersheds and threatened
fish populations. The plan has withstood legal challenges and although
the planned timber supply is not as high as envisioned, it has
stabilized.
The NSO was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act
in 1990. Overall, demographic studies indicate NSO populations have
been declining approximately 2.9 percent annually, leading to an
estimated 40% decline in population numbers over the last 25 years.
Forest Service Research and Development (R&D) has been a key leader in
long-term research and monitoring of the NSO. This research aims to
improve our understanding of the effects of land management under the
Northwest Forest Plan on NSO populations, as well as the effects from
invading barred owls, climate and other environmental factors. At its
implementation, the Plan anticipated spotted owl populations would
continue to decline for a few decades, until habitat is restored in the
network of large reserves established under the Plan.
To date, monitoring shows a continued range-wide decline. However,
some areas show stable populations, while others, like the northern
portion of the range, have shown larger declines than anticipated.
Monitoring and research have revealed wildfire appears to be the
biggest factor in habitat loss for spotted owls on federally managed
lands since the Plan's inception. Factors other than habitat loss are
adversely affecting spotted owls. Competition from barred owls is a
major threat. Forest Service research on competition between these
species has revealed spotted owls avoid areas occupied by barred owls
and have much lower reproductive rates than barred owls. This research
will inform future management for spotted owls. Other Forest Service
research focuses on modeling owl populations and habitats in relation
to fire, climate change, and prey populations.
Although the specific reasons for the NSO decline are not yet fully
understood, habitat loss and increasing competition from barred owls
appear to be key factors. In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(FWS) completed a revision of the 2008 Recovery Plan for the NSO and
initiated the process to re-designate critical habitat based on the new
recovery plan. The recovery plan emphasizes active restoration of
habitat to meet recovery goals and ecosystem conservation, both in dry
forests and moist forests. The recovery plan recognizes that in dry
(fire adapted) forest ecosystems; there may be short-term adverse
effects to individual owls with long-term benefits to their habitat.
The Plan also addresses experimental removal of barred owls from
certain parts of the NSO range to see if this removal affects NSO
population trends.
In March 2012, the FWS proposal for critical habitat was released
for public review and comment. The Forest Service supports the FWS
proposal and believes the proposed revision of critical habitat
reflects the intent of the 2011 recovery plan. We worked with the FWS
to develop specific rule language, which continues protection for
important old growth forests while recommending active forest
management designed to restore and protect ecological processes;
improve habitat conditions; and increase the resilience of the forests
to fire and insect infestations.
The Forest Service will continue to work with the FWS to assure the
final designation provides for recovery of the owl and allows for
appropriate timber management, which restores forest health, increases
resilience, and meets the economic needs of our communities.
In summary, the Forest Service continues to work toward
accomplishing restoration objectives, maintaining a robust forest
industry, and in turn creating jobs. We are striving to efficiently
implement existing programs and policies, as well as pursuing a number
of new policies and initiatives to increase the pace of forest
restoration through collaboration and management of the national
forests. The aim of these efforts is to move beyond the conflicts which
have characterized forest policy in the past and toward a shared
vision, which allows local communities, environmentalists, the forest
industry, and other stakeholders to work collaboratively toward
healthier forests and watersheds, safer communities and more vibrant
local economies.
I want to thank the committee for its interest, leadership, and
commitment to our national forests, their surrounding communities and
the forest products infrastructure.
This concludes my prepared statement and I would be pleased to
answer any questions you may have.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call Mr. Mitch Friedman, Executive
Director of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance.
Mr. Friedman, you're recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF MITCH FRIEDMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORTHWEST
ECOSYSTEM ALLIANCE, BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON
Mr. Friedman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the mid 1980s
prior to founding Conservation Northwest, which I now direct, I
organized many protests against logging of ancient forest,
including the first protest to protect Spotted Owls. My past is
full of appeals and lawsuits on these issues and listing
petitions under the Endangered Species Act.
About a decade ago we at Conservation Northwest changed our
approach. We observed that few people, even in the timber
industry, any longer favored logging old growth. We took the
opportunity to explore common ground to benefit ecological and
human communities. Conservation Northwest engaged fully in one
of the first novel collaborations in the West here on the
Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
A group of dedicated and diverse stakeholders transitioned
the Forest Service away from clear cutting big, old trees by
promoting projects to beneficially thin second growths. Appeals
and lawsuits dwindled. Timber flowed. Ecosystems and recreation
benefitted. A win-win-win.
Today we're most heavily invested in the Colville National
Forest, where we're a core partner in the Northeast Washington
Forestry Coalition. This collaboration is behind the success of
about 30 projects over eight years without environmental
controversy. That's going to be expanded by one of the grants
Mr. Connaughton just described from the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program.
The collaborations we're involved in are real. They include
people with whom we once battled but have reached accords in
how we view forests and management. Collaboration builds trust
and a culture of problem solving. When confronted with a new
challenge, the process involves civil and genuine effort to
identify common interests, evaluate science sometimes with the
aid of experts and eventually reach agreement and action.
I have witnessed collaboration groups reach agreement to
address objectives like wildfire fuels management, Spotted Owl
habitat, threats to forest and watershed health and even
wilderness protection. I invite you to take a field trip to see
projects created by the Pinchot Partners or Northeast
Washington Forestry Coalition and observe how collaboration is
working.
My experience is not the exception but is now typical
across the region. Federal forests in the West are producing as
much timber as they are budgeted for and doing so with much
less controversy or litigation expense than in the past. I have
submitted into the record a graphic that compares budgeted
targets and volume offered for the Forest Service and BLM units
across Washington, Oregon and California over a 15-year period,
and it shows that these days the Forest Service is producing as
much timber as Congress provided funding for. If Congress
provided more funds, the agencies could produce more
controversy-free timber, notwithstanding protections for owls,
salmon and other important values.
Conservation Northwest will soon release a commissioned
study that provides detailed estimates of uncontroversial
timber available on Northwest Federal lands. Federal timber
values can be substantially increased without reducing
environmental safeguards, cutting special areas, building new
roads or otherwise harming our natural heritage.
If Congress wants more timber cut from Federal land, you
need only invest more funds and allow ecological protections
and collaborative groups to guide those funds into the most
beneficial projects. Efficiency can be improved in
environmental analysis and contracting procedures.
The agencies have become somewhat risk adverse and are
generally following the same NEPA approach for popular
restoration projects as they would there clear cut old growth.
Many stakeholders want reform and innovation and are working
for it through pilot projects under authorities like the
Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, Stewardship
Contracting, Proof of Concept and others. I am confident that
efficiency can be increased without reducing collaboration or
robust protections for water, wildlife or public resources.
With regard to timber production and jobs, the big
constraint is the market. The economy is sluggish. Housing
starts are a third of their boom level. British Columbia
continues to dump subsidized soft wood. The strong markets are
overseas.
Private lands are now being logged heavily to meet demand
in China, Japan and other Pacific markets. Almost 20 percent of
logs cut in Washington and Oregon are exported whole, a volume
that is 2.5 times that cut from Federal lands here. Those
exported logs touch the hands of few American workers.
I get the concerns of mill owners and workers, but the
reason that loaded trucks bypass them on the way to export
yards do not include protection for owls or other natural
resources.
On the Endangered Species Act, a recent study found that 90
percent of 110 species listed that were reviewed, while not
recovered, are actually on pace with expectations in their
respective recovery plans. If you're cake is mushy, you can't
blame the recipe unless you've allowed the full baking time.
The Spotted Owl is a case in point.
Continued population declines were anticipated by the
recovery plan until such time as enough habitat is recovered to
reverse the trend. We have a ways to go on that objective and
some complex challenges. It isn't easy work, but I know from my
family experiences the Spotted Owls, wolves and other rare
species, wildlife makes a big difference in our lives, but it's
worth the effort.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Friedman follows:]
Statement of Mitch Friedman, Executive Director, Conservation Northwest
I am Mitch Friedman, a biologist and Executive Director of
Conservation Northwest. I have been involved in federal forest issues
since 1985. I believe that the path forward on federal timber policy is
clear and full of opportunity if we apply the leadership and resources
to follow it.
In the mid 1980's, prior to founding Conservation Northwest, I was
a organized many protests against logging of ancient forest, including
the first protest to protect spotted owls. My past is also full of
appeals and lawsuits on these issues.
About a decade ago, we at Conservation Northwest changed our
approach. We observed that few people, even in the timber industry, any
longer favored logging old growth. We took the opportunity to explore
common ground to benefit ecological and human communities.
Conservation Northwest engaged fully in one of the first novel
collaborations in the West, here on the Gifford Pinchot National
Forest. A group of dedicated and diverse stakeholders transitioned the
Forest Service away from clearcutting big, old trees by promoting
beneficial thinning projects in stands of second growth. Appeals and
lawsuits ended, timber flowed, ecosystems and recreation benefited: A
win-win-win.
Conservation Northwest is based in Bellingham and employs field
associates in rural forest communities throughout the region. We have
at least scrutinized most major national forest projects across the
state for two decades. Today we are most heavily invested around the
Colville National Forest, where we are a core partner in the Northeast
Washington Forestry Coalition. This collaboration is behind the success
of about 30 projects over eight years without environmental
controversy. This work is now expanding thanks to a million dollar/year
grant from the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.
The collaborations we are involved in are real. They include people
with whom we once battled but have reached accords in how we view
forests and management. Collaboration builds trust and a culture of
problem solving. When confronted with a new challenge, the process
involves civil and genuine effort to identify common interests,
evaluate science sometimes with the aid of experts, and eventually
reach agreement and action. I have witnessed collaborative groups reach
agreement to address objectives like wildfire fuels management, spotted
owl habitat, threats to forest and watershed health, and even
wilderness protection. I invite you to take a field trip to see
projects created by the Pinchot Partners or Northeast Washington
Forestry Coalition, and observe how collaboration is working.
My experience is not the exception, but is now typical across the
region. Federal forests in the West are producing as much timber as
they are budgeted for, and doing so with much less controversy or
litigation expense then in past. This graphic compares budgeted targets
and volume offered for the Forest Service and BLM in WA, OR and CA over
a fifteen year period.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.004
.epsIf Congress provided more funds, the agencies could produce
more controversy-free timber, notwithstanding protections for owls,
salmon and other important values. Conservation Northwest and other
groups will soon release a commissioned study that provides detailed
estimates of uncontroversial timber available on Northwest federal
lands. Federal timber volumes can be increased substantially without
reducing environmental safeguards, cutting special areas, building new
roads, or otherwise harming our natural heritage.
If Congress wants more timber cut from federal land, you need only
invest more funds and allow ecological protections and collaborative
groups to guide those funds into most beneficial projects.
On the other hand, efficiency can be improved in federal
environmental analysis and contracting procedures to provide better
return on investment for the Treasury and communities. The agencies
have become somewhat risk averse, and are generally following the same
NEPA approach for popular restoration projects as they would to
clearcut old growth. Many stakeholders want reform and innovation, and
are working for it through pilot projects under authorities like the
Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act, Proof of Concept, and
others. I am confident that efficiency can be increased without
reducing collaboration or robust protections for water, wildlife and
other public resources.
With regard to constraints on timber production and jobs in the
region, the 800 pound gorilla is the market. The economy remains
sluggish and housing starts are a third of their boom level. British
Columbia continues to dump subsidized softwood. Domestic timber prices
are therefore so weak that some federal timber sales have no bidders.
The strong markets are overseas. Private lands are now being logged
very aggressively to meet demand in China, Japan, and other Pacific
markets. Almost 20% of the logs cut in Washington and Oregon are
exported whole, a volume that is 2.5 times that cut from federal lands
here. Those exported logs are from private lands and touch the hands of
few American workers.
I get the concerns of mill owners and workers. But the reasons that
loaded trucks bypass them on the way to export yards do not include
protections for spotted owls or other natural resources. I think it is
wise for the committee explore ways to boost economic activity and
timber jobs. The best opportunities for doing so are addressing raw log
exports and investing more in programs like the Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Act that help communities by improving our
forests and watersheds.
Policy should be based on a review of what is working. Presently we
have less conflict and controversy on our federal lands than we've had
in decades. That is the result of land management policies that protect
our assets and collaborations that identify common ground and build
long term community equity.
By staying the course on these successful principles while also
exploring ways to improve returns on federal investment, we can provide
a strong foundation for growth in timber jobs as the economy recovers,
and improve the health of our forests and rural communities while
protecting the landscapes, streams and wildlife that make our region
great.
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call on Mr. Ernie Niemi, Senior
Economist of EcoNorthwest.
Mr. Niemi, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF ERNIE NIEMI, SENIOR ECONOMIST, ECONORTHWEST,
EUGENE, OREGON
Mr. Niemi. Thank you very much.
My name is Ernie Niemi. I've spent more than 30 years
analyzing the relationship between national forests and the
economy of this region. As the Subcommittee moves forward, I
recommend that it consider three important characteristics of
this relationship: Number one, to recognize that these national
forests produce many, many different types of goods and
services, timber certainly, recreational opportunities, clean
water and the like. Each one of these goods and services
contribute to the standard of living of the residents of this
region and to the profitability of businesses in this region.
The second is that the national forests in this region also
contribute to jobs and generate jobs in different ways.
Economists generally rank these ways into two groups. One is
that the national forests directly contribute to the commercial
activities that you talked about earlier, so the national
forests generate jobs so they generate recreational
opportunities that support the tourism industry.
The second mechanism is known as amenity-driven growth.
That is to say the national forests provide recreational
opportunities, scenic vistas, clean water and a high quality of
life. Those amenities attract productive workers, they attract
entrepreneurs and they attract investors to this region.
For much of this region the amenity-driven growth mechanism
predominates. That isn't to say that the commercial-driven
mechanism is irrelevant. Not at all. It is just that that's the
reality in this region today. We also have 20 or 30 years of
evidence that indicates that the amenity-driven mechanism has
increased in importance, not just in this region but throughout
the United States and is likely to do so.
We also have experience in the commercial sector. A very
natural characteristic of the commercial sector that
investments in technology and other factors over time diminish
the ability of those sectors to generate new jobs for any given
unit of the national forest. So we see that the number of jobs
per million board feet of log has diminished over time.
We see that large mills across this region and in Canada
have replaced the many numerous small mills that used to be in
rural communities. Part of what that means is that any program
designed to increase logging and generate timber-related jobs
in small communities has a very steep uphill road to climb.
The third factor that I hope you pay attention to is that
because of the complexity of this relationship there are
necessarily trade-offs. Any action to generate jobs or new
incomes for one group or for one set of communities or for one
industry almost certainly will diminish the jobs and the
incomes for another group.
For example, we've learned in this region at a hard cost
that activities in the uplands, in the head waters, that result
in sediment coming down in the streams increases the cost of
communities. Businesses and households pay to remove that
sediment downstream, and in effect that reduces the amount of
money that businesses can invest to generate new jobs
downstream. We also know that the impacts of sediment and other
impacts on water quality eliminate jobs in the fishing industry
all the way down to the coast.
I'm very pleased to have heard the two people who preceded
me talk about the importance of restoration and the challenge
of restoration. One of the leaders in restoration in the State
of Oregon commented very recently to me that a useful way to
think about this is that the national forests in many respects
are like Humpty Dumpty: Once it's broke, it's really very hard
to put back together again.
What that means is that these trade-offs persist not just
across one group to another group but also over time. Short-run
decisions for short-run gain can have very long lasting effects
not just on the ability of the national forests to generate
goods and services, their ability to generate jobs, but can in
fact impose a cost, in effect a tax on future generations.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Niemi.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Niemi follows:]
Statement of Ernie Niemi, Senior Economist,
ECONorthwest, Eugene, Oregon
I. Introduction and Summary
My name is Ernie Niemi. I am testifying on my own behalf before the
Subcommittee.
For more three decades I have analyzed the relationship between
federal forests and the economy of the Pacific Northwest, as a Senior
Economist with ECONorthwest, the oldest and largest independent
economic consulting firm in the Pacific Northwest. I live and work in
Eugene, Oregon, but have conducted economic research on natural
resource management issues throughout the United States and in other
countries.
I encourage the Subcommittee, when considering the effects of
federal forest policy, to consider the diverse nature of the
relationship between federal forests and the economy of Oregon and
Washington. In particular:
1. This region's federal forests produce many valuable goods
and services that make important contributions to the economic
well-being of workers and families, to the productivity of
businesses, and to the economic outlook of communities, both
rural and urban. These goods and services include wood fiber
for the wood-products industry, clean water for communities,
mitigation of potential flood damage for downstream property
owners, habitat for fish and wildlife, recreational
opportunities, the sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere,
and many more.
2. This region's federal forests also generate jobs and
incomes in many different ways. Not just through the production
of products, such as logs for the timber and bio-energy
industries, but also through the production of services, such
as delivering clean water that lowers the cost of living and
doing business in the region, recreational opportunities that
support jobs in the tourism industry, and scenic amenities that
attract productive workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.
3. Any policies regarding the management of the region's
federal forests will have both positive and negative effects on
the economy. With a change in policy, some residents of Oregon
and Washington will see their economic welfare and job
opportunities increase, others will experience a decrease.
All these dimensions of the relationship between this region's
federal forests and its economy must be fully accounted for before one
can reasonably conclude that the existing forest-management policies
have failed, or succeeded. Similarly, all of these dimensions must be
considered before concluding that new policies would, on balance,
enhance or diminish the federal forests' contribution to the Pacific
Northwest's economy.
II. Federal Forests Provide Many Economically Important Goods and
Services
From an economic perspective, the Pacific Northwest's federal
forests are important not in and of themselves but because they provide
goods and services that increase the quality of life for the region's
residents and visitors. The list of these goods and services is long
and growing, as ecological scientists learn more about the inner
workings of the federal forests and people learn more about how they
derive benefits from them. Figure 1 provides an illustrative list.
Consistent with widely accepted professional standards, this list
includes a broad suite of goods and services, including those whose
value comes from direct use of forest resources, such as logging,
indirect use, such as purification of stream water, or non-use, such as
occurs when people are willing to pay to protect forest characteristics
for future generations (USEPA 2000, National Research Council 2004,
USEPA 2009). The list may expand or contract depending on the results
of future research and changes in human preferences.
A product from a forest is considered an economically important
good or service only if humans derive a benefits from it and have a
demand for it. Throughout this discussion, I recognize that humans are
part of the forest ecosystem: they affect the amount of natural capital
in federal forests, the workings of forest processes, and, hence, its
ability to provide a set of goods and services.
Figures 2, 3, and 4 illustrate some of the goods and services
provided by this region's federal forests. Figure 2 shows the extent to
which all forests are currently protecting areas important to the
supply of drinking water. The most intense areas in Oregon and
Washington are located on federal forests. Forest cover can explain 50
percent of differences in water-treatment costs for ommunities in
forested versus nonforested watersheds, and, for every 10 percent
increase in forest cover, treatment and chemical costs decrease by 20
percent, with these benefits maximized at 60 percent forest cover (The
Trust for Public Land et al. 2002). The map in Figure 3 similarly shows
that the greatest sequestration of carbon, represented by the amount of
biomass also occurs on federal forests.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.005
.eps[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.006
.epsThe federal forests of this region cannot be managed to
increase the output of all goods and services at the same time.
Increasing the output of one set will decrease the output of another. A
change in management policies for the region's federal forests would
improve the economic well-being of current and future generations only
if it would increase the net economic value of all the different types
of goods and services produced by the forests on a sustained basis.
When weighing the potential change in the net economic value, it is
important to consider all the different ways in which society imputes a
value to forest goods and services: through direct use, indirect use,
and non-use.
III. Federal Forests Generate Jobs and Income in Different Ways
Many residents of this region can remember when federal forests
generated jobs primarily through the timber industry. Logging and
milling operations provided jobs for workers and supported communities,
large and small, dispersed throughout the region. The implementation of
the Northwest Forest Plan was accompanied by widespread fear that not
just jobs and incomes in the timber industry but the overall the
overall regional economy would collapse. The collapse never occurred.
Figure 4 shows that, although the amount of timber harvested from
federal lands in Oregon and Washington fell by about 90 percent in the
1990s, overall employment in the timber industry declined by only about
30 percent, while total employment and per capita income increased by
about one-third. These trends have continued. They strongly suggest
that future logging on federal forests will generate fewer jobs and
lower incomes, and have less of an impact on the overall economy than
in the past. This conclusion applies especially to small, rural
communities. Figure 5 shows that the timber industry has shifted away
from a large number of relatively small sawmills dispersed across the
region to a smaller number of mills capable of processing large volumes
of timber.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.007
.eps[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.008
.epsIn today's economy, federal forests generate jobs and income
primarily by providing recreational opportunities and other amenities
that attract workers, families, entrepreneurs, and investors. The
overall economic power of amenities, of all types, is indicated by the
findings of research on differences in job growth among the 50 states
to distinguish between the two growth processes (Partridge and Rickman
2003). The researchers concluded that industry-driven and amenity-drive
growth have roughly the same impact on job growth. This finding
indicates, at a minimum, that federal forests may have a greater
influence on jobs and income through their amenities and their
influence on household-location decisions rather than through the
production of logs. This expectation is reinforced by research showing
that communities close to undeveloped public lands have experienced
faster population growth than those lacking these amenities. (Power et
al. 2001 and Kim et al. 2005).
Federal forest generate some jobs and income through direct
consumption of recreational amenities. In Oregon, in 2006, the last
year for which these data are available, outdoor recreation accounted
for 73,000 jobs, $310 million in state tax revenue, and sales that
represented 3.4 percent of the state GDP (Outdoor Industry Foundation
2006a). During the same year, the outdoor recreation industry created
115,000 jobs in Washington, $650 million in state tax revenue, and
sales that accounted for 3.5 percent of the state GDP (Outdoor Industry
Foundation 2006b). Much of this recreation occurred on or was dependent
on federal forest lands.
Restoration of ecosystems damaged by past management of federal
forests also can generate significant jobs and income. For example, a
recent report shows that, for every $1 million invested in restoration
projects, 15.7-23.8 jobs are created in Oregon directly and indirectly,
with average payroll costs per worker ranging between $31,000 and
$55,000 annually (Nielsen-Pinkus and Moseley 2010). The total economic
output of the same $1 million investment ranges between $2.2 million
and $2.5 million. The reason for the high multiplier effects of
investments in forest and watershed restoration projects is that 95-
99.5 percent of the initial investment goes towards hiring Oregon-based
businesses for contracted work. The indirect impacts on the state's
economic output from these types of projects range between about
$735,000 and $985,000 for every $1 million spent on restoration.
IV. Any Change in Federal Forest Policy Will have Both Positive and
Negative Impacts on the Economy
The demands for goods and services produced by this region's
federal forests far exceed the supply. As a consequence, competition--
for resources, land-uses, goods, and services--is an essential
characteristic of the relationship between federal forests and the
Pacific Northwest's economy (Niemi and Whitelaw 1999).
Some of this competition occurs over short time periods. Changes in
the amount of logging on federal lands, for example, might alter the
price of logs in the regional log market, and induce off-setting
effects on logging on other lands. A marked increase in federal log
production, for example, might depress log prices so that private
landowners receive less for the logs they sell to the market. Or, if
activities on federal lands that are the headwaters for municipal water
supplies result in higher levels of sediment in the water, the
businesses and households will incur additional costs to remove it.
This added cost can reduce the funds businesses have available for new
investment and force households to reduce their local spending,
resulting in further reduction in business investment.
Many of the overall effects on the regional economy of changes in
the competition for federal forests play out over longer time periods.
Past experience suggests that using federal lands as a source of logs
for the timber industry will continue to exhibit a declining ability to
generate increases in jobs and incomes, while using these lands as a
source of amenities attractive to workers, entrepreneurs, and investors
will continue to exhibit a rising ability to generate economic growth.
Actions today that increase the supply of logs but reduce the
attractiveness of amenities thus can have an overall negative effect on
economic growth for decades, an effect that may intensify over time.
V. References
Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2012. State Annual Personal Income &
Employment. Retrieved May 19, 2012 from http://www.bea.gov/
regional/index.htm
Kim, K.-K., D.W. Marcouiller, and S.C. Deller. 2005. ``Natural
Amenities and Rural Development: Understanding Spatial and
Distributional Attributes.'' Growth and Change 36 (2): 273-297.
Nielsen-Pincus, M. and C. Moseley. 2010. Economic and Employment
Impacts of Forest and Watershed Restoration in Oregon.
Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon.
Spring. Retrieved May 17, 2012, from http://ewp.uoregon.edu/
sites/ewp.uoregon.edu/files/downloads/WP24.pdf
Niemi, E., and E. Whitelaw. 1999. Assessing Economic Tradeoffs in
Forest Management. U.S. forest Service, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, General Technical Report PNW-GTR-403. July.
Oregon Department of Forestry. 2011. 25-Year Harvest History Data
(1986-2010). Retrieved May 19, 2012 from http://www.oregon.gov/
ODF/STATE_FORESTS/FRP/Charts.shtml
Outdoor Industry Foundation. 2006a. The Active Outdoor Recreation
Economy Report: Oregon. Retrieved May 18, 2012, from http://
www.outdoorindustry.org/pdf/OregonRecEconomy.pdf
Outdoor Industry Foundation. 2006b. The Active Outdoor Recreation
Economy Report: Washington. Retrieved May 18, 2012, from http:/
/www.outdoorindustry.org/pdf/WashingtonRecEconomy.pdf
Power, T.M. and R.N. Barrett. 2001. Post-Cowboy Economics: Pay and
Prosperity in the New American West. Island Press.
Stein, S.M., R.E. McRoberts, L.G. Mahal, M.A. Carr, R.J. Alig, S.J.
Comas, D.M. Theobald, and A. Cundiff. 2009. Private Forests,
Public Benefits: Increased Housing Density and Other Pressures
on Private Forest Contributions. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-795.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific
Northwest Research Station. p. 41 Retrieved 8 November 2010
from http://www.fs.fed.us/openspace/fote/benefits_files/pnw-
gtr795_pt3.pdf.
Todd, A.H. and E. Weidner. 2010. ``From Forest to Faucet: Drinking
Water as and Ecosystem Service.'' Presentation to ACES: A
Community of Ecosystem Services, Gila River Indian Community,
Arizona. December 6. Retrieved 2 June 2011 from http://
conference.ifas.ufl.edu/aces/Presentations/Tuesday/Plenary%20D-
G/pm/Yes/0430%20A%20Todd.pdf.
The Trust for Public Land and American Water Works Association. 2002.
Protecting the Source. Retrieved May 19, 2012, from http://
cbey.research.yale.edu/uploads/
Conservation%20Finance%20Camp%202011/agenda/Tuesday/
protecting_the_source_04-1.pdf
U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. various years.
Production, Prices, Employment and Trade in Northwest Forest
Industries.
Washington Department of Natural Resources. 2011. Washington State
Timber Harvest. Retrieved May 19, 2012 from http://
www.dnr.wa.gov/BusinessPermits/Topics/EconomicReports/Pages/
obe_washington_timber_harvest_reports.aspx
______
The Chairman. Next we'll call on Mr. Kelly Kreps of Kreps
Ranch, LLC.
Mr. Kreps, you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF KELLY KREPS, KREPS RANCH, LLC,
WHITE SALMON, WASHINGTON
Mr. Kreps. Thank you, Congressman Hastings.
The Chairman. Pull the microphone closer to you, please.
Speak right into it.
Mr. Kreps. Thank you, Congressman Hastings and
Representative Herrera Beutler for this opportunity to share
how the Northern Spotted Owl designation has affected my
family. The Kreps family homesteaded in Western Klickitat
County in the State of Washington in----
The Chairman. Bring it closer and tilt it up if you can.
There you go. Thank you very much.
Mr. Kreps. They started as a cattle ranch with 160 acres.
Today my two brothers and I run 6,400 acre cattle and timber
ranch. Besides the three of us, we have two full-time employees
and also use some seasonal help.
We started actively logging in 1989. In 1990 we were
hearing about the Northern Spotted Owl, but this did not
concern us because he liked old-growth forests on the west side
of the Cascades according to the biologists. Our timber was
second growth with some pre-merchantable stands. Besides,
Federal recommendations limited harvests on private property to
70 acres adjacent to the owl nest during the mating season.
The problem with the Endangered Species Act is that special
interest groups in liberal states like Washington have a lot of
power, so the State of Washington now tries to maintain 2,500
acres of habitat for each owl nest site. With these
circumstances, by 1992 we had 400 acres restricted for owl
habitat. I wrote a letter to the Washington Forest Practice
Board at that time suggesting that the property be leased by
the state or Federal government, whomever was responsible for
implementing the owl recovery on private property.
Currently we have approximately 550 acres of timberland
restricted for Spotted Owl habitat. We are small forest
landowners with 3,200 total acres of timber. Only about 1,600
acres of this would be prime timbered ground which has good
slope, good soils. The proposed new Critical Habitat Listing
would restrict an additional 660 acres of our timberland. If
this does not affect--if this does take affect, we would then
have 1,210 acres of timberland reserved for owl habitat that we
would then be maintaining for a public resource. 800 acres are
part of our prime timberland.
With the potential loss of this additional timber base, we
as a business would most likely have to lay off both of our
employees, but not only will two of our full-time employees be
affected, this also has a trickle-down effect. We do our on
logging, except we hire mechanical felling and we get
independent log haulers to ship our trees to the mills.
When we harvest less timber, we buy fewer seedlings to
plant. With fewer acres to harvest, we need less equipment or
need to upgrade it less often. We were strongly urged by a
logger and friend in 1992 to clear cut or at least cut below
habitat standards all of our timberland that was not affected
by owls at that time. We chose not to because that is
management from fear and not best management practices, which
we have tried to do on our ranch for over 125 years.
However, with the current proposal, I feel anyone that does
not manage their land so that the Endangered Species Act or any
other bureaucratic policy that may inhibit them is probably a
fool. This type of condemnation without compensation should be
illegal. If a public resource is to be protected by private
property owners, then the public should have to lease their
resources.
This not only affects jobs but it affects livelihoods that
have been passed down through generations. We are part of the
few which still use and grow natural resources as a way of
life. My brothers and I hope that our children, the sixth
generation of Kreps, will be able to follow in our footsteps.
With the continuing squeeze on private property owners to
protect public resources as deemed by a specialist, it can be
crippling. If every person in the United States had to donate
$10 for every $100 they spent to protect public resources on
private property, I think there would be a lot less regulations
and habitat protected on private lands. Perhaps the public
would prefer protecting those resources on the lands they
currently have.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Kreps.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kreps follows:]
Statement of Kelly Kreps, Kreps Ranch LLC, White Salmon, Washington
The Kreps family homesteaded in Western Klickitat County in the
State of Washington in 1883. They started as a cattle ranch with 160
acres. Today, my two brothers and I run the 6400 + acre cattle and
timber ranch. Besides the three of us, we have two full time employees
and also use some seasonal help.
We started actively logging in 1989. In 1990 we were hearing about
the Northern Spotted Owl, but this did not concern us much because he
liked old growth forests on the other side of the Cascade Range (west
side) according to the biologists. Our timber was second growth with
some pre-merchantable stands. Besides, federal guidelines limited
harvests on private property of the 70 acres adjacent to the owl nest
during the mating season.
The problem with the endangered species act is that special
interest groups in a liberal State like Washington have a lot of power
and so the State of Washington now tries to maintain 2500 acres of
habitat for each owl nest site. With these circumstances, by 1992 we
had about 400 acres restricted for owl habitat. I wrote a letter to the
Washington Forest Practice Board at that time suggesting that the
property be leased by the State or Federal government, whomever was
responsible for implementing the owl recovery on private property
(attachment A). I did receive a phone call (unofficial) sometime later,
and the person told me that if the State paid what I suggested to every
private property owner who was maintaining owl habitat, the dollar
value would break the State.
Currently we have approximately 550 acres of timberland restricted
for spotted owl habitat. This has grown since 1992 mostly because the
State of Washington has a statewide HCP (Habitat Conservation Plan) and
that enables them to harvest timber that is habitat in one owl circle
because they have property somewhere else in the State that now can be
considered habitat and that leaves the burden of habitat back to the
private property owners.
We are small forest land owners with 3200 total acres of timber.
Only about 1600 acres of this would be prime timbered ground (good
soil, mild slope, etc.). The proposed new Federal Critical Habitat
listing would restrict an additional 660 acres of our timberland. If
this does take effect we would then have 1210 acres of timberland
reserved for owl habitat that we would then be maintaining for a public
resource. Eight hundred acres are part of our prime timberland.
With the potential loss of this additional timber base, we as a
business will most likely have to lay off both of our employees. Our
timber is our primary source of income and has subsidized our cattle
operation 8 of the last 10 years. Not only will two of our full time
employees be affected, but this has a trickledown effect. We do our own
logging except we hire mechanical felling and we get independent log
haulers to ship our trees to the mills. When we harvest less timber, we
buy fewer seedlings to replant. With fewer acres to harvest, we don't
need to upgrade equipment as often.
We were strongly urged by a logger and friend in 1992 to clear cut
or at least cut below habitat standards all of our timberland that was
not affected by the owls at that time. We chose not, because that is
management from fear and not best management practices which we have
tried to do on our ranch for over 125 years. However, with the current
proposal I feel that anyone that does not manage their land so that the
ESA or any other bureaucratic policy that many inhibit them is probably
a fool. This type of condemnation without compensation should be
illegal. If a public resource is to be protected by private property
owners, then the public should have to lease these resources. This not
only affects jobs, but it affects lively hoods that have been passed
down through generations. We are part of the few, which still use and
grow our natural resources as a way of life. My brothers and I hope
that our children, the 6th generation of Kreps', will be able to follow
in our footsteps. With the continuing squeeze on private property
owners to protect public resources as deemed by a specialist, it can be
crippling. If every person in the United States had to donate $10 for
every $100 they spent to protect public resources on private property,
I think there would be a lot less regulations and habitat protection on
private lands. Perhaps the public would prefer protecting those
resources on the lands they currently have.
Thank you for your consideration.
______
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 74531.009
The Chairman. And last we'll go to Mr. Tom Nelson, who is
the Washington Timberland Manager for Sierra Pacific
Industries.
Mr. Nelson, you're recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF TOM NELSON, WASHINGTON TIMBERLAND MANAGER, SIERRA
PACIFIC INDUSTRIES, MT. VERNON, WASHINGTON
Mr. Nelson. Thank you very much.
For the record, my name is Tom Nelson. I live about four
miles north of here in a tiny community of Bayview, Washington,
Skagit County. I'm here today to speak on behalf of Sierra
Pacific Industries. We're here to urge the congressman and
whoever else can help us to ask the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service to abandon this plan for implementation of the current
proposed critical habitat designation.
Our three main reasons for this are that, number one, the
proposed critical habitat does not meet the definition of
essential for the bird's survival. Number two, the economic
effects of this action have not have been adequately analyzed
and they would undoubtedly add to the ongoing deleterious
effects currently being endured throughout the Pacific
Northwest. And three, the proposed actions would inevitably be
futile anyway since the Northern Spotted Owl's fate will
largely be determined by the evolution of future populations
and territories of the Barred Owl and how much habitat might
being lost to forest fires, not by how much forest habitat is
going to be set aside.
I'd like to expand on each of these briefly, though not to
the extent I have in my submitted written testimony. Fist of
all, critical habitat, at the time of the listing suitable
habitat was deemed necessary for the recovery of this species
and it consisted of large blocks of high-quality habitat,
primarily old coniferous forest land.
As such, the recovery plan since 1990 has focused on
setting aside large blocks of essential habitat and eliminating
timber management altogether in these areas. After more than 20
years of locking up type of land and nearly a total devastation
of our industry within a lot of these communities, it appears
this was not really the right answer.
Spotted Owl numbers have continued to decline in spite of
these sweeping changes. We now have fewer owls than we did in
1990 in spite of all of this and we've dedicated more than 21
million acres of Federal forest land to the Northern Spotted
Owl and yet the Fish and Wildlife Service most recently studied
that the population has declined by an average of 2.8 percent
per year since 1995. This simply hasn't worked.
Number two, the economic effect, I won't dwell on them
because a lot of the previous speakers have covered it, but I
would like to add that many of us pleaded back in 1990 that
perhaps the Northern Spotted Owl is not really so dependent on
old growth forest for its survival as some would have us
believe. Perhaps we should be more certain of our predictions
before we impact an entire generation of people within our
region, but yet, the proposal before us now is to essentially
double down on this same risky theory and set aside even more
productive timber as owl habitat. That seems like a really bad
idea to us.
The last reason is the Spotted Owl competition and
displacement. We now know that competition from Barred Owls is
a significant threat to the continued existence of Northern
Spotted Owl. This is something we didn't know back in 1990. We
also know that both Barred Owls and Spotted Owls select very
similar habitat for breeding, feeding and shelter. Given this,
does it really make sense to set aside even more essential
habitat for Spotted Owls before we figure out how to deal with
the threatening cousin, the Barred Owl, and I'm not talking
about a 12-gauge shotgun.
I'd like to summarize briefly. The current theory that we
must designate massive chunks of Federal timberland in order to
save the Spotted Owl seems to be, at best, highly questionable.
It has not worked for the past 20 years. Why should it work
now? Moreover, even if you expect it to change course and begin
to increase these populations immediately, we've never closely
looked at the severe economic conditions that the previous
listings caused. Shouldn't we review this carefully before we
compound these effects?
And finally, aren't we simply trying to interject our own
personal values in this case by trying to override evolution
and natural selection? Given what we have learned since the
listing of the Northern Spotted Owl in 1990, any objective
review of these events would have to conclude that the Northern
Spotted Owl is going extinct. Regardless of how much forest
land we set aside for preservation, Barred Owls appear to be
replacing them at a fairly rapid rate.
The sensible approach would be to reject the proposal for
more set asides of essential habitat until and unless the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service can actually demonstrate how this
habitat will reverse the Spotted Owl's decline and that an
adequate Barred Owl control program has been implemented.
Unless we look at all the variables in this complicated
equation, the answer will always be incorrect.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Nelson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Nelson follows:]
Statement of Tom Nelson, Washington Timberlands Manager,
Sierra Pacific Industries
Background
SPI is a 3rd generation, family-owned and operated business with
(3) manufacturing facilities, (2) biomass cogeneration facilities and
over 217,000 acres of working forestland in Washington state. We employ
nearly 600 crewmembers at these facilities and we are, historically,
one of the top three purchasers of State Trust timber sales. We also
own more than 438,000 acres of timberland in northern California that
lie within the range of the northern spotted owl and operate an
additional 10 sawmills and millwork plants within this region that
employ more than 2900 employees. We are here today to urge you to
direct the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to abandon their plans
for implementation of the current proposed ``Critical Habitat''
designation for the northern spotted owls. Our primary reasons for this
request are that:
1. the proposed critical habitat does not meet the definition
of ``essential'' for this bird's survival,
2. the economic effects of this action have not been
adequately analyzed and would undoubtedly add to the ongoing
deleterious effects currently being endured throughout the
Pacific Northwest, and
3. the proposed actions would inevitably be futile anyway,
since the northern spotted owl's fate will largely be
determined by the evolution of future populations and
territories of the barred owl, and how much habitat will be
lost to forest fires, not how much forest habitat is set aside
by this proposed action for the northern spotted owl.
As noted in the Federal Register for this proposed action, the
original rationale for listing the northern spotted owl (NSO) as
threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was a widespread loss
of its old growth forest habitat and a declining population (55 FR
26114, June 26,1990). This resulted in an 85% reduction in historic
timber sale levels from Federal lands, the closure of hundreds of
mills, the loss of thousands of family wage jobs and the virtual
elimination of generated timber receipts to pay for county governments.
Critical Habitat
Critical habitat is defined within the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
as that which is ``essential to the conservation and recovery'' of the
owl. At the time of listing, suitable habitat that was deemed necessary
for recovery of this species consisted of large blocks of suitable,
high-quality habitat--primarily old-growth coniferous forest land. As
such, the recovery plans for the NSO since 1990 have primarily focused
on setting aside large, contiguous areas as essential habitat for the
NSO (and eliminating timber management altogether in these areas).
After more than 20 years of locking up public timber land as owl
habitat--and nearly total devastation of the timber industry within one
of the world's richest timber-growing regions--it now appears that this
was not the right answer. Spotted owl numbers have continued to
decline, in spite of these sweeping changes to the culture and
infrastructure of the Pacific Northwest. We have fewer owls now than we
did in 1990 despite effectively dedicating much of the 21 million acres
of Federal land to the NSO.
It is also impossible to determine what habitat is ``essential'' to
the conservation and recovery of the owl when the USFWS lacks reliable
information on how many northern spotted owls are alive today and where
they are located. In fact, very little monitoring has taken place since
the early 1990's. The limited population trend estimates and owl site
data that is being relied upon results in significant errors. The
USFWS' most recent studies claim that the population has declined by
2.8% per year since 1985. This critical habitat designation is based
upon data for 3,439 owl pair sites. Taking into account the 2.8% annual
population decline this would mean that there were over 6,300 owl pairs
in 1990, which is over three times the 2,000 reported in the 1990
listing document. If there actually were 2,000 owl pairs in 1990 and if
the population has declined by 2.8% annually, then there would be only
1,071 remaining. How can the public have any confidence in this 13
million acre critical habitat designation with this type of
uncertainty?
Economic Effects
The economic effects brought on by this listing have been
catastrophic to the rural communities within this region. The annual
amount of Federal timber being harvested has dropped by 85% since the
listing, demands for public assistance are up sharply, and entire
communities have fallen into a state of deep economic recession as
public timber (the lifeblood of many of these communities) was
withdrawn for essential owl habitat--rather than sustainable timber
management.
As many of us pleaded in 1990, perhaps the NSO is not really so
dependent on old growth forests for its survival as some would have us
believe. Perhaps we should be more certain of our predictions before we
impact an entire generation of people within this region. And now the
proposal before us is to ``double down'' on the same risky theory and
set aside even more productive timber land as owl habitat?
Effects of Barred Owl Competition and Displacement, Forest Fires
Over the past 50-60 years, the barred owl (Strix varia) has
expanded its range from the eastern US and Canada into western North
America. The range of the barred owl now intermingles and overlaps that
of the NSO in the western US, where they compete for habitat (and
appear to be winning).
As the Service states in their recent announcement for this
proposal, ``We now know that the suite of threats facing the northern
spotted owl differs from those at the time it was listed; in addition
to the effects of historical and ongoing habitat loss, the northern
spotted owl faces a new, significant, and complex threat in the form of
competition from the congeneric (referring to a member of the same
genus) barred owl (USFWS 2011, pp. I-7 to I-8). Emphasis added.
We now know that competition from barred owls (not a listed
species) is a significant threat to the continued existence of northern
spotted owls--something that was not considered or acknowledged at the
time of listing in 1990. We also know that both barred owls and spotted
owls select very similar habitat for breeding, feeding, and shelter.
Given this, does it really make sense to set aside even more
``essential habitat'' for spotted owls before we figure out how to deal
with their threatening cousins, the barred owl? Wouldn't this simply
amount to more land precluded from sustainable forest management so
that the barred owl can expand while the NSO continues to decline in
numbers?
In addition, even if the barred owl threat were somehow solved, the
additional threat of essential habitat loss due to forest fires is
ignored (or, at best, grossly underestimated) in this analysis. This is
especially true in the Klamath province, central Cascade range, and
eastside owl habitats. And, it is compounded in areas of these
provinces where there is an ownership pattern dominated by
``checkerboard'' sections, a remnant of the original railroad land
grants. Checkerboard blocks of owl habitat in private ownership will
eventually fall victim to fires as non-management of adjacent Federal
land continues--rampant fires will not adhere to property boundaries.
The lack of forest management brought on by single species-focused
management for the NSO has actually compounded the risk of catastrophic
wildfires.
Summary
In short, the current theory that we must designate massive chunks
of federal timber land in order to save the northern spotted owl seem
to be highly questionable--it has not worked over the past 20 years,
why should it work now? Moreover, even if you expect it to change
course and begin to increase NSO populations immediately, we have never
closely looked at the severe economic effects that the previous listing
action caused--shouldn't we review this carefully before we compound
these effects with even more land withdrawals in the name of the
spotted owl?
And, finally, aren't we simply trying to interject our own personal
values in this case by trying to ``override'' evolution and natural
selection? Given what we have learned since the listing of the NSO in
1990, any objective review of these events would have to conclude that
the northern spotted owl is going extinct--regardless of how much
forest land we set aside for preservation. Barred owls appear to be
replacing them at a fairly rapid rate.
The sensible approach would be to reject this proposal for more set
asides as ``essential habitat'' for the northern spotted owl until, and
unless, the USFWS can actually demonstrate how this habitat will
reverse spotted owl declines and that an adequate barred owl control
program has been implemented. Unless we look at all the variables in
this complicated equation, the answer will always be incorrect.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this important issue.
______
The Chairman. That concludes our testimony, and I know I
have a few questions and I'm sure that Mrs. Herrera Beutler has
some questions. I do want to mention when I mention this is an
official committee hearing that your input is welcome, and
there are forms at the table at the back that I understand are
pretty self-explanatory. If any member of the audience has
comments, you're certainly welcome to pick up one of those
forms and fill it out.
Let me start with just a couple of questions, and, frankly,
after hearing the testimony, I'm not sure there's so much to
start with, but Commissioner Pearce, let me ask you first, you
mentioned in your testimony that about the time that the
Spotted Owl was listed there were almost four times as many
private jobs on the Gifford Pinchot than Forest Service jobs.
What would that ratio look like today in your estimation?
Mr. Pearce. Well, the last time that I spoke with our
Economic Development Commission, their estimate of jobs on the
forest, private jobs on the forest, were less than 15 total,
and to be honest with you, I don't know how may Forest Service
folks work on the Gifford Pinchot. What I do know is that
there's not a single office or ranger station in my county, and
I don't believe any of them are actually on the forest any
longer. I know that there are two people that report to work on
the forest at the Land River Station from the Forest Service.
The Chairman. But the ratio certainly isn't four to one?
Mr. Pearce. No, sir. It's much, much, much higher Forest
Service to----
The Chairman. So it's reversed, Forest Service higher than
private?
Mr. Pearce. Absolutely.
The Chairman. That's the point.
Dr. Salwasser, the national forest in the Region 6 I
understand are currently growing at an annual rate in excess of
9 billion board feet but they sold only about 550 million board
feet, so what is going to happen with that ratio if it
continues to the health of the forest and what sort of risks
are associated with that imbalance that I just described?
Dr. Salwasser. Congressman Hastings, that question might be
a better question for Dr. Connaughton, who would know what's
going to happen. I can give you the general story.
The Chairman. Well, give me the general and we'll ask Mr.
Connaughton.
Dr. Salwasser. The general story is, on the wetter west
side forest they will simply accumulate the biomass on the
land. Fire is very rare. Insects don't appear to be a major
problem, with the exception of some invasive species. On the
drier side, though, that amount of annual growth with no
natural removal from fire, for example, or harvest makes those
forest more vulnerable to drought stress, insects and fire.
The Chairman. Mr. Connaughton, would you respond to the
question I had there with that imbalance of what the projected
growth is as it relates to harvest?
Mr. Connaughton. Hal Salwasser's answer was a good answer.
Desiccation of these forest will occur and then they can become
vulnerable to recess. That's one of the reasons we prioritize
our treatments where we do, particularly is to reduce the
influence of fire that that might have an unfavorable effect on
communities.
The Chairman. Mr. Connaughton, you mentioned treatments and
you mentioned restoration. Harvest, is that part of the
treatment and restoration?
Mr. Connaughton. Oh, yes. It's an essential element.
The Chairman. How much flexibility do you have to, say,
increase harvest if the demand is there under current law?
Mr. Connaughton. Outside the range of the Northern Spotted
Owl is we have----
The Chairman. Outside the range of the Northern Spotted
Owl--Northern Spotted Owl makes up how much of the range
percentage-wise.
Mr. Connaughton. Wild guess on my part is 60 percent.
The Chairman. 60 percent is off limits essentially then?
Mr. Connaughton. Not entirely off limits because the new
recovery plan calls for greater flexibility for managing those
forest that are vulnerable to fire.
The Chairman. And that flexibility, I assume--the reason
I'm here rubbing you is because I want to--the thought comes.
And that flexibility, I assume, is subject to lawsuit.
Is that correct?
Mr. Connaughton. Yes.
The Chairman. That's subject to lawsuit under the
Endangered Species Act; is that correct?
Mr. Connaughton. And several other acts.
The Chairman. OK. That brings me then to another
observation that, Mr. Friedman, I congratulate you for saying
that in your past for self--I don't know if I should say self,
but for full disclosure, but you suggested, at least I got you
suggested that collaboration is the new mantra rather than
litigation.
Is that correct?
Mr. Friedman. Yeah, I think that shows up in the record.
The Chairman. With that in mind, Hal, is it correct that
you have filed five lawsuits, you and your organization in the
last five years regarding that?
Dr. Salwasser. Sure, but that's a substantial decrease from
the past.
The Chairman. It's still five, however, right? OK. Well, I
mean, in other words, a city could conclude, well, OK that's in
the past, but my goodness, if we start harvesting, that five
could increase. Could it increase?
Dr. Salwasser. Yeah, but those lawsuits aren't necessarily
related to timber harvest. For instance----
The Chairman. Well, I'm talking about timber harvest.
Dr. Salwasser. Then it's not an accurate statement. Those
five lawsuits are more general than just those related to----
The Chairman. They're related to the Endangered Species
Act, though, aren't they?
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Sure.
The Chairman. Well, my time has expired, and I'll recognize
the gentlelady from Washington, as we say in the other
Washington.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to
speak fast. I might have to cut some of you all off because I
have many questions--I have more questions to ask than we
probably have time.
But, you know, I am going to start with following along the
Chairman's line for Mr. Connaughton. One of the things he was
saying I think is very important and I want wanted to bring up
the Wild Cats Sale. A recent lawsuit involving Wild Cats Sale
on the Gifford Pinchot was ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest
Service on all points, but the agency failed to defend the sale
when an appeal was filed and instead negotiated with the
plaintiff. This resulted in a substantial reduction of harvest.
I believe we got down to about 3 million board feet. It was
substantial.
Why didn't the agency defend this? If you're talking about
areas where we could potentially harvest, that could be part of
restoring the forest.
Mr. Connaughton. First, it's my knowledge that the Wild Cat
Sale is limited, so I don't have a specific answer.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. It's the only sale that I think we
were talking about in the Gifford Pinchot in our region for
several years. I mean, it's like the only one.
Dr. Salwasser. The appeal is instructive because during the
appeal period there is an expectation that the Forest Service
and other Federal agencies will enter into a negotiation with
the appellant. If we find common ground that there is a grounds
for concern over one of the Federal laws being either broken or
in some way or another discharged, we make a change.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. But it was ruled--you were ruled in
favor of on all points, so that yes, there's always going to be
someone who throws rocks, but as far the courts were concerned,
the Forest Service was right with the first sale we were going
to have, in my knowledge, in a long time, and you all backed
away.
Is that going to be your approach when it comes to managing
the non-set-aside land where it's appropriate, where it's not
within owls circles, where it's not environmentally sensitive?
You're not even going to push forward on those areas?
Mr. Connaughton. Our intent is to very much obey the law,
and that is in the eye of multiple participants.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. But in the issue of a court case, the
eye of the law should be, I would assume, the judicial review.
Mr. Connaughton. Certainly.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So moving forward, my office has been
informed--and this is also to Mr. Connaughton--my office has
been informed that biologists within your own agency are
raising the alarm because of the rapid decline of species
dependent upon young forest growth. You know, one of the panels
is talking about a 2.8 percent per year decline in Spotted
Owls, but another panelist, Mr. Mealey, spoke to the decline of
other species, I think about elk and deer who need some of that
foraging habitat. You know they're starving and unable to
produce and take care of their offspring.
Do you believe that the management of our forest for a
single species has been beneficial for the health of our
forests and the multiple species of wildlife within them?
Mr. Connaughton. I think that's a very questionable
approach, because I think that we've learned that the
conservation of species occurs at best landscape scales and
therefore doing one species at a time ends up as being a
logical outcome in terms of public policy, nobly motivated, but
the execution becomes exceptionally----
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So with that, having basically
admitted that no, managing for one species hasn't necessarily
proven beneficial for all species or the overall health of the
forest, why then would you double down on an expanded critical
habitat taking basically more private forest land if you're
admitting that that species has not done well for the health of
the owl, forest or the species?
Mr. Connaughton. Well, first, it's Fish and Wildlife
Service's obligation to designate critical habitat. The
coordination we have on that is what can the Federal estate
bring to that obligation that they have? If in their
determination that that's an appropriate thing to do even
though the population has declined by 40 percent, and that also
protects some other owner. If you have restrictions Federally,
then you don't need to impose them elsewhere.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So then you don't support what U.S.
Fish and Wildlife is doing then? The Forest Service does not
support that expansion?
Mr. Connaughton. Oh, no. We're with the Fish and Wildlife.
We understand the law they need to apply, too.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So you, the Forest Service, support
the expansion of the critical habitat even though you just
admitted that it doesn't necessarily protect the Spotted Owl?
Mr. Connaughton. The critical habitat obligation is theirs
and definitely we have been part of those negotiations.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So I understand that to be yes.
I'm going to switch over to Dr. Salwasser. I'm so sorry if
I'm saying that wrong. Unfortunately some people who see this
hearing, and may even be here today, they'll see it as an
attack on the Spotted Owl. That is not the case. There is a
thought that preserving as much old growth habitat as possible
is the only way to help the owl. Although, it sounds like we're
hearing different even from our regional forester. It appears
to me that over the last 20 years of this type of management
hasn't necessarily helped the owl, considering that the numbers
do continue to drop.
If you were to propose a plan to save the Spotted Owl,
would this be it? And if not, how you would change it?
Dr. Salwasser. Congresswoman, you have posed a very
difficult question for me as a wildlife biologist. I support
the Endangered Species Act whose purpose was to preserve
ecosystems and the species that depend on them. I do not
support plans to save a single species. I am more concerned
about the resiliency, diversity and productivity of ecosystems
at a landscape scale to provide the environmental, economic and
social benefits that we need from our forest lands.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Very good. Thank you.
The Chairman. Second round.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. We'll have to do the second round.
The Chairman. Well, let me ask--Mr. Fox, let me ask you a
question here. As you know, President Obama has directed the
Department of Interior to come up with an economic analysis of
the spotted oil critical habitat that's due very shortly.
This is not a clear question, but as this is being
developed, what do you think needs to be in there to accurately
reflect the impact on private timber owners and others? In
other words, we may have a report. We don't know what's going
to be in it, but if there's something missing or added, give me
your--what do you think needs to be in that plan?
Mr. Fox. Well, I think that what I spoke about, which was
Section 10 of the USA, and I think we need to get a true
implementation of that and make it available for private forest
landowners to get a habitat conservation plan, thereby creating
an incentive for them to continue to be in forestry and to
create the species habitats that we need. Otherwise, folks are
not going to invest in private forest land. They're being
scared. They're managing by fear and they are not going to
continue to do this. We're not going to get what we need at the
end of the day. In other words----
The Chairman. Let me try to put it in kind of layman's
terms. If there is not something in this plan that provides
some certainty that can be counted on, then the report would be
inadequate?
Mr. Fox. That's correct.
The Chairman. That's correct, OK.
Mr. Nelson, you're in the commercial business and you heard
my observation that I thought that public lands should be
multiple purposes. The Forest Service has recently claimed that
there is insufficient demand for timber sales, thus leading to
reduced harvest and so forth.
Would Sierra Pacific be interested in purchasing more
Federal timber in your marketing area if it were offered.
Mr. Nelson. That's an easy one. Yes.
The Chairman. I thought it would be an easy one, but I
thought it would be good to have it on the record because we
hear so much about different economies and so forth.
Mr. Nelson. If I could expand upon the ``yes.'' Our company
expanded into Washington six or seven years ago and we expanded
out of California. We own 1.7 million acres down there. We
expanded largely because of the public timber supply stability
in the State of Washington, but it wasn't from the U.S. Forest
Service. It's from the DNR.
The Chairman. Were you part of the Quincy Library
Agreement?
Mr. Nelson. Yes, I was one of the original three.
The Chairman. You painfully understood how that broke down.
Now, what you just made an observation on is important, so I
want to ask you, Region 6 of the Forest Service has in excess
of 50 million acres of forest land and yet they sold--what came
off those lands were around 575 in million board feet. In
contrast, Washington State DNR has little over 2 million acres.
That's 52 million compared to 2 million acres yet they sold 550
million board feet.
How could there be such a discrepancy on that?
Mr. Nelson. A couple of reasons: First of all, the DNR--I
wanted to add to that. The DNR also has in place a HC2, a
Habitat Conservation Plan. They have a plan that covers all of
us that own private land for aquatic species, largely fish.
They have their own plan that covers Spotted Owls and other
species as well as fish, so they not only have the stability of
the Timber Sale Program, but they have the stability of these
Federal assurances.
I think the real reason that the state is doing that and
not so much the feds, my own opinion, is that the state has it
in trust. There are some very tight restrictions. They must
manage their lands for the beneficiary of the trust but to be
with inside all of the environmental regulations.
The Forest Service on the other hand has about umpteen
conflicting and overlapping rules, regulations, policies, et
cetera, that are all geared toward not doing stuff. That's
basically what they do, and so there's a different approach to
it entirely between the state and the Federal implements.
The Chairman. Would that be part of the reason why the
yield on state lands is over $300 per thousand board feet and
yet on Forest Service lands it's less than $50 per thousand
board feet? Would you say that would be a reason for that?
Mr. Nelson. Yes, I would, and in addition to that, the
overhead is codified by the state legislature of Washington, so
they can only have 30 percent overhead to do something. The
Forest Service is kind of a blank check.
The Chairman. So let me ask you this--I just asked Dr. Fox
what should be in that plan.
Is it fair to say that you as a commercial operator have
more certainty dealing with state lands than you do with
Federal lands?
Mr. Nelson. Yes.
The Chairman. That is affirmative. OK. My time has run out.
I'll recognize the gentlelady from Washington.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you. We're kind of coming up to
what I think a big part of the reason we're here. We also want
to talk about the impacts it has on jobs and the economy. We're
talking about small forest landowners. We're talking about
timber and forest management companies. That has an impact on
our counties and our communities locally, which is one of the
reasons I wanted to raise a question to you, Commissioner, with
regard to tax receipts, and specifically will you please go
into detail about the amount of Federal dollars the county or
counties who are timber dependent receive through Secure Rural
Schools and PILT, and with both of those set to expire, how
would you like to see those programs addressed in lieu of this
conversation?
Mr. Pearce. Well, the Secure Rural Schools was based on
actual timber harvest between 1986 and 1996, the three highest
years' average, and that began in 2000, following the Owl
Guaranteed Payment. That, of course, ramped down in the last
four years. That was part of the agreement in Congress. And so
my county, as just an example, is 5 and a half million a year.
Now, during logging, back in 1990, we made $7 million in
actually receipts. '91 we made 7 million. So we actually went
down significantly with these payments. Last year the payment
was 1.8 million. Our DNR receipts are county by county. We
happened to be in the HCP, one of the counties hardest hit by
the Spotted Owl. I know that comes as a surprise. But the state
has actually begun a program to buy that land which is
encumbered and to pay the county for the timber value, so our
legislature, our Governor and the commissioner have recognized
that those trust monies are very important to us and they
developed a program to buy those lands. The schools are
absolutely dependent on it. It's how they construct schools in
this state.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. I think it's important for folks to
realize and believe this is the case, we're not talking about--
I think in certain agencies in certain areas even in
Washington, D.C., and central planning offices, I don't think
there's an understanding of there was a good faith trade made
here between the county and the Forest Service. The counties
are not asking for welfare payment. This is not something for
nothing. This was a trade. When 90-plus percent of the county
is completely off limits, it makes it difficult for counties to
have economic viability to pay for school districts and fire,
so on and so forth, and I believe this is the situation that
Skamania is in.
Mr. Pearce. Well, yes, ma'am. The fact is in 1908 with the
Federal Forest Act, the reality is there was an agreement
between--and it specifically was between counties and the
Federal government, and that agreement was that to begin with
we would get ten cents of every dollar it received. Of course
that went to 25 cents.
The fact is in 2010 the Forest Service on 193 million acres
nationwide only made $180 million in total receipts. Had we
shared in that, it would have been a quarter of 180 million. So
yes, the counties are very much left out in the cold and our
schools are as well because we've lost that contract.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Can you speak to under the new plan
almost all Skamania County will be covered, I believe, almost
all. I mean, it is almost there now, but under the new plan,
believe it or not they're even expanding it and what will
that--what will the economic impact be? Do you think that will
be on Skamania, your ability to produce?
Mr. Pearce. Well, we're very concerned because obviously
Secure Rural Schools and county payments has not been
reauthorized. Even if it is, it's going to be significantly
less. As I said earlier, we cut 4 million from a 14 million
dollar budget last year. We're looking at another 4 million
dollar cut. The fact is at this time if this plan goes into
effect, it affects 45 or 50 percent of our matrix land that is
left, which is supposed to be the land that we actually get to
go past, and it does in fact, as you look at the map, pretty
much cover the entire Gifford Pinchot National Forest except
for those areas that are already no touch, wilderness and so.
I believe and--you and I met with our mill owner. I believe
our mill is finding it very hard to stay profitable, having to
ship logs--while they're right in the middle of a national
forest, having to ship logs from so far away, so it's going to
have a profound impact.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. I yield.
The Chairman. There are a lot of questions here that I want
to ask.
Let me ask first, Commissioner Pearce, in the testimony
that we have heard from several of our witnesses, they
testified that the national forests provide a number of jobs
and other valuable goods such as recreation, biomass energy and
ecosystem services. Your county is probably the poster child as
to where that sort of activity is supposed to come because of
that.
Give me your assessment of those observations.
Mr. Pearce. Well, certainly preservation of the forest is
important. The problem is that our forest is very close to the
Portland metropolitan area, so for the most part we don't get
overnight stays outside of the forest. Folks will come to stay.
Just to give you an idea of how hard it is in our forest,
there has been a moratorium on our forest for guide services
for 11 years. Literally you can't get a permit to take people
out on bikes, you can't get a permit to go caving, you can't
get a permit to take people on hikes, let alone hunting,
fishing, so on.
We're working very hard to get that lifted because our
large private employer, which is the Skamania Lodge, would very
much like to offer those sorts of services, so I would have to
disagree, sir, that we are not seeing an economic vitality out
of serving the forest.
The Chairman. So that's what one could largely call a
theory that hasn't been put into place, is not yielding, but
the theory is supposed to be?
Mr. Pearce. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Theory as opposed to axiom for math majors.
Mr. Mealey, you quoted Jack Ward Thomas that Federal
agencies have developed the hands-off management approach. Now,
my question to you, taking that at its worth, is the flaw in
the implementation, the hands-off approach, or is it a flaw in
the law itself?
Mr. Mealey. In my opinion it's a flaw in the law.
The Chairman. It is?
Mr. Mealey. I talk a lot about the overly precautionary
nature of the Endangered Species Act, and what I mean by that
is that the act itself provides for the elimination of harm to
a species, and so that means that any harm in the short term
should be avoided, regardless of the long-term benefits.
So I hope this wouldn't be too long, but let me give an
example of actually how this applies, and this is a real
example: When I was on the Boise Forest, for example, if
there's a watershed that's at risk from uncharacteristic
wildfire and it requires access or road access that crosses a
stream to do the necessary actions to reduce the risk and that
road would produce sediment in crossing a stream, you would
have to consult--if the agency, the Forest Service, found that
that may affect the species, you would consult with Fish and
Wildlife Service, and if they conclude it likely to adversely
affect, it would have an effect and in the short term that
would require formal consultation, which is time consuming, and
so what happens is that knowing that and knowing the back log
of those activities, the agency would propose actions that
would have no effect, so they wouldn't have to formally
consult, but the law itself requires the agency conclude likely
to adversely affect to avoid any short-term harm, and so that's
why I recommended that Section 7, Consultations, require a
balancing of risks, balancing the short-term effects of an
action against the long-term benefits so that there could be
some weighing and some rational conclusions about actions.
The Chairman. Should there be when you're doing that,
recognizing that certainly people have a right to disagree and
have a right to go to court, but, I mean, it seems to me in the
instance you described in Idaho as ripe for litigation. Am I
correct?
Mr. Mealey. Yes.
The Chairman. So it's ripe for litigation. Is there a way
to do it where you can speed up the litigation yet people can
still be heard if they have concerns? But you have to address
issues in a timely manner. Is there a way to do that in your
mind.
Mr. Mealey. I don't know what they would be. Of course, we
all know that there's an appeals process and if you appeal you
get standing to sue, and then if you sue, that case is on the
docket, and I don't know how that can be changed except to
remove the litigation points.
The Chairman. Well, listen, I know that was not a fair
question, because that's a question that we have to wrestle
with on our side, and my time has run out. I'll recognize Mrs.
Herrera Beutler and then I'll make a closing remark, but I'll
address that particular issue because I think that is the
important part as we go forward.
I'll recognize Mrs. Herrera Beutler.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And this is for Mr. Connaughton: In Washington state, do
you believe that the current 2 percent of the forest harvests
in our 9 million acres that you manage, do you think that 2
percent harvest is adequate and is it sustainable over the long
term?
Mr. Connaughton. We're getting as much from the
appropriations that we have currently as we can make happen. Is
there more work to be done? Indeed there is, and I'd like to do
it.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. So you believe that the 2 percent is
not adequate over the long term?
Mr. Connaughton. We're at 6 percent in Oregon and
Washington in the national forests.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. I was speaking to just Washington. I
apologize. I don't know the Oregon numbers.
Mr. Connaughton. So I'd have to verify with the court. The
take-home message that you asked me about, is there more work
to be done, the answer to that in my mind is yes.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Absolutely. Let me also speak to, with
regards to the areas of forest that have been designated as
critical habitat for the last 20 years, do you believe that
those areas are healthier today than they were before the
designation?
Mr. Connaughton. It depends on what one means by healthier.
If they're contributing to the recovery of the Northern Spotted
Owl, the answer to that is probably going to be yes, and
several of the speakers have raised the issue but that has
consequences for other environmental services and benefits, and
the question in that would be yes in terms of aquatic
conditions and our river basins. In terms of timber harvest,
that would be part of local economy, so the answer to that
would probably in general be no, so there is a gradient based
on service itself.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. And kind of skipping over to a
different question that since I have you here I wanted to bring
up. Recently the EPA, presumably in response to last year's
Ninth Circuit Court ruling, that runoff from logging roads are
considered point source indicated that it will begin to draft
regulations, and I wanted to know if the Forest Service raised
concerns about the impacts of this ruling to the Administration
and the Justice Department, in large part because some of the
numbers I've seen, the amount of permits that you all have to
get will take upwards of ten years for the 400,000 permits.
How do you know all--dealing with the Administration, do
you personally believe that runoff is a point source?
Mr. Connaughton. First is, have we weighed in with the
Administration? The answer to that is yes, and there's been an
awful lot of discussion about what is implied. The idea of
point source is also a matter of contention, and here's where I
am when it comes to that issue, is, for forest practices we
want to be very aware of any adverse effects that we have on
our watersheds and our river basins, and I'm very content with
the way in which we're going about managing the National Forest
System, and I've seen some very good things off the National
Forest System, too, in terms of conservation.
Does that then justify the need for a permit? The answer to
that is very much in front of you folks in congress, and for an
EPA, my intent is, I wind up in the same place whether I have
to ask for or request a permit or not. It is the protections of
those watersheds. Whether I've got a permit or not is a
procedural event. I hope that makes sense.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Yeah.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much. I just want to ask
one more question and then I'll make a closing remark here, but
in fairness, this is a question to all of you, and it's really
the basis for which we have this hearing here today, and I'm
going to ask if you will just give a ``yes'' or ``no'' answer.
As we describe what you have all described, the Northwest
Forest Plan was developed based on essentially five principles,
and I'll just paraphrase what those principles are: Social and
economic balance to protect forests' health, wildlife and
water; sound science; predictable and sustainable timber
harvest; and ending gridlock. That was essential the five
principles.
Now, based on this, let me ask what we used to call the $64
question: Does anybody there, yes or no, believe that the
Northwest Forest Plan has achieved any success?
Start with you, Commissioner Pearce.
Mr. Pearce. Absolutely not.
The Chairman. Mr. Fox?
Mr. Fox. No.
The Chairman. Dr. Salwasser?
Dr. Salwasser. Yes and no. You changed the question at the
tail end.
The Chairman. I did? OK.
Dr. Salwasser. Yeah. The Northwest Forest Plan has achieved
some successes, but it has not achieved its five set of the
principles.
The Chairman. Got you.
Mr. Mealey?
Mr. Mealey. In response to the five principles, the answer
is clearly no.
The Chairman. Mr. Connaughton?
Mr. Connaughton. Same as Mr. Salwasser's comment.
The Chairman. OK. Very good.
Mr. Friedman?
Mr. Friedman. I'm with Salwasser and Connaughton.
The Chairman. You moved.
Mr. Niemi?
Mr. Niemi. I'm with Mr. Salwasser as well.
The Chairman. Mr. Kreps?
Mr. Kreps. No.
The Chairman. Mr. Nelson?
Mr. Nelson. Not even close.
The Chairman. Split decision.
Again, I want to thank Mrs. Herrera Beutler for allowing
this Committee to come into her district. I think this is a
very, very important Committee meeting to try to get
information, and I certainly I want to thank the panel for
coming here. As Chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, I
have determined after a great deal of working on this to look
at the Endangered Species Act, because if there's one constant
thread that we have heard throughout all this testimony is that
this is being driven by the Endangered Species Act and the
implementation of that act.
Now, just for the record, I don't think there's anybody in
America that wants to see species become extinct. We should do
everything in our power to see that they are recovered, and
that ought to be a goal, and I think that's one of the reasons
why when the Endangered Species Act passed, it passed with
strong bipartisan support in both houses, but like every act
that Congress puts in place, there's a time limit we should go
back and review to see if it's working.
The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1983. The last
time it was reauthorized was in 1988. That's 24 years ago. And
if the goal is to recover species, let me just give you some
figures, round figures on what the act has done and why
probably there's a lot of controversy about it. There are
roughly, round figures, 2,00 listing of species. The amount
that's been recovered again is roughly 20, 20 out of 2,000.
If one were to equate that to baseball in batting averages,
I can tell you 20 out of 2,000 would not qualify you for Class
D baseball. It probably wouldn't classify you for little league
baseball, to be very honest. Yet we are working under this law,
and it's for that reason that my Committee has decided to look
into the Endangered Species Act with the goal of recovering
species and not get tied up into litigation.
So much--we can't get the exact figure from the Federal
government--is tied up. Their dollars are not recovering
species but rather defending lawsuits, and that to me seems to
be a focal point that we're going to look on, and we've already
had hearings on that and we'll have more hearings, but this
Committee hearing here allows us to get testimony from
obviously the panel, and welcome you again if you have
testimony of something that sparked your interest, please fill
out the form, and we'll proceed forward, but I want to do it,
again, in the sense that the idea ought be recover species and
yet still have the way of life that we Americans enjoy so much.
And I'll go back to what I said in my opening statements:
When I became Chairman of this Committee, I strongly felt then
and that feeling hasn't diminished a bit that our public lands
ought to be, unless otherwise designated, for multipurpose use,
and that includes obviously commercial and recreational
activity.
So, again, I want to thank the panel very, very much for
appearing today. Your testimony is very, very valuable. And,
again, I invite the audience if you have something that you
want to add to this, please do so. The record will be held open
for ten days.
The Chairman. And once again, I want to thank my colleague
from Southwest Washington for being here and being such a great
host. Do you want to say something? I know better. I know I'm
going to yield to the hostess. You are recognized.
Ms. Herrera Beutler. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you so
much for bringing your team here and for listening. We have
tremendous resources in our area. I'm not just talking about
the forests. I'm not just talking about the species. I'm
talking about our region as a whole, our community, and yes,
healthy forests are part of our DNA. It's part of our blood. We
all chose to live here. The quality of life that we have, I
believe, is unparalleled, and we want to protect it. We want to
recover what has been lost, but we need to do so in a way that
both respects wildlife and, I said it before a little tongue-
in-cheek, but I believe the endangered American wage earner.
We have very rural areas. We act as though we are resource
poor, but we are resource rich, and I believe with the goal of
managing in a sustainable, healthy way wildlife and forests,
we're all going to benefit, and I agree that a collaborative
approach is important. As I look across this room today, the
folks who have come to this hearing and the folks who have come
to testify, I'm looking at a lot of collaborators.
I don't know if you've ever been on private and on forest
land, but it's some of the best managed habitat you will see,
period, bar none. Comparing that with Federal lands makes you
go, ``OK, what's the difference here?'' And I think it's
because we love our land and we love our resources, and so we
want to make sure that what we got out of today is taken back
to Washington, D.C., as this reconsideration of the forest
policy is considered, that we recognize where we can make
changes to better improve our forest health, our habitat and
the economy for our region.
So with that, thank you so much for coming.
The Chairman. Again, thank all of you for coming. I
certainly appreciate your attendance being here.
If there's no further business coming before the
Subcommittee, the Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 10:53 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
Statement submitted for the record by the U.S. Department of the
Interior
Introduction
The Department of the Interior (Department) takes this opportunity
to submit a Statement for the Record on Federal forest policies and
their effects on local economies and natural resources. Because the
oversight hearing is being held in the state of Washington, our
statement addresses the Department's policies for public forests and
natural resources in the Pacific Northwest, as well as the economic
contributions in the states of Washington and Oregon from the
Department's forest management activities.
Background
The public lands and natural resources managed by the Department of
the Interior play an important role in American lives, economies, and
communities, and include some of our Nation's greatest assets. The
forests of the Pacific Northwest have provided, for more than a
century, the timber which Americans have used to build countless homes,
schools, and factories. The rivers traversing these forests create
hydropower that has supplied electricity to generations of Americans.
Within the public lands today are also preserved the last areas of old-
growth forest that link the current generation of Americans back
through millennia.
The mission of the Department is to protect and manage the
responsible use of many of America's most significant natural
resources. Within the Department, both the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) play a role in the
public forests in the Pacific Northwest. The FWS carries out its
mission of working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish,
wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the
American people. The BLM, meanwhile, is responsible for managing 245
million surface acres of public lands in 11 western states. Of these
lands, the BLM manages 2.2 million acres of commercial forest in
western Oregon and California (O&C), which is allocated for a variety
of multiple uses, including conservation of northern spotted owl and
riparian habitat as well as for traditional forest products such as
lumber, plywood, and paper.
In December 2010, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar hosted a
Forest Summit in Washington, D.C. Dozens of stakeholders voiced
familiar concerns and desires: conserve old-growth, recover threatened
species; sustain local communities; provide jobs, and reduce wildfire
risk. The Secretary renewed the Department's commitment to a strong
working partnership with open lines of communication in order to tackle
the long-standing challenges of achieving these complex goals.
This Administration's policies reject the false choice between the
environment and our communities. Rather, the Department has embraced a
multiple-use concept that supports traditional jobs in the forestry
industries by providing for sustainable timber harvest while restoring
ecosystems for environmental benefits and recreation. We are committed
to continuing our work with stakeholders and interested members of the
public to find ways to balance the economic potential of the Pacific
Northwest forests with protecting watersheds and providing habitat for
endangered species.
Forest Management
Under the Oregon and California (O&C) Grant Lands Act of 1937 (43
U.S.C. Sec. 1181a), the BLM administers its 2.2 million-acre O&C
forests ``in conformity with the principle of sustained yield for the
purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply, protecting
watersheds, regulating stream flow, and contributing to the economic
stability of local communities and industries, and providing
recreational facilities''.
For the better part of the past 17 years, the BLM's management of
the O&C lands has been framed by the Northwest Forest Plan and the
BLM's 1995 Western Oregon Resource Management Plans (RMPs). In managing
timber activities on public forestlands, the BLM's objectives are to:
Provide timber-based economic opportunities for rural
communities;
Ensure the long-term health and productivity of these
lands; and
In coordination with the FWS and other agencies and
partners, create multiple environmental benefits--including
recovery and conservation of species and habitat--that result
from healthy forests and watersheds.
Economic Activity/Timber Sales
The BLM's timber management activities have direct effects in terms
of employment and income in the Pacific Northwest, as well as induced
effects in the local economy, such as the activities of other
businesses required to support timber operations. In Oregon, which has
seen a marked decline in traditional forestry jobs, BLM's forest
management activities supported over 2,700 jobs in 2010 and produced
almost $600 million in economic activity (The Department of the
Interior's Economic Contributions; June 21, 2011).
Although timber purchases as well as harvest levels are driven by
market forces, the BLM continues to offer a predictable, sustainable
supply of timber sales in western Oregon of approximately 200 million
board feet (MMBF) per year. In recent years the BLM's timber volumes
offered for sale have ranged from highs of 236 MMBF in 2008 and 233
MMBF in 2010, to 198 MMBF in 2007.
The BLM offered 198 million board feet of timber for sale in
FY2011, including 28 MMBF from the Roseburg District and 22 MMBF from
the Medford District, and in addition, re-offered 12 million board feet
from previous contracts that had been mutually cancelled. In FY 2012,
the BLM plans to offer the program target volume of 193 MMBF of timber
for sale; the Roseburg target is 28 MMBF and the Medford target is 19
MMBF. The BLM also plans to reoffer additional volume from eight more
contracts that were mutually cancelled. For FY 2013, the BLM budget
proposal also includes an increase of $1.5 million in the O&C Forest
Management program to increase the volume of timber offered for sale.
Forest Health & Productivity
The Department's highest priority activities are directed toward
reducing risks to communities by ensuring the long-term health of these
forests and their watersheds. In recent decades, prolonged droughts and
the spread of insect infestation have devastated millions of acres of
trees in the Northwest. Through Federal forestry management, we are
working to improve the health of these forest ecosystems, which, in
turn, makes the forested lands more resilient against the risk of
wildfires and invasive species, and preserves key wildlife habitat that
will aid in conserving and recovering threatened and endangered
species.
The BLM, in collaboration with the FWS, is working to refine its
implementation of active management, which employs science-based
``ecological forestry' practices that are carefully tailored to restore
localized forest areas to healthy conditions. In the dry forests of
southwestern Oregon, for example, a prescription for active management
may require intervention to reduce the buildup of fuels. In the wetter
forests on the west side of the Cascades, a prescription may include
patchy regeneration harvests in addition to thinning to better mimic
natural forest processes. In addition to restoring forest health, these
techniques allow for sustainable timber harvests for local mills and
the communities who rely on the timber industry for jobs and economic
strength.
Pilot Projects
As a result of the December 2010 Forest Summit, Secretary Salazar
set in motion a plan to apply the principles of active forest
management, as suggested by Professors Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin,
on BLM lands within the Coos Bay, Roseburg, and Medford Districts in
Oregon. Professors Johnson and Franklin--in collaboration with the BLM,
FWS, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Coquille Indian
Tribe--are demonstrating the ecological and economic merits of
ecological forestry principles in Oregon's moist and dry forests. The
Medford pilot project, the first of the three sales and the one
furthest along in implementation, received no protests or
administrative appeals and sold for more than four times the appraised
value. Commercial harvest is underway in that Pilot. The Coos Bay and
Roseburg Pilots are at various stages of the sale and environmental
assessment process.
Based on the promise of these pilot projects described by
Professors Johnson and Franklin in a report on Ecological Forestry
pilot projects, in February Secretary Salazar announced that the BLM
will plan five additional timber sales using ecological forestry
principles in 2012 and 2013. Drs. Johnson and Franklin estimate that
the BLM's use of ecological forestry practices would sustainably yield
an annual harvest of approximately 217 to 286 MMBF for the next 15
years from the public forests in Oregon.
Moving Forward/Planning
As part of the commitment to restoring healthy habitat and
providing sustainable timber harvest and revenues--in March of 2012,
BLM announced that it will undertake Resource Management Plan (RMP)
revisions which will provide goals, objectives, and direction for the
management of approximately 2,500,000 acres of BLM-administered lands
in western Oregon. The revisions to the existing RMPs will determine
how the BLM will actively manage BLM-administered forests in western
Oregon for multiple objectives including contributing to the recovery
of threatened and endangered species, to provide clean water, to
restore fire adapted ecosystems, to produce a sustained yield of timber
products, and provide for recreation opportunities. Finding a balanced,
sustainable approach is critical in western Oregon. The Department
encourages citizens to participate in discussions about management of
public forests in western Oregon and to be part of the solution. The
first step in the BLM's process to revise RMPs is a formal public
scoping period to seek public input regarding the range of issues to be
addressed in the planning process, including the management
alternatives that should be examined. The public scoping period ends on
July 5, 2012.
We expect that with participation from members of the public and
stakeholders in this scoping process as well as throughout the planning
process, the agency will be better able to determine which forest
management practices and activities will help achieve our goals.
Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Efforts
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is working to recover the
northern spotted owl in coordination with the U.S. Forest Service, BLM,
National Park Service, and many other state, tribal, and private sector
partners. Recovery efforts currently encompass recovery planning,
critical habitat designation, and barred owl management. The recently
released 2011 Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl includes 34
recovery actions and makes three overarching recommendations: 1)
protect the best of the spotted owl's remaining habitat; 2) conserve
forest ecosystems through active management; and 3) reduce competition
from the encroaching barred owl. Specifically:
To protect the best of the spotted owl's remaining
habitat, FWS recommends conserving spotted owl sites and high
quality habitat across the landscape. This means the habitat
protections provided under land use plans on Federal lands will
continue to be a focus of recovery, but protection of other
areas is likely needed to achieve full success. FWS is
currently seeking public comment on the proposed critical
habitat designation and an economic analysis will be made
available for public review and comment.
To conserve forest ecosystems through active
management, FWS recommends actions that make forest ecosystems
healthier and more resilient to the effects of climate change
and catastrophic wildfire, disease, and insect outbreaks. This
involves an ``ecological forestry'' approach in certain areas,
which may include carefully applied prescriptions such as fuels
treatment to reduce the threat of severe fires, thinning to
help older trees grow faster, and restoration to enhance
habitat and return the natural dynamics of a healthy forest
landscape. FWS also recommends continually evaluating and
refining active forest management techniques. This effort
includes the BLM's pilot projects, supported by Secretary
Salazar.
To reduce competition from the encroaching barred
owl, FWS recommends managing barred owl populations to give the
spotted owl a chance to rebound sufficiently that the two
species may eventually be able to co-exist. To test the
feasibility and effectiveness of barred owl management, the FWS
is proposing experimental removal of barred owls in certain
portions of the spotted owl's range to see how this may affect
spotted owls. If the experiment proceeds and the effects on
spotted owls are positive, the FWS may consider the efficacy
and feasibility of barred owl removal on a broader scale.
Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan and Critical Habitat Proposal
Minimizes Impact to Private Landowners and States
The 2011 Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl acknowledges
that certain areas on non-Federal lands play a critical role in
recovery and recommends working collaboratively with key conservation
partners such as state agencies, private landowners, and tribes. FWS is
pursuing ongoing dialogue and collaborative decision-making with state
agency partners and citizens to determine the best way forward. FWS
will also continue to consult and collaborate with tribal governments
that have long worked to monitor and conserve spotted owls on their
lands, thus making valuable contributions to recovery. The goal is to
work with partners and citizens to evaluate the potential contribution
of state and private lands to recovery in areas where Federal lands are
limited. If any areas are to be included, FWS will work together to
develop economic and other sensible incentives for voluntary habitat
conservation partnerships such as Safe Harbor agreements and Habitat
Conservation Plans.
For the current critical habitat proposal, FWS is considering the
exclusion of several categories of land from the final designation,
including state and private lands which are already managed for
conservation. When a critical habitat designation includes non-Federal
lands with no Federal connection, there is no direct effect on
landowners (though there may be indirect effects). The designation
helps to inform state and local government agencies and private
landowners about the value of the habitat. As a result, a critical
habitat designation may help facilitate voluntary conservation
partnerships such as Safe Harbor agreements and Habitat Conservation
Plans.
A Safe Harbor is a voluntary agreement between FWS and a private
landowner that encourages private landowners to carry out habitat
conservation measures on their land to benefit species listed under the
Endangered Species Act. In exchange, FWS provides assurances that
future land use restrictions will not be imposed. Under Safe Harbors,
some impacts to individual species may occur in return for the
landowner's commitment to conservation measures that contribute to the
species' population overall. This provides landowners with more
certainty for their land use planning. There are currently five Safe
Harbor agreements for the northern spotted owl--two in Washington, one
providing statewide coverage in Oregon, and two in northern California.
Similarly, Habitat Conservation Plans are used for non-Federal
landowners (usually government agencies, private organizations, or
businesses) whose otherwise lawful activities are expected to impact
listed species. The FWS works with these landowners to develop
provisions for monitoring, minimizing, and mitigating for potential
incidental take. There are currently 12 Habitat Conservation Plans for
the spotted owl--six in Washington covering more than 2 million acres,
two in Oregon covering 200,000 acres, and four in California covering
more than 200,000 acres.
Addressing Forestry Needs
The BLM has a target of 197 million board feet of proposed sales in
western Oregon in FY 2013. The Secretary announced that as part of this
target, BLM will plan for at least five additional timber sales
(totaling approximately 15 million board feet) using ecological
forestry principles. By using ecological forestry principles,
addressing the growing impact of the invasive barred owl and expanding
the scientific foundation for wise management of our forests, the
Department of the Interior seeks to give communities, foresters, and
land managers the additional tools they need to forge healthier and
more resilient forests. The Department is also working closely with the
Forest Service, which recently announced steps to improve forest
restoration through active management and to increase forest products
sold by the National Forests from 2.4 billion board feet in 2011 to 3
billion board feet no later than 2014.
The current critical habitat proposal for northern spotted owl
encourages increasing active management of forests, consistent with
ecological forestry principles and practices within critical habitat
when it promotes forest restoration and ecosystem health. This is a
major change from previous critical habitat designations. Many Pacific
Northwest forests are out of balance due to an interaction of natural
and human influences. In the drier and diseased forests, FWS supports
intervention to protect older trees, reduce unnatural fire risk, and
better manage insect outbreaks. In the moist forests west of the
Cascade Mountains, FWS supports thinning and patchy regeneration
harvests that better mimic natural forest processes. Application of
such science-based forest treatments could provide significant economic
and employment opportunities in many areas and should be compatible
with the goals of northern spotted owl recovery. It may also reduce the
potential for litigation of some timber harvest proposals that apply
these methods.
The Endangered Species Act requires the FWS to identify all areas
essential to the conservation of a species and that may require special
management, and then to take other factors, such as economic impacts,
into consideration to refine proposals before critical habitat
designations are finalized. The critical habitat proposal that
identifies areas that may be considered for the final designation also
emphasizes the significant benefits of excluding private lands, and
that consideration, along with the economic assessment, will help
inform which areas will be excluded from the final critical habitat
designation. The FWS is contracting with economics experts to develop a
thorough economic analysis of the critical habitat proposal, which will
evaluate timber harvest-related and other potential economic impacts.
The economic analysis will be made available for public review and
comment, prior to the finalization of the northern spotted owl critical
habitat designation.
Conclusion
By working in partnership with local communities, forest industry,
and conservation groups, this Administration is moving toward a long-
term strategy for forest management that is environmentally sound and
economically sustainable. The Department's science-based planning
activities, informed by economic analysis and public feedback, will
provide greater certainty for timber mills and communities while
conserving our land, water and wildlife.
______
The documents listed below have been retained in the
Committee's official files.
Anderson, Emily, Grayland, Washington, Comment form
submitted for the record
Bonagofsky, Jerry, Comment form submitted for the
record
Cowlitz County, Board of Commissioners, Letter
submitted for the record
Dubrashich, Mike, Lebanon, Oregon, Letter submitted
for the record
Edwards, Karla Kay, Willamina, Oregon, Comment form
submitted for the record
Forsberg, R. Lynn, Ridgefield, Washington, Letter
submitted for the record
Graham, Darren, Comment form submitted for the record
Gross, Commissioner Lee, on behalf of the National
Forest Counties and Schools Coalition, Letter submitted for the
record
Hallanger, Bill, Email submitted for the record
Jensen, Carol, Longview, Washington, Comment form
submitted for the record
Krug, Larry, Stevenson, Washington, Comment form
submitted for the record
Linde, Thomas, Carson, Washington, Letter submitted
for the record
McKeirnan, Leigh, Letter and email submitted for the
record
Mitchen, Darcy, Comment form submitted for the record
Newton, Dr. Michael, Professor Emeritus of Forest
Ecology and Management, Oregon State University, Letter
submitted for the record
Oregon State Delegation, U.S. House and Senate,
Letter to Secretary Salazar
Pickell, William, Hoquiam, Washington, Letter
submitted for the record
Revesz, Peter & Jane, Battleground, Waashington,
Letter submitted for the record
Richter, Jeff, Letter and comment form submitted for
the record
Smith, Larry F., Mossyrock, Washington, Comment form
submitted for the record
Spencer, Paul, Letter submitted for the record
Stubblefield, Ted, Former Forest Supervisor, Gifford
Pinchot National Forest, Letter submitted for the record
Teitzel, David, Carson, Washington, Comment form
submitted for the record
Whipple, Darrel, Rainier, Oregon, Comment form
submitted for the record
Woods, Richard I., Kelso, Washington, Letter
submitted for the record