Will the Northwest Forest Plan balance ecology and economic well-being?

A 20-person Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) is helping the United States Forest Service (USFS) make changes, and last week, Columbia Gorge News explained how the FAC’s recommendations on Tribal inclusion and implementing more beneficial fire are potentially groundbreaking. This week, we’re diving into what the NWFP represents at its core — an attempt to balance conservation needs with a sustainable timber economy — and the points of concern on both sides.

For context, the NWFP protected some of the region’s oldest trees and did so by classifying forests into one of five land-use allocations. Three of those allocations are reserves, areas where logging is restricted since they include either old-growth, mature forests, land next to rivers and wetlands or spaces like national parks.

In total, the NWFP designated nearly 17.4 million acres as reserves, a critical step considering about 72% of the Pacific Northwest’s original old-growth conifer forest has been lost, largely through logging, since European settlement.

At the same time, however, the plan promised to provide rural communities with 1 billion board feet of timber per year from the remaining allocations, Adaptive Management Areas (AMAs) and Matrix Areas (MAs) — and that promise has not been kept. Today, less than one-tenth of that is being produced, and jobs in the sector dropped by nearly 40% between 2001 and 2021, according to a USFS monitoring report.

The FAC released its recommendations this July, which USFS could accept or alter entirely, so how are loggers and environmentalists responding?

The decline and future of Skamania County

The FAC’s last meeting was in Skamania County, where the NWFP hit hard. In 1980, Skamania had the highest average wage in Washington. Today, the county has lost six of its seven mills and more than 500 timber jobs.

“There was a movie theater. There were car lots,” said Tom Lannen, one of Skamania’s county commissioners since 2016. “It was what I would call a self-sustaining community because most anything you needed, you could get here.”

Lannen now describes Skamania as something more like a commuter community, where folks work and buy things in Portland or Vancouver, rather than close to home. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest used to provide Skamania with $10 million of reliable, annual revenue, but Lannenn said the county’s 2023 operating budget is the same as it was 14 years ago. As a result, Skamania has struggled to retain local businesses and provide basic services, everything from road repair to education.

“The home of Mount St. Helens, the National Scenic Area, the Indian [Heaven] Wilderness, the Trapper Creek Wilderness and all of those different things, but where only 1.8% of our land is taxable,” said Lannen. Between the NWFP and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act, 849,000 of Skamania’s 1.1 million acres are federally owned; state agencies and private timber companies own most of the rest.

With little taxable land and the NWFP’s logging restrictions, Skamania desperately needs to diversify its economy. Since the county is so rugged, Lannen said agriculture isn’t a feasible option. Ryan Reed, the youngest FAC member who’s from the Karuk, Hupa and Yurok Tribe in Northern California, hopes to see a major shift.

“I come from impoverished communities, so I’ll be the first one to tell you what it means not to have money, but it’s unfortunate our federal government and global society is really dependent on extractive resources,” said Reed. “There needs to be conversations about how we transition from a resource extractive industry to an ecosystem services industry.”

Employing more people in restoration work like invasive species removal or water quality enhancement could generate significant economic gains. While Lannen was open to the idea, he also had reservations.

“There’s definitely benefit to it. The question is the scale,” said Lannen. “You look at the county on Google Earth, and I mean we’re literally carpeted in timber. We’ve got the smallest amount of [agricultural] land of any county, save one, so anything we can use those resources for is beneficial.” With the existing infrastructure and alternatives that require large investments, trying to capitalize on timber revenue is a no-brainer for Skamania.

The FAC was admittedly unable to fully address the challenges facing places like Skamania in its recommendations. They advise the USFS to monitor socioeconomic conditions and offer more employment opportunities in these communities, but like building up a restoration economy, Lannen questioned where the funding will come from.

“We tend to make a lot of promises, and they’re not delivered on because they’re not funded,” said Lannen. “[The NWFP] needs to engage, be more engaged in a broader base than what we’re seeing now.”

Ultimately, it might take Congress stepping in to help timber-dependent communities transition amidst an already-strained USFS.

More for the forest

The Pacific Northwest Forest Climate Alliance is a collection of more than 80 groups devoted to protecting forests, shifting away from extractive industries and mitigating climate change in some capacity. During a meeting on Sept. 10, Madeline Cowen, grassroots and digital organizer for Cascadia Wildlands, described where they felt the FAC got it wrong on forest stewardship.

“There are other values that forests provide besides human production, and those need to be considered,” said Cowen, emphasizing the importance of biodiversity. She outlined three key issues: stand age, post-fire salvage logging and survey requirements.

The first NWFP banned logging trees more than 80 years old in Late Successional Reserves (LSRs), one of the three reserve allocations, and the FAC suggested raising that age to 120. Effectively opening more areas for harvest, Cowen disagreed, but FAC Co-Director Susan Jane Brown offered more nuance.

“There are still significant acreages of plantations in LSRs that are now older than 80,” said Brown. “We want to get in there, into those plantations, and add complexity to those stands because they’re monocultures.” Selective thinning of trees, not clearcutting, could make these plantations more similar to naturally occurring old-growth.

Reed pushed back further on leaving forests alone as opposed to actively pursuing restoration, an idea that reinforces separation between humans and nature. “That’s equally colonial and white-dominated than saying to cut it all, because that says Indigenous peoples shouldn’t be in these areas and putting fire on the landscape,” said Reed. “Certain areas need fire, need things to be cut.”

Cowen also criticized the FAC for permitting salvage logging, the practice of harvesting trees after a wildfire, in AMAs and MAs regardless of tree age and whether it’s in a moist forest west of the Cascades, or a dry forest to the east. While the effects are site-specific, salvage logging can harm cavity-nesting birds like the northern spotted owl and disturb soils, but there isn’t scientific consensus on how salvage logging impacts the likelihood of future wildfires.

“It’s still going to allow them to come into forests that may be burned in a mosaic and bring in those really harmful machinery to sensitive, post-fire forests,” said Cowen.

Likewise, the FAC proposed loosening requirements to survey rare species prior to logging or conducting fuels treatments in old-growth forests. For Cowen, old-growth forests are more than just trees, and pre-disturbance surveys help maintain biodiversity across the entire ecosystem.

As the Principal and Chief Legal Counsel for Silvix Resources, who has built a legal career contesting salvage sales, Brown understood Cowen’s concern around post-fire harvesting. But the FAC did recommend banning the practice in LSRs, which Brown called a “huge win.” They also called for retaining all live trees and the oldest dead trees in AMAs and MAs, which isn’t the status quo.

“That’s the harvest land base. That’s where we’re supposed to do timber harvest,” said Brown. “So, I will hold my nose, and I don’t like it, but we did put some sideboards on that salvage.”

With the survey requirements, she clarified the FAC was focused on making fuels reduction projects around communities easier to conduct.

“I don’t want to have to explain to the community of Trout Lake or Stevenson that we thought it was more important to protect this species of lichen or bryophyte, as opposed to keeping your community safe from wildfire,” said Brown. “I don’t want to argue that to a judge. I don’t want to argue that to a reporter.”

Whether it’s between wildlife and community safety, or ecological health and economic needs, many of the FAC’s forest stewardship recommendations necessitate some sort of tradeoff.

How to get involved

The USFS expects to release its draft environmental impact statement of the plan on Nov. 6, which could reflect none, all or some of FAC’s recommendations. That will kick off a 90-day public comment period where anyone can suggest revisions. Visit www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r6/landmanagement/planning/?cid=fseprd1172301 for more information on how to participate when it becomes available.

After receiving public comments, the USFS will then update its draft and publish the final amendment to the NWFP, most likely in spring or summer of 2025.

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This is the second of a two-part series examining the successes, failures and implications of the pending Northwest Forest Plan; visit columbiagorgenews.com for part one.