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Voices of the Northwest
The RG's Porter/Mickey Exchange Over BLM's Western Oregon Plan Revision
BLM Plan Will Worsen Situation in Rural Oregon
By Sam Porter and Ross Mickey
Posted on Mar 20, 2008 |
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The following exchange first appeared in The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, Tuesday, February 5, 2008, A9
GUEST VIEWPOINT
BLM Plan Based on Outdated Ideas
By Sam Porter
On Jan. 18 Jim Caswell, director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, told a logging convention in Eugene that his agency intends to disregard parts of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan when it comes to the 2.2 million acres of land the BLM manages in Western Oregon (Register-Guard, Jan. 19).
The parts of the Northwest Forest Plan the BLM’s management strategy disregards — watershed assessments, surveys of plants and animals before areas are logged and upper management reviews of decisions made at regional levels — are basic to environmental responsibility and governmental checks and balances.
So how does Caswell justify the BLM’s disregard? He does it by pointing to the dependence of Western Oregon rural communities and counties on logging since the 1937 Oregon & California Railroad Act.
Caswell said, “It’s a contract we have with them.”
In other words, the argument for the BLM’s preferred alternative of the Western Oregon Plan Revision — which triples harvest levels allowed under the Northwest Forest Plan on already heavily logged lands — is that it benefits rural communities.
Yet the O&C Act provides slender justification for the BLM’s preferred management plan — not least with reference to the northern spotted owl.
Under the National Forest Management Act, management strategies have “to maintain all native vertebrate species in a viable state across their ranges.” Under the Endangered Species Act, such strategies have to “provide the means whereby the ecosystems upon which an endangered species depends may be conserved.”
Will tripling the cut on BLM’s heavily logged lands comply with such requirements?
Even the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service say the BLM’s plan will harm water quality and salmon. It appears the BLM did not consult the EPA or the fisheries service regarding federal environmental laws.
Caswell is not revising the Northwest Forest Plan. He is leading a counterrevolution against the Northwest Forest Plan’s revolutionary ecosystem management, which is underpinned by among the most heavily peer reviewed science in history and the evolution of environmental law.
Under the 1897 Organic Administration Act, the basic purpose of national forests is threefold: 1) “to improve and protect the forest”; 2) “to secure favorable conditions of waterflows”; and, 3) “to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.”
The timber industry claims timber production as the national forests’ main purpose. But it’s not clear who defines “use and necessities” or how to determine whether “necessities” are adequately met.
Nor is the meaning of “continuous supply” clear. It could mean a few thousand board feet of timber from all national forests annually. The framers of the national forest system did not intend a system of sheer economic utility — intensive logging to maximize wood production — and the 1897 act’s legislative deliberation suggests watershed protection takes precedence.
Enter the O&C Act. In 1866, Congress granted 3.7 million acres of forestlands in Western Oregon to the Oregon & California Railroad. In 1916, the U.S. government reclaimed most of the land because the railroad did not fulfill its part of the agreement.
Once public, these lands — managed by the BLM across 18 Oregon counties — were non-taxable. In 1937, Congress passed the O&C Act to compensate counties by providing 50 percent of receipts from timber sales on O&C lands.
The O&C Act pays close attention to economic utility with key concepts such as “sustained yield,” the forest’s “productive capacity” and the “community stability” of rural, timber-dependent communities.
Writing long before the concepts of ecosystems and biodiversity came into everyday use, the act’s authors see the forest as a “permanent source of raw material for the support of dependent communities and local industries.”
Caswell seems to rest his case on these aspects of the O&C Act.
But, in spite of this narrow but powerful utilitarian view of forests as raw materials depots, the O&C Act is a weak reed on which to rest hopes for rural Oregon counties. That’s primarily because, in addition to the O&C Act, the BLM operates under a legislative mandate that includes the Endangered Species Act and the National Forest Management Act, which reflect what we have learned about the natural environment since 1937.
The federal government should continue full annual payments to O&C counties until alternative revenue sources are found. But not on the basis of a management plan premised on a narrow, outdated interpretation of the O&C Act that is neither scientifically nor legally defensible — and that would be a sociological disaster if carried out.
Sam Porter
Sam Porter of Eugene is a courtesy research associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oregon. His research examines the conflict over Oregon’s federal forests.
The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, Monday, February 18, 2008, A8
LETTERS IN THE EDITOR’S MAILBAG
BLM is Right to Revise its Plans
Sam Porter in his Feb. 5 guest viewpoint is identified as a “courtesy research associate” in the University of Oregon’s Sociology Department whose “research examines the conflict over Oregon’s federal forests.”
Porter passionately argues that the alternatives the Bureau of Land Management is considering for revising its management plans are not “legally defensible” because they do not meet the requirements of the National Forest Management Act or the purposes of the Organic Act.
As any first-year forestry student knows, these laws do not even apply to the Department of Interior or the BLM. The Organic Act of 1897 created the National Forest System, which is administered by the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service, and NFMA is the primary legislation guiding the management of these lands.
These Western Oregon BLM lands were created by the O&C Act of 1937, and the Federal Land Policy Management Act guides their management. Furthermore, the Northwest Forest Plan is just that, a plan, not a law, that should be periodically updated as situations change.
Finally, the BLM is revising its management plans because the NWFP violates the O&C Act, which clearly states that the O&C lands are “for the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply.”
We can only hope that UO’s Department of Sociology has a higher standard for research than is exhibited here by Sam Porter.
Ross Mickey
Eugene
Editor’s Note: Ross Mickey is the Western Oregon Manager for American Forest Resource Council, which, according to its web site, http://www.amforest.org/, “strives to provide a positive operating environment for the forest products community, representing nearly 100 forest product manufacturers and forest landowners – from small, family-owned companies to large multi-national corporations – in twelve states, west of the Great Lakes.”
Sam Porter submitted the following response to rgletters@guardnet.com on Thu, 21 Feb 2008:
BLM Plan Will Worsen Situation in Rural Oregon
I was wrong to say the U.S. Bureau of Land Management operates under the National Forest Management Act (Guest Viewpoint, 2-5-08); and, the 1897 Organic Act and NFMA guide management of U.S. Forest Service, not BLM, lands, as Ross Mickey rightly points out (Letters Feb 18).
But the BLM is required to comply with the Endangered Species Act to “provide the means whereby the ecosystems upon which an endangered species depends may be conserved.”
And although this crucial and ecologically insightful NFMA regulation – “to maintain all native vertebrate species in a viable state across their ranges” – is not legally binding on the BLM, that agency should at least take it into account as it manages public forestlands.
I want to emphasize the need for inter-agency coordination and intellectual coherence in federal environmental legislation – for responsible federal land management. I’m trying to make more a moral and sociological point than an administrative or legal one – though they are of course related.
I never said the Northwest Forest Plan is a law not subject to change as Mickey implies. Even the O&C Act is subject repeal.
Circumstances make a difference. And the ecological circumstances have changed dramatically since Congress enacted the 1937 O&C Act with its utilitarian and economic bent.
The BLM’s Western Oregon Plan Revision preferred alternative, which triples harvest levels under the Northwest Forest Plan, ignores such changes. Such deliberate ignorance will worsen an already difficult social situation in western Oregon rural communities.
Sam Porter
Eugene
sporter@uoregon.edu
This exchange took place in the editorial pages of The Register-Guard. We are grateful for their gracious permission to republish this exchange for readers of West By Northwest.org Online Magazine. The Register-Guard is one of the few independent, daily newspapers left in the country with original reporting and thoughtful editorials. We urge all local readers to subscribe to the daily RG as a way to keep independent, professional journalism strong and protect our constitutional rights.
MGH–Editor
© Copyright 2000-2006 by West By Northwest.org
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