More stumps and fewer salmon are on the Pacific Northwest's horizon. On Tuesday, the Bush Administration announced rule changes that end the "Survey and Manage" standard that has helped protect old-growth forests for the past 10 years, as well as hundreds of rare and endangered species. The administration also weakened provisions of a rule designed to protect vulnerable streams and salmon from damage due to logging.[1]
As described in the March 5 BushGreenwatch, the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan's "Survey and Manage" standard required the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to "look before logging" -- to survey public lands for sensitive plants, fungi and fauna native to northwest forests. The need to protect these species, which serve as indicators of forest health, has often reduced or canceled logging of old-growth forests.
Now, forest managers will decide on a case-by-case basis whether protection is important. The rule changes will affect 5.5 million acres of forests on public lands.[2]
"The Bush Administration is making it easier to cut old-growth trees for an industry that will fund its reelection campaign," said Jeremy Hall of the Oregon Natural Resources Council Action in Eugene. "The industry donated more than $1 million dollars to the President and his party and the payback is logging trucks loaded with our biggest trees."[3]
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced that individual timber sales would no longer be required to meet all the protections for stream and watershed health established by the Northwest Forest Plan's Aquatic Conservation Strategy. Instead of monitoring the effects of logging on a site-by-site basis, agency managers will instead assess entire watersheds, which can range in size from 30 to 150 square miles.[4]
Damage to streams and salmon will be impossible to judge on such a large scale until it is too late, according to Glenn Spain, Northwest Regional Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "Under the old rules you're supposed to assess the impact of a timber sale based on the particular characteristics of the site -- such as slope and stream conditions. You're supposed to know what you're doing," Spain told BushGreenwatch.
"Under the new rules, there will be no connections made between the logging on the ground and the effect on the salmon. They don't have to know what they're doing, or mitigate impact," said Spain. "It's a don't-know, don't find-out policy that institutionalizes scientific ignorance."
"I'm a registered Republican, but I did not vote for a rollback in the fundamental protections of public resources that support sustainable industries, such as fishing," Spain added. "We have tens of thousands of family-wage jobs at risk. The fishing industry is worth one billion dollars in the Pacific Northwest, and over $150 billion nationwide. No fish, no fishermen, no fishing jobs."
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SOURCES:
[1] Earthjustice press release, Mar. 23, 2004.
[2] "Key rules are eased to boost logging," The Oregonian, Mar. 24, 2004.
[3] Earthjustice Press Release, op. cit.
[4] The Oregonian, op. cit.
