Species studies will end

Thursday, May 1, 2003
By KATHIE DURBIN, Columbian staff writer

An eight-year, $40 million effort to study and protect more than 400
little-known Northwest forest-dwelling species is due to be shelved
under the Bush administration's settlement of a timber industry lawsuit.

Details of the settlement are expected May 9, when the
administration releases a draft proposal to eliminate the controversial
survey-and-manage provision of the Northwest Forest Plan.

The plan, adopted in 1994 by the Clinton administration to end
legal gridlock in Northwest forests, offers a blueprint for preserving
old-growth forest ecosystems across 24 million acres of federal land.

Although it was supposed to produce up to 1.1 billion board feet of
timber annually, the plan has never met that target.

Under the settlement, the administration will halt annual surveys
of amphibians, mollusks, insects, fungi, lichens and other species and
discontinue current measures to protect them. Those measures, adopted by
the Clinton administration in its final days, are designed to maintain
"a reasonable assurance of species persistence" for every species on the
list for 100 years.

The American Forest Resource Council and Oregon-based Douglas
Timber Operators challenged the survey-and-manage provision in federal
court. They argued it went too far by giving legal protection to
invertebrates not covered by the National Forest Management Act or the
Endangered Species Act. The plaintiffs contended that the policy
illegally required federal agencies to set aside more than 81,000 acres
of habitat that would otherwise be available for logging.

An attorney representing environmental groups that are suing the
administration contends the settlement is part of a concerted strategy
by timber industry groups to weaken the Northwest Forest Plan through
secret settlement talks.

"I think they want to shift away from ecosystem management to
having just a few rules they have to comply with," said Patti Goldman,
an attorney with the Seattle office of Earthjustice, an environmental
law firm.

The settlement is the latest in a series negotiated by the Bush
administration with industry groups in recent weeks. The administration
also has agreed to review the status of the northern spotted owl and the
marbled murrelet by year's end, to amend the aquatic conservation
strategy for federal lands in the Northwest, and to consider whether the
BLM is legally obligated to provide species protection on some of its lands.

Earthjustice and its clients have sued the administration, alleging
that the settlement talks exclude the views of environmental groups and
the public.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, Earthjustice lawyers
obtained documents that detail the industry's so-called "Global
Framework" for producing more timber from federal lands through
settlements of pending lawsuits and the Bush administration's agreement
to implement that strategy.

Mark Rey, the Department of Agriculture undersecretary and former
timber industry lobbyist who directs the administration's forest policy,
has denied that the administration is trying to orchestrate legal
challenges.



Snails and slugs

Meeting the requirements of survey-and-manage kindled resentment by
timber companies and some Forest Service officials as surveys for
snails, slugs and lichens held up timber sales across the Northwest.
Former Northwest Regional Forester Harv Forsgren said last year that he
believed the species in question were thriving on the 80 percent of
forest lands that are protected from commercial logging and thus were
not surveyed.

Last November the Vancouver-based Gifford Pinchot National Forest
withdrew a timber sale after a Washington state biologist noted that it
provided rare habitat for the Larch Mountain salamander.

Implementing survey-and-manage was a challenge for federal
agencies. Starting virtually from scratch, scientists conducted surveys
and collected what information was available on hundreds of obscure
creatures. Some rare species were present in 10 or fewer sites. Other
species were far more common than believed. In all, 72 species have been
dropped from the original survey list of 409 species.

After survey-and-manage goes away, some species that presently
enjoy protection will fall under Forest Service and Bureau of Land
Management guidelines for protecting rare and sensitive plants and animals.

But not all will make the sensitive species list, said Randy
Molina, a scientist with the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research
Station. Molina spoke Wednesday at a Portland seminar on species
conservation.

Attorney Goldman said that's a loss.

"It was mandatory to protect these species. Now it's going to be
much less regular, much less mandatory to look for these species, and if
they're found there will be much more discretion about whether and how
to protect them."



New understandings

In his seminar presentation, Molina acknowledged the controversy
over survey-and-manage. He defended the program's achievements and the
knowledge gained over the past eight years as biologists scrambled to
understand the role snails and slugs and salamanders play in the ecology
of old-growth forests.

"Survey-and-manage has been the whipping dog of the Northwest
Forest Plan," he said. "That's unfortunate, because tens of thousands of
sites of rare, poorly protected species have been protected and new
findings have greatly improved our scientific understanding" of what
those species need to survive, he said.

Molina said that as a result of survey-and-manage, a better
understanding of the importance of these species "has entered the
federal agency culture."