Timberland Investment

The American Forest Resource Council (AFRC) and a broad group of national and regional interests filed suit today in Washington, D.C. to overturn the new Forest Service Planning Rule adopted last April. According to the Complaint, the new Rule violates the statutory requirements Congress has given the agency to prepare forest plans to provide for multiple uses of outdoor recreation, range, timber, watershed, and wildlife and fish. The Rule instead elevates the vague concepts of “ecological sustainability” and “ecosystem services” such as carbon storage and spiritual values above all else which will lead to years of lawsuits over new forest plans and forest management projects.

When Wilderness Isn’t Wilderness: When the US Forest Service wants to act fast to protect natural resources, it can. But, when it needs to act fast to prevent catastrophic timber loss to pests or fire, it predictably fails to act. June’s double standard example is within the still-burning 297,000 acre Whitewater-Baldy Fire in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, Gila National Forest. As the fire burned, biologists used electro-shockers to capture rare Gila trout from streams, then the trout were netted and lifted-out of the Wilderness via helicopter. No Environmental Impact Statement; no appeal period; and no public input for mechanized machinery or fish-snatching in a designated Wilderness. Go figure.

Exploding trees — Forest Service Believe It or Not: US Forest Service workers in Montana’s Helena National Forest are using high explosives to fall beetle-killed pine trees that pose danger to scenic highways and recreation sites. An engineering program leader at the USFS Missoula Technology Development Center said the danger of cutting down rotted trees in tough locations is a reason to use explosives. “We just don’t have a whole lot of really good sawyers. The days of going out and doing that activity are long gone in the Forest Service.” Sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction.

The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was adopted in 1994 to “protect” the Sacred Owl. Nobody actually knew how many Sacred Owls existed at the time; nor did they know how many had existed in any previous period. Nobody had ever counted them. Instead, they created a model based on nesting habitat. Since Sacred Owls nest in “old growth,” and “old growth” was being reduced by logging, the model inferred that the Sacred Owl population must be declining also.

Based on this model, the powers that be concluded the Sacred Owl must be endangered. Since the Sacred Owl also requires younger stands and clearings for forage, the critical habitat designation was broadened to include most of the public forest lands in the Pacific Northwest. This opened the door for the environmental movement to litigate virtually any timber sale on public lands under the auspices of the Endangered Species Act.

Today, the environmentalists claim the Sacred Owl population is still declining at an alarming rate. So we must set aside even more land as “critical habitat,” sacrificing even more production, jobs, and communities. But, if the Sacred Owl population really is declining so rapidly, eighteen years after the NWFP was put into effect, then clearly the plan is not successful and should be scrapped. Why double down on a failed plan?

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in a case that examines whether sediment running off logging roads is industrial pollution and should be more tightly regulated.

The case could affect thousands of miles of roads. It’s being closely watched by the timber industry, clean water advocates, and politicians in the Northwest.

Three environmental groups filed a lawsuit Thursday, alleging state timber harvests violate federal law by killing and harassing marbled murrelets, a bird protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The lawsuit comes as Oregon land managers are implementing a plan to increase logging on the 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest between Reedsport and Coos Bay.

The government plans to allocate RM3 billion for expansion of forest plantations in the country to achieve an area covering 375,000 hectares by 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today.

The U.S. Forest Service has chosen Pagosa Land Co. to remove woody biomass from national forestland in Pagosa County. Through the Pagosa Area Biomass Long-Term Stewardship Contract, a project developed to restore the region’s forest while reducing fire risk through a 10-year contract, J.R. Ford, president of Pagosa Land Co., and his team will have access to the national forest to harvest woody biomass.

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The contract work will include the removal of saw timber products other than logs, as well as limbs and tops of trees found in ponderosa pine, mixed conifer or aspen stands, according to the USFS. The contract will also allow Ford and his team to perform road maintenance and other associated activities. Roughly 1,000 to 2,000 acres of forest will be treated each year.

The Northwest Forest Plan enacted by President Clinton in 1994 may have had good intentions, but it has failed catastrophically.

According to Forest Service records, the volume of timber harvested on Forest Service lands declined from a peak in 1987 of 12.7 billion board feet to 4.8 billion board feet in 1994. That harvest further declined to 2.4 billion board feet in 2011. When the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted in 1994, harvest levels already had dropped by nearly two-thirds — and today are merely 19 percent of the peak harvest level of 1987.

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The resulting build-up of biomass in Northwest forests has led to catastrophic fires burning millions of acres. Spotted owl populations have crashed by 60 percent or more. The Northwest Forest Plan has failed to save owls and instead has caused the incineration of their habitat.

The Pacific Northwest is the premier timber-growing region in the world. Yet today, America is importing 40 percent of its softwoods from Canada.