The plan was created in 1994 to protect threatened and endangered species, like the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. It was meant to put an end to the timber wars of the 80s and 90s, when environmental activists protested the over-harvesting of trees in the region.
The plan covers all of the Forest Service lands in Oregon and Washington, as well as a small part of Northern California.
While innovative at the time, even environmentalists like Carol Valentine with the Sierra Club believe the plan needs to change to meet our new challenges.
“Tribes were excluded from the original plan, and the fact that that could get remedied in a good way is excellent,” she said. “And we are in an era of climate change, and we need to think about the Northwest Forest Plan in that context.”
A was released by the Forest Service last November. It outlines different paths the agency could take to change the plan. Some of the changes include greater involvement of tribes in forest management, greater emphasis on fire-resiliency projects – including thinning of forests and prescribed fire – and changing how the plan identifies different types of forests in the region.
Environmental activists held a rally outside the Forest Service office to push for stronger protections for old-growth ecosystems in the amendments.
Luke Ruediger has spent his life advocating for forests in southwest Oregon, and is the executive director of the Applegate Siskiyou Alliance. One of the areas he and others have been focusing on is a proposal to raise the age of trees where timber harvests are essentially forbidden from 80 years up to 120 or 150 years.
“A lot of those 120 year old stands are really providing a lot of key ecosystem services,” he said. “Providing important wildlife habitat, clean water, carbon storage and many of these mature and old growth forests represent very fire resistant landscapes that should be maintained in the environment.”
Ruediger said that trees between 80 and 120 years old are essentially the ‘future old-growth’ forests that should be protected to cultivate more habitat for species like the northern spotted owl.
Molly Juillerat, forest supervisor for the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest, said it’s not going to be a black and white approach to managing these forests.
“It's looking at that landscape holistically and what it needs, and that's according to things like its fire regime, to the forest type, and what kind of plants and animals are living in that area,” she said.
Juillerat said that the 80-year-old number was fairly arbitrary. The thought process behind it was to encourage the growth of those burgeoning forests into old-growth forests. And now, those forests are over 120 years old, and should still be protected.
Clint Emerson, regional botanist for the Forest Service, said that these numbers aren’t based on a scientific study. He said it’s more of a balance between protecting old-growth forests, harvesting timber and protecting communities from wildfire.
Emerson and Juillerat note that the plan is not finalized. Juillerat said there could be significant changes to the amendments based on the public feedback.
“The draft is very much a draft,” she said. “So comments really do matter. And so I encourage people to look at the different alternatives, and look at the sections that they care about, and make really specific comments about that.”
Environmental activist Luke Ruediger said he wants to see greater site-specific management of lands; especially in southwest Oregon, where overly broad landscape management doesn’t fit the diverse types of forests seen in the region.
“The only thing that has protected these forests has been the structure of the Northwest Forest Plan that has forced the agencies to alter their management styles and strategies to allow for the protection of more mature habitats,” said Ruediger.
Because this plan covers such a broad area, and greatly influences forest management by the USFS, Ruediger said it’s important that protections for old-growth forests remain strong.
about the draft environmental impact statement are due by March 17. Juillerat said it’ll take a few months to parse through the comments and decide what changes to make to the plan. She expects a final decision on the plan to come out in the fall or winter of this year.
