Rep.
George Nethercutt: Listener?
By John Osborn,
M.D.
A nation that spent most of 1995 engrossed by
the O.J. Simpson murder trial and ignored Congress
using the budget process to grind up our
environmental laws is grumpily awakening to the
budget mess in the nation's Capital. One
Congressman in the cast of politicians is the
Speaker-slayer, Rep. George Nethercutt of
Spokane.
A year ago the "Gingrich revolution" was just
beginning. Tom Foley, congressman from eastern
Washington, was no longer Speaker of the House.
Eastern Washington voters replaced Tom Foley with
George Nethercutt, a publicly soft-spoken and
courteous campaigner.
Early in January, 1995, I traveled to
Washington, D.C., to meet with newly elected Rep.
Nethercutt, and to monitor the impact of the
Congressional budget process on forests. For the
past 10 years I have spent vacations on Capitol
Hill, prompted in part by the way in which
Congress's budget process is abused while setting
the nation's forest policies. A trail of stumps and
ruined streams leads from our clearcut forests to
hallways and backrooms of Congress. If you want to
know what government agencies really do, then
ignore their rhetoric. Look at their budgets.
Rep. Nethercutt welcomed me into his office in
the Longworth Building. We sat down: the television
was on one side of Nethercutt and I was on the
other. He looked at the TV as I spoke. Then looked
at me. Then back to the TV. I attempted to convey
the historic proportions of the transition underway
in the Columbia River region. Leadership is needed,
I said, to protect and restore our forests and
fisheries and to help rural communities through a
period of disruptive change. "Do you fish?" I
asked. No. "Hunt?" No. "Do you know anything about
the clearcutting and toxic metal pollution upstream
from Spokane?" No. Finally Nethercutt turned away
from the television and asked, insistently, "What
do you want from me?"
On March 1, I returned to Capitol Hill to
testify before the Senate Subcommittee on forest
policy, chaired by Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID). Over on
the House side of the Hill, the
Logging-without-Laws Rider was being shoved through
committees. Nethercutt supported this. The
Logging-without-laws rider was attached to a budget
bill like a bomb on a Christmas tree, and signed
into law by a flip-flopping President Clinton. Now
our public forests are falling to lawless
logging.
On June 1, another meeting with Rep. Nethercutt
was held, this time in Spokane. Nethercutt insisted
that "salvage" logging would not lose money,
disregarding conservative estimates that taxpayers
would lose hundreds of millions of dollars. He
attempted to defend his own rider on a budget bill,
so-called "Section 314", that would effectively
censor scientists, subvert public process, and gut
the Columbia River region's planning process.
Most of Nethercutt's constituents value the high
quality of life here: our forests, our world class
fishing, hunting, and lovely lakes. Nethercutt's
Sec. 314 and Logging-Without-Laws destroys the
Columbia River region's forests and fisheries. At
the same time, Nethercutt's actions will cost
taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
How to explain Nethercutt's decisions? Follow
the money. Money still gushes from timber
companies, and especially from the
Northern-Pacific-based corporations: Boise Cascade,
Potlatch, Plum Creek, and Weyerhaeuser. Money, the
mother's milk of politics, binds together the
corporate-government complex with the goal of
keeping a lock-hold on decisions about our public
forests and fisheries.
So let us return to George Nethercutt's question
from last January: "What do you want from me?"
First, stop intergenerational theft. Commit
yourself to sustaining our forests. As Republican
Gifford Pinchot recognized, preserving forests
through "wise use" can only occur with careful
planning. Careful planning requires using not
discarding the tools of sound science, economics,
and fair and open public process. Science-based
planning is the only way to avoid continued
malpractice that is destroying the Columbia River
forests and fisheries one of the most magnificent
river ecosystems in the world.
In short, George Nethercutt, provide the healing
leadership that we also asked repeatedly of your
predecessor, Tom Foley. You campaigned on being a
listener, not a speaker. Listen to more than the
Lords of Yesterday, George Nethercutt. Listen to
the land and to the people.
(1)
In extremis:
Columbia River
fisheries and forests
Rains devastate N.
Idaho forests and watersheds
Officials blame
clearcuts, roads in wrong places
for most of
damage
Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review
District Ranger Art Bourassa walks away from
a massive slide on Quartz Creek in the Clearwater
National Forest.
By Ken
Olsen, Staff
writer
The casualty list runs from Sandpoint to Lolo,
Mont., and the roster is far from complete.
Early estimates suggest triage will cost
taxpayers millions.
It's the worst damage to North Idaho's forests
most experts have ever seen: Roads overloaded with
water from recent storms fell off mountainsides,
walls of mud and debris tore up logged and unlogged
watersheds.
In Clearwater National Forest, federal officials
frankly admit the devastation was aggravated by too
many clearcuts and roads built in the wrong
places.
At least 28 roads are closed due to more than
100 slides, slumps and washouts. Some of the roads
probably won't reopen next summer, the U.S. Forest
Service said.
The Idaho Panhandle National Forests to the
north reports extensive damage to 200 miles of
roads in the Bonner's Ferry District alone. The
havoc raised by mudslides is worst in the St.
Maries and Avery Ranger Districtscutting off the
road between Avery and Wallace and blocking other
byways.
The forests appear to qualify for emergency
repair money
from the Federal Highway Administration.
"This is not a good picture," said Art Bourassa,
district ranger on the North Fork of the Clearwater
National Forest, as he pointed to a slide.
"I wish we didn't have a road up there," he
added, pointing to a new road in a recently logged
area 20 miles east of Dworshak Reservoir.
The rainstorms turned the road into an avalanche
that charged through a clearcut and took out a
piece of another logging road below it. The debris
tumbled into the North Fork of the Clearwater
River.
Not far away, raging Isabella Creek punched out
a 100-yard-long, 10-foot deep curve on an older
road, clear down to bedrock. It is the only road to
the popular Mallard-Larkins Pionpeer Area.
It definitely will be rebuilt, officials said,
starting with a rock barrier to shield the next
road from the creek.
Hardest hit was Quartz Creek Road, buried under
a massive slide 600 feet wide and 60 feet deep.
It blocks the easiest access to an active timber
sale.
But removal of the dirt and debris, and repair
of the road, will cost an estimated $1 million.
Many of the slides and washouts happened on
steep slopes with unstable soil. They involve roads
built four to 40 years ago.
This is a grand-slam education on how not to
manage forests today, officials said.
"Everything up to four to five years ago was
heavily clearcut," Bourassa said. "That probably
isn't sitting with what Mother Nature planned."
As for roads, "some shouldn't have been built,
based on location, drainage and stability," he
said.
In areas like Skull Creek and Quartz Creek,
"there were too many roads, too close
together."
That management won't be repeated, he said.
The Forest Service knew long before Bourassa
arrived here six years ago that several of those
roads were risky because the soil is so unstable.
"But if we didn't build in medium- to high-risk
areas, we wouldn't have a road down the North Fork
corridor," a major timber-hauling route, Bourassa
said.
Those risks are never figured into the cost of a
timber sale, but they are risks taxpayers will now
pay for, environmentalists said.
Former Forest Service employees contend the
current devastation is also partly a result of
logging the same watershed year after year, instead
of giving it time to heal.
Without those trees, there is nothing to drink
up rainwater and prevent erosion, said Al Espinosa,
who was chief fisheries biologist on the Clearwater
for 20 years.
For example, there are no roads above the Quartz
Creek slide.
Yet this watershed has sustained 200 million
board-feet of logging since 1965, much of it done
in the name of salvaging white pine.
In 1979, the most valuable white pine was taken
from the north slope by helicopter, leaving
primarily dead and dying trees on the slope that
slipped away last month.
It was salvage logging, advertised then as now
as essential to get the trees while they are still
valuable.
Spokesman Review December 8, 1995
Copyright 1995, The Spokesman Review Used
with permission of The Spokesman Review
Old forests east of
Cascades in jeopardy
·Scientists tell
Congress that old growth timber has been heavily
logged and isn't likely to survive another 100
years
By Kathie
Durbin of The
Oregonian staff
A century of logging has reduced old-growth
forests east of the Cascades to fragile islands too
small to support native wildlife, an independent
panel of scientists has concluded.
Six scientific panels briefed members of
Congress on their findings Thursday in Washington,
D.C. The scientists urged the U.S. Forest Service
to stop all logging of old-growth forests and
individual old trees in Eastern Oregon and Eastern
Washington immediately so the tattered forest
ecosystem can survive.
The scientists also said the agency should halt
all logging and road-building within broad
streamside areas and entire watersheds critical to
salmon. They said livestock grazing along streams
should end so that degraded rivers can heal.
The Clinton administration will heed the
recommendations as it begins writing a new
environmental impact statement for managing and
restoring the damaged eastside forests, said Mark
Gaede of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The outlook for survival of the eastside old
growth is grim even if the recommendations are
followed, said David Perry, a professor of forest
ecology at Oregon State University who served on
the seven-member panel.
"I personally think it has only a moderate or
low probability of surviving another 100 years
because of the threat of fires and insects," Perry
said. "This threat of natural catastrophe makes it
doubly important to protect all the remaining old
growth that we have."
The scientists recommended that two panels be
established to develop more detailed strategies for
restoring forest health and forest landscape.
The American Fisheries Society, the Wildlife
Society, the American Ornithologists' Union, the
Ecological Society of America, the Society for
Conservation Biology and the Sierra Biodiversity
Institute sponsored and prepared the report, which
was requested by seven House members in May
1992.
It was funded with $66,000 in grants from the W.
Alton Jones Foundation, the Bullitt Foundation and
the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Oregonian September 10, 1993
Brock Evans of the National Audubon Society said
the scientists' report proves that eastside forests
are in even worse shape than those west of the
Cascades.
"The watersheds containing these ancient forests
comprise most of the spawning and rearing habitat
for threatened and endangered Columbia and Snake
River salmon," Evans said.
But Chris West, vice president of the Northwest
Forestry Association, took issue with the idea that
the eastside forests can be saved by preserving
them.
"If we're going to improve and maintain forest
health in the eastside ecosystem, we're going to
have to manage the forest," West said. "Study after
study has shown that we can't just walk away."
The study includes the first-ever maps showing
the location and extent of eastside old-growth
forests, roadless areas and key watersheds. Steve
and Eric Beckwitt of the Sierra Biodiversity
Institute in North San Juan, Calif., drew on
mapping data and aerial photographs collected by 75
citizen mappers through the Audubon Society
Adopt-a-Forest project and used sophisticated
geographical information system software to prepare
the detailed maps.
The scientists found that three national
foreststhe Colville, Wallowa-Whitman and Winemahad
no old-growth patches larger than 5,000 acres. Of
seven old-growth patches larger than 5,000 acres in
the Malheur, Ochoco and Umatilla forests, only one
was protected.
Old-growth ponderosa pine, the most ecologically
and economically valuable tree species east of the
Cascades, is also the scarcest, they said. Just 3
percent to 5 percent of the original ponderosa pine
forest remains on the Deschutes National Forest, 5
percent to 8 percent on the Wihema and 2 percent to
8 percent on the Fremont.
"The geographical extent of old growth forest
ecosystems in eastside national forests has been
dramatically reduced during the 20th century," the
scientists said. "Continued logging of old growth
outside current reserves will jeopardize unknown
numbers of native species."
- EASTSIDE
FORESTS
- Here are the findings
of the Eastside Forests Scientific Society
Panel:
- · The extent of
eastside old-growth forests has been
dramatically reduced by logging since 1900.
0ld-growth ponderosa pine may cover only 15
percent of its original range in Eastern Oregon
and Eastern Washington.
- · Less than 25
percent of the old growth left on national
forests is protected.
- · At least 70
percent of the remaining eastside old growth is
in patches of less than 100 acres too small to
provide habitat for many old-growth
species.
- · Many areas
designated "old growth" in existing forest plans
aren't old growth at all.
- · Although large
roadless areas are important to such species as
bear, elk and wolverine, fewer than 8 percent of
roadless areas in the Blue Mountains are
protected.
- Recommendations
- · Halt all
logging of mature and old-growth forests to
create a "time out" until a protection strategy
is developed.
- · Cut no
individual trees older than 150 years or larger
than 20 inches in diameter at breast
height.
- · Do not log or
build new roads in areas where fish face
possible extinction or in watersheds that
provide the best remaining habitat and gene
pools for salmon and resident fish.
- · Do not build
new roads within roadless areas larger than
1,000 acres.
- · Establish wide
protected corridors along streams and wetlands,
including 300-foot wide buffers along yearround
streams.
- · Halt all
livestock grazing in riparian areas except under
strict protective controls.
The Oregonian
Forest Service officials frankly admit the
devastation in North Idaho was aggravated by
clearcuts and logging roads.
Landslide, Quartz Creek, Clearwater NF,
December 1995
Spokesman Review, Gerry Snyder photo
August 1, 1993 Copyright 1993, The Spokesman
Review Used with permission of The Spokesman
Review
More miles of logging
roads than streams in NW forests
By Scott
Sonner Associated
Press
 WASHINGTON
Logging-road mileage has more than doubled in
Northwest national forests since 1960, far
outstripping the pace of street and highway
construction in the region, a new report said
yesterday.
More than 325,000 miles of logging roads now
crisscross public lands in British Columbia and
parts of six Northwest states enough to circle the
planet 13 times, according to a study by Northwest
Environment Watch, a Seattle-based non-profit
environmental-research center.
That's more than the 220,000 miles of public
streets and highways in the region, which grew
about 25 percent over the past 35 years.
Compared with highways, national-forest roads
have proliferated since 1960, more than tripling in
Oregon and more than doubling in Idaho and
Washington, the report said.
The study by John Ryan and Chandra Shah warns of
environmental damage caused by logging roads,
including erosion and sedimentation in streams that
harm dwindling salmon populations.
It urges a halt to logging-road construction in
the Northwest U.S. and zero growth in British
Columbia. It applauds Forest Service efforts to
remove roads as a central part of watershed
restoration in heavily logged national forests.
"Perhaps its most surprising finding is that
roads have surpassed streams as the most dominant
feature of the landscape in the region," said Alan
Durning, the center's executive director and former
researcher with Ryan at the Worldwatch Institute in
Washington, D.C.
"Today, outside of Alaska, more of the U.S.
Northwest is accessible to four-wheelers than to
salmon."
The report addresses the region's overall road
network public streets, highways and public logging
roads combined roughly 535,000 miles across British
Columbia, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northwestern
California, western Montana and southeastern
Alaska.
British Columbia has the longest combined road
network, about 190,000 miles; followed by Oregon,
127,000; Washington, 95,000; Idaho, 69,000; western
Montana, 29,000; northwestern California, 22,000;
and southeastern Alaska, 5,000.
"Surprisingly, the Northwest's extensive network
of highways ... has expanded relatively little
since 1960," the report says.
"During this period, regional population nearly
doubled and the number of cars tripled, yet
recorded highway mileage increased only 25
percent."
That's partly because new housing developments
do not add much mileage compared with old rural
roads stretching across vast distances. Also, some
new suburbs simply pave over existing roads, the
report said.
National forests in the U.S. Northwest average
3.5 miles of road for each square mile of land, the
report said, citing 1994 figures by the Forest
Service.
Oregon's national-forest roads grew from about
20,000 miles in 1960 to 73,000 miles in 1994.
Washington's grew from about 9,000 miles to
22,000 miles, Idaho's from about 16,000 to about
33,000 and Alaska's from 251 to 3,600, the report
said.
Logging roads on British Columbia's public lands
now total about 150,000 miles.
Seattle Times December 12, 1995
(2)
Columbia River "Ecosystem
management"
Feds prepare to tackle
forest plan for East Side
By Jim
Lynch Staff
Writer
After crafting a plan for harvesting Western
woodlands, the Clinton administration is turning
its spotlight onto the Inland Northwest
forests.
The federal scrutiny arrives at the same time
environmental attorneys are shuttling arms to the
next old growth battlefieldthe timberlands of
eastern Washington and Oregon.
Clinton's top forester concedes the East Side
was largely ignored in the recent White House
forest plan, but said deciding how to best manage
the pest-plagued forests is now the top
priority.
"We're slowly marching our way eastward," said
Assistant Agriculture Secretary Jim Lyons in an
interview with The Spokesman-Review.
Lyons said the administration needs more
scientific information about East Side forests
before it decides how much timber can be logged
each year without jeopardizing the forests'
future.
It may take years before new management plans
are fully enacted, but some key information
surfaces later this month as reports on old growth
and forest health are completed.
Meanwhile, the East Side timber sale program is
in neutral with little more than salvage sales
offered on most of the region's public forests.
After devising a strategy for the eastern
Washington and Oregon forests, Lyons said the U.S.
Forest Service will shift to north and central
Idaho, the Inland Northwest's timber core.
The White House isn't waiting for a fractious
Northwest congressional delegation to resolve the
region's timber standoff that has pitted
environmentalists against both the Forest Service
and the timber barons.
"We don't need legislation to do what we want to
do over there," Lyons said. He described the
administration's goal as "attempting to protect
forest health in a manner that ensures sustainable
production of all resources, not just timber."
Lyons said West Side inventories revealed the
Forest Service overestimated the amount of timber
in its forests. He noted similar planning glitches
may have occurred in East Side forests.
The Forest Service continues to manage its lands
with plans devised in the late 1980s, but the
timber sale levels have slumped far lower than the
projected averages.
Most big sales have been delayed indefinitely in
response to a threat by the Natural Resources
Defense Council.
The San Francisco-based group filed a petition
against the Forest Service in late March seeking to
halt logging of old growth in East Side
forests.
"The East Side of the Cascades faces an
ecological crisis that rivals, if not exceeds the
one threatening the northern spotted owl," wrote
NRDC attorney Nathaniel Lawrence.
"Continued logging of the East Side's old growth
will inevitably lead to an environmental and
political train wreck."
The NRDC bills its petition as a way to protect
the American marten, pileated wnodpecker and
northern goshawk, animals not on the endangered
species list.
The threat of a lawsuit unnerves the agency's
Region 6 headquarters in Portland, which spent the
past few years in and out of court with
environmentalists over its old growth sales plans
in Western owl forests.
Tim Rogan, special assistant to Regional
Forester John Lowe, said the petition was one of
many signs the Forest Service needs to reevaluate
its East Side sales program.
"All these things are adding up," Rogan said.
"We decided we better put these sales that were
scheduled to go out on hold."
Rogan said the agency is gathering information
and doesn't know if future management strategies
will allow the forests to return to the sale
outputs deemed possible in the current plan.
"We have no idea what the (potential) timber
output of the area is," he said.
Richard Everett, a scientist team leader for the
Wenatchee Forestry Research Laboratory, is a lead
architect of a new East Side management
strategy.
Everett recently finished a five-volume report
on East Side forests which evaluates the condition
of timberlands and sets guidelines for ways to
better manage them.
Lyons called Everett's study a good start. "It
provides a generic blueprint," he said.
The study describes a management strategy that
steps back and views logging and other forest
activities from a ecosystem perspective.
With ecosystem management, foresters consider
how logging and other activities affect a large
region, such as an entire watershed.
It encourages managers to better mimic nature
with prescribed burnings, tree thinning and other
tactics.
Everett said it's far too early to predict how
the new system would affect timber sales. But he
said all sales will have to pass this test.
Panel Chairman Mark Henjum, a non-game
biologist, said the project has been difficult
because of conflicting information about old growth
stands.
Henjum said in some cases Forest Service old
growth maps were outdated and didn't reflect the
fact that some reputed old stands had already been
cut.
Lyons said the Clinton Administration focused
almost solely on the West Side in its forest plan
because it would have been too cumbersome to staff
a team of scientists with expertise on both sides
of the mountains.
"It doesn't mean we're not going to move
aggressively to put together a strategy on the East
Side," he said.
Lyons also said the decision to leave out the
East Side had nothing to do with House Speaker Tom
Foley. The speaker has expressed concerns that
Clinton's proposed forestry plan may jeopardize too
many timber jobs.
Lyons said after the administration gets a
handle on East Side forests, Idaho's federal
woodlands will receive similar scrutiny.
He said the management problems in Idaho are
different and in some ways more difficult,
complicated by the ongoing debates over roadless
areas and salmon.
"Does this activity improve the sustainability
of the ecosystem, or doesn't it?" he said, noting
sales must be redesigned if they don't pass.
"We anticipate that many sales will not pass
this screening process," Everett said.
He also estimated it could take at least three
years before ecosystem management will be fully
implemented throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho
and Montana.
Fred Stormer, deputy director of the Pacific
Northwest Research Lab, said the new strategy
changes the way the Forest Service looks at its
land.
"We've been making product-based decisions
rather than ecosystem based decisions," he
said.
Andy Mason, assistant supervisor for the
Colville National Forest, said managers of the
northeastern Washington forest are not waiting for
an official directive to change their management
style.
"We're embarking on ecosystem management," Mason
said.
He said some proposed timber sales are now going
through the new "screen."
"Basically we're trying to figure out how we can
do ecosystem management and what it will mean,"
Mason said.
Other East Side studies that could help script
future timber plans include an old growth study by
the East Side Forest Scientific Society Panel.
Spokesman Review July 18, 1993 Copyright
1993, The Spokesman Review Used with
permission of The Spokesman Review
Project significant
undertaking for region
The Eastside Ecosystem Management Project is a
huge undertaking.
It will help determine, among other things, how
clean the region's water is, how much wood is
available from its national forests, and how many
different kinds of plants and animals survive into
the 21st century.
What's the main goal of the project?
To write a document, called an environmental
impact statement, that will guide management of 12
national forests and five Bureau of Land Management
districts in Eastern Washington and eastern
Oregon.
When will the environmental impact statement
be completed?
A draft version, which will list alternative
land management strategies, is due in February
1995. There will be a 90-day public comment period
before it is finalized.
Who will choose the "winning" management
strategy?
Two people: the Forest Service's regional
forester in Portland, and the Bureau of Land
Management's supervisor for Oregon and
Washington.
What's the next step in the process?
This spring the public will be asked to help
identify issues
that the environmental impact statement should
encompass.
Will the document's writers take jobs and
communities into consideration?
They stress that people are an important part of
the ecosystem. They will consider economic and
social values as well as ecological ones.
What's being done about federal lands in the
Interior Columbia River Basin that are outside of
eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington?
Federal officials plan to produce an
environmental impact statement for Idaho. There's
talk of writing one for Montana, too. Parts of
Idaho and Montana are already included in the
scientific assessment that's being done by the
Eastside project.
Will the scientific team conduct
research?
There is no time for that, although they may set
priorities for future studies. They'll be making
management recommendations based on existing
information.
Julie Titone Spokesman Review
March 9, 1994 Copyright 1994, The Spokesman
Review Used with permission of The Spokesman
Review
(3)
Congress censors science, guts public
process
Panel axes three fish
protection projects
By Roberta
Ulrich of The
Oregonian staff
In a move environmentalists denounced as a
"foolish idea," a House subcommittee this week
ordered an end to three sweeping forest and fish
protection projects east of the Cascades.
An industry spokesman said if the cutback
survives the congressional process, it probably
will be for the good.
But a spokesman for the National Marine
Fisheries Service, which is charged with protecting
endangered salmon, said the action "doesn't bode
well for habitat protection."
The subcommittee's action is only the first step
in the appropriations process. But it fits the
environmental and fiscal agendas of many of the
majority Republicans from the Northwest, giving it
a good chance of being enacted.
The House Appropriations subcommittee on
Interior Department agencies and the Forest Service
terminated three key fish protection programs:
Pacfish, Infish and the Interior Columbia River
basin ecoregion assessment. The report is not yet
public, but copies have been distributed to members
of the full Appropriations Committee.
Pacfish is a set of regulations that the
National Marine Fisheries Service developed for
streamside protection until the basin project
dealing with resident fish.
Much of the scientific study for the ecoregion
assessment has been completed, and draft reports
are planned for completion by Oct. 1, when the ban
on further project work would take effect. A draft
environmental assessment is not scheduled to be
finished until mid-winter, said Tom Quigley, the
science team leader for the multi-agency
project.
The agencies, including the Forest Service and
Bureau of Land Management, began the study in 1994
to adapt their forest plans to new demands,
including protection for endangered species of
salmon.
The subcommittee report notes that the ecoregion
project has garnered important scientific
information on forest health conditions.
However, the report added: "Despite this
accomplishment, the project has grown too large and
too costly to sustain in a time of fiscal
constraints."
The only thing salvaged for funding is
publication of the scientific information collected
so far.
Bob Doppelt of Oregon Rivers, an environmental
organization that has supported all three programs,
said the subcommittee report seemed to eliminate
analysis or alternative stream protection
proposals.
The report also ordered the forest management
agencies to amend their forest plans rather than
use the guidelines developed under Pacfish and
Infish.
Doppelt said the formal amendment process is so
lengthy "there will be no protection for a long
time, if ever" for salmon habitat in the eastside
forests.
Brian Gorman, a National Marine Fisheries
Service spokesman in Seattle, said removing the
Pacfish rules would "have a major impact on habitat
protection in the Northwest."
Jim Myron of Oregon Trout said sarcastically, "I
guess there is no threatened fish species." Then he
added, "It's like sticking your head in the
sand."
Bruce Lovelin of the Columbia River Alliance, a
coalition of industrial users of the Columbia and
its tributaries, said the subcommittee action was
"not too surprising." He said his group had not
looked at Pacfish as helpful and would welcome
changes in its rules for habitat protection.
Oregonian June 22, 1995
Forest effort pawn in
budget fight
By Eric
Pryne Seattle
Times staff reporter
 The
budget war that now consumes Congress and President
Clinton is as big as the national debt and
Medicare.
It's also as small as an office on Poplar Street
in Walla Walla.
Fifty scientists, planners and other federal
officials who work there have spent the past two
years assessing the present and plotting the future
of all federal forests and rangelands between the
Cascade crest and the Rockies.
Their charge: prepare a management plan for the
dry side of the mountains that is as
comprehensiveand perhaps as precedent-settingas
Clinton's controversial 19-month-old "Option 9"
forest plan for the west side of the Cascades.
Now their work may be cut short. The Walla Walla
project and the east-side forests have become pawns
in the budget war.
They are hardly a major focus of the debate in
Washington, D.C. But trees and salmon on 75 million
acres of national-forest and Bureau of Land
Management landan area almost twice the size of
Washington state may hang in the balance.
Northwest lawmakers, backed by timber and
agricultural interests, have inserted language in a
spending bill that would both narrow the project's
scope and bar the administration from imposing any
sweeping changes based on its findings.
The provision is one of dozens of environmental
"riders" that Congress has tacked onto the spending
and deficit-reduction bills now at impasse: Most
have more to do with policy than money.
That's hardly unprecedented. Budget bills must
pass each year to keep the government running. So
they become "Christmas trees," bills on which all
sorts of marginally related ornaments are hung.
A rider to a 1987 deficit-reduction bill, for
instance, took Hanford off the list of possible
sites for the nation's first nuclear-waste
dump.
What's different this year is that environmental
riders have become a major sticking point between
Clinton and Congress.
While the administration opposes the Walla
Walla rider, environmentalists worry the president
still could approve it if it's part of the right
package.
The Walla Walla project lacks the high national
profile of riders to change federal mining law or
open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil
drilling. While the Clinton administration opposes
the Walla Walla rider, environmentalists worry the
president still could approve it if it's part of
the right package.
When Clinton announced the outline of his
"Option 9" plan for west-side forests in 1993, he
rejected environmentalists' entreaties to include
forests in Eastern Washington and Eastern
Oregon.
Instead, he announced that a parallel planning
effort would be undertaken there. Officially it's
known as the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Management Project.
A scientific team, based in Walla Walla, is
slated to complete an assessment of federal lands
between the Cascades and Rockies early next
year.
Other teams are piecing together management
plans based on that assessment. Drafts are expected
in February. One team, also in Walla Walla, is
focusing on Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon.
The other, in Boise, is preparing a plan for Idaho
and parts of Montana, Wyoming, Nevada and Utah.
The issues are different east of the Cascades.
Fires are more frequent, for instance; scientists
say they do more damage today because past logging
and fire suppression have altered the
landscape.
Debate rages over logging's role in restoring
"forest health."
The east side also is home to the only Northwest
salmon already protected by the Endangered Species
Act. On federal lands, logging has been restricted
along Snake River tributaries where the fish
spawn.
Environmentalists have used lawsuits and the
threat of lawsuits to block timber sales. In the
1980s the national forests of Eastern Washington
and Eastern Oregon produced an average of 1 billion
board feet of timber annually.
Last year, timber sales there totaled just 380
million board feet.
The Walla Walla project aims to provide land
managers with a road map through all these
disputes. But timber interests fear it could
produce another Option 9.
That plan reduced logging in federal forests in
Western Washington, Western Oregon and northwestern
California to about one-fifth the level of the
1980s.
The Walla Walla project also is opposed by such
groups as the Washington State Farm Bureau and
Washington Cattlemen's Association, but for another
reason: fear that it could affect private
property.
Language inserted in the Interior appropriations
bill by Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Spokane; Sen.
Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and others would:
·Limit the scientific team's report to
"forest health" issues, excising information on the
condition of fish and wildlife.
·Bar the administration from adopting a
regionwide management plan, as it did in Option 9.
Instead, each national-forest supervisor would
decide what management changes are needed.
·Exempt timber sales from the Endangered
Species Act.
· Eliminate after December 1996 interim
policies that prohibit logging in relatively wide
streamside buffers.
The idea, says Nethercutt, is to get away from
"one
size-fits-all" regulation. "I think there's great
benefit to decentralizing these decisions," he
says.
Jim Geisinger, president of the Portland-based
Northwest Forestry Association, agrees. "We aren't
opposed to using new science and new concepts," he
says. "There may be places where 300-foot (stream)
buffers make sense. We just think there are other
places where they don't."
But Mike Anderson, a senior policy analyst with
the Wilderness Society, says the rider subverts
science and muzzles scientists.
"It's not wise policy to have everyone making up
their own mind in the Columbia Basin," he says,
"because you have salmon and other species that are
very wide-ranging."
Vice President Al Gore has labeled the Walla
Walla rider "a shortsighted action (that) would ...
guarantee more court battles and legal
gridlock."
But Anderson and Geisinger agree its fate in the
budget war probably hinges less on its merits than
other features of whatever legislation it's
ultimately packaged with.
"I don't think it's a make-or-break item, to be
honest with you," says Geisinger.
Seattle Times November 23, 1995
Nethercutt confuses
aquifer, ecosystem studies during WW
visit
 Summary:
U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt criticized a federal
ecosystem study during a visit to Walla Walla last
week. However, some of his comments actually
referred to a different federal study.
By Becky
Kramer 0f the
Union-Bulletin
U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt confused two federal
studies during a visit Friday to Walla Walla.
Washington's GOP congressional delegation has
been critical of a federal proposal to designate a
large area of the Palouse region as a "sole-source
aquifer"creating new regulations for groundwater
withdrawal.
Republican representatives sent a letter to
President Clinton questioning the sole-source
aquifer designation.
The letter did not address a study of Eastside
forests and rangeland, as Nethercutt had indicated
Friday.
Furthermore, a report sent to Nethercutt by the
state Department of Ecology also addressed the
sole-source aquifer designation. Contrary to
Nethercutt's remarks, the Department of Ecology has
not taken a stance on a study of Eastside forest
and rangeland ecosystems.
Department officials are still reviewing the
study, which is called the Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project, said ecology
spokeswoman Mary Getchell.
Nethercutt criticized the ecosystem management
project during several appearances Friday in Walla
Walla. He characterized it as a "huge grab for
federal control" that would lead to increased
regulation on private lands. He also referred to
the letter sent to Clinton and to the Department of
Ecology report, indicating that they addressed the
ecosystem management project.
George Nethercutt
"I don't know how the confusion occurred," said
Nethercutt spokesman Ken Lisaius. Nethercutt was
not available for comment Tuesday or this
morning.
Project leaders have been working with
Nethercutt's office to set a briefing with him on
ecosystem management.
"Our goal is to help folks understand what's
going on and set up good relations," said Patty
Burel, spokeswoman for the Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project.
The projecta joint Forest Service/Bureau of Land
Management effortis assessing the condition of
range and forest lands in Eastern Oregon, Eastern
Washington, Idaho and Western Montana. Project
leaders say they need to know the overall condition
of lands in that area to help them better manage
federal lands.
However, new management strategies developed in
the process will not extend onto private lands,
Burel said.
Walla Walla Union Bulletin February 22,
1995
House approves plan
that slashes funds for ecosystem
study
 Summary:
A spending plan that cuts funding for completing a
study of forest health issues east of the Cascade
Mountains is headed for the U.S. Senate. The House
of Representatives approved it Tuesday.
By Union-Bulletin and
AP
WASHINGTON The U.S. House of Representatives
Tuesday approved a plan that guts funding for the
Walla Walla-based Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Study.
Spending for the so-called "Eastside study"
would be slashed to $600,000 in the 1996 fiscal
year, about a 90 percent cut from the $6.7 million
that had been requested.
The cuts were part of the overall Interior
Appropriations Act, which was approved on a largely
party-line vote of 244-181. One of the 14
Republicans who voted against the measure was
Oregon's 2nd District Rep. Wes Cooley, who
represents Umatilla County.
The cutback was proposed by Washington's 5th
District Rep. George Nethercutt. The reduced
funding, Nethercutt says, will allow project
officials to publish results of their 18-month
study and go home. The proposal does add $3 million
for watershed analysis.
Shutting down the process would affect two
environmental impact statementsintended to amend
dozens of federal forest plans and Bureau of Land
Management planning documents in the interior
Columbia Basin. The statements address issues that
range beyond individual forest boundaries such as
salmon, forest health and rangeland conditions.
Nethercutt says he's concerned about the cost of
the project and its magnitude.
The measure also directs the Forest Service to
remove existing guidelines for managing endan
gered salmon and trout stocks. Those strategies,
known as PACFISH and INFISH, had established
no-logging buffer zonessome as wide as a football
fieldaround key rivers and streams.
Environmentalists said today that the cuts to
the Interior Department and Forest Service would
harm public forests and fisheries across the
West.
"If the provisions of this bill are enacted, it
will be written across the Western landscape in
clear cuts, dead fish and red ink," said Jay Lee of
the Western Ancient Forest Campaign.
Nethercutt brushes aside the criticism: "I'm
sure that those supporting full funding are trying
to identify consequences," he said. "I tried to be
fair."
The bill also would impose 40 percent cuts in
the National Endowment for the Arts and the
National Endowment for the Humanities, a signal of
conservatives' strength. It also would force
reductions in the National Park Service, the Fish
and Wildlife Service, and the government's effort
to track endangered species.
But in a reversal, the House voted 271-153 to
continue the moratorium on low-priced government
sales of mining claims to federal land.
On a separate measure, the House Appropriations
Committee approved a $79 billion measure for
veterans, housing and other programs. However,
President Clinton said he would kill it unless it
is changed before it reaches his desk. The bill
would curtail efforts against air and water
pollution, halve aid for the homeless and dismantle
the president's national service program.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin July 19, 1995
Lobbyists try to curry
favor with freshmen
By Jim Drinkard
Associated Press
WASHINGTON George Nethercutt, the Republican who
knocked off House Speaker Tom Foley, mingled in the
hallway of a Washington lobbying firm with about 40
lobbyists for mining, transportation, energy,
agriculture and high-tech interests.
Over coffee, the lobbyists made introductions
and small talk. Then they retired to the conference
room at Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds,
where partner Pamela Garvie introduced the incoming
freshman lawmaker and he made brief remarks
including one vital disclosure: his assignment to
the House Appropriations Committee.
Wednesday's reception at offices a block from
the White House was an example of how across the
city, lobbyists are reaching out to get acquainted
with new lawmakers, many of whom railed in their
campaigns against the stranglehold of special
interests.
Law firm partner Emanuel Rouvelas acknowledged
that lobbyists rank low in the public eye these
days. But the newcomers "tend to understand we are
not corrupt black-bag folks, not back slappers or
door openers. In effect, our job is to frame the
issues and advocate the issues in the best way we
can," he said.
A fairly common way to meet new lawmakers is
over drinks and hors d'oeuvres at a reception to
retire campaign debts. "There are fund-raising,
debt-retirement opportunities galore," said one
lobbyist who asked not to be quoted by name. "All
of them come in with debts," and remember those who
help them, he said.
"He is a very impressive guy," lobbyist Tim
Peckinpaugh said of Nethercutt. "He is the kind of
guy who is going to do well in this town."
Peckinpaugh, who arranged the sessiona
get-acquainted meeting, no fund raising involved is
one of several lobbyists at the firm with GOP
credentials. He emphasized that most of the
interests represented at the session are natural
constituents of Nethercutt, with important
operations in his district or in the Northwest.
Among them, for example, was Carl Schwensen, chief
lobbyist for the National Association of Wheat
Growers, a major commodity in Nethercutt's eastern
Washington district.
Preston Gates has planned nine such
get-togethers - mostly for new lawmakers from
Washington and Oregon, where its client base is
concentrated. The list includes
Microsoft and a host of maritime, timber, mining
and transportation interests.
"We are involved in a fairly substantial effort
to get to know and work with the incoming
members-elect," Peckinpaugh said. "This gives the
new members an immediate sense of who they will be
dealing with here in town, in terms of the key
interest groups."
In addition to hearing the new lawmakers' views
and priorities, it gives lobbyistsmost of whom have
worked on Capitol Hilla chance to offer practical
advice to the newcomers, he said.
"We think since we've been around a while and
have seen it from the inside, we can offer some
special insider tidbits on how you organize the
office to fit your particular district, where to
put district offices back home, that kind of
thing,'' Peckinpaugh said.
"The best way lobbyist types get to know new
members is through old members," said John
Rafaelli, a partner in a major law and lobbying
firm. "They introduce them to you, and you get to
be buddies."
For corporate lobbyists such as Raymond Garcia,
who represents defense and aerospace giant Rockwell
International, the first step is to call on newly
elected lawmakers whose districts include a
Rockwell plant.
"Most companies are going to be planning these
contacts, to just make people in Congress aware of
their interests," Garcia said. "Most new members
will be very interested in knowing who are the
economic entities in their districts. They want to
know as much as they can."
And it's terribly important, he added, to get to
know those freshmen going on the committees that
have power over each lobbyists' industry.
Lobbyist John Gordley, who represents soybean,
sunflower and canola interests, is focused on next
year's rewrite of the farm bill. If a new member
from an agricultural state needs help getting on
the Agriculture Committee, Gordley is
well-positioned: He used to work for new Senate
Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, and is well
acquainted with incoming House Agriculture
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.
The new lawmakers "like to have people come and
meet them," said Gordley.
Missoulian December 9, 1994
Oregonian July 20, 1995
Nethercutt still in
debt from '94 campaign
By David Royse
Correspondent
WASHINGTON More than halfway through his first
year in Congress, Rep. George Nethercutt still is
raising money to retire debt racked up during his
campaign last year when he unseated House Speaker
Tom Foley.
Reports filed with the Federal Election
Commission show most of the Spokane Republican's
contributors were individuals, although the
American Medical Association's political action
committee led a modest list of corporate and trade
association donors.
Nethercutt raised more than $142,000 in the
first half of this year, his FEC reports show.
Almost 70 percent of it went to a committee
dedicated to retiring the campaign debt, leaving
Nethercutt only $43,000 to spend on getting
re-elected.
So far, no one has stepped forward to challenge
the freshman congressman next year.
Nethercutt's 1994 campaign committee still owes
$34,700, including $9,700 of a $27,000 loan
Nethercutt himself made to his campaign.
Campaign watchers say more candidates than usual
ran up debts during last year's election races.
According to the citizens interest group Common
Cause, freshman lawmakers of both parties have
repaid more than $1 million in personal loans to
their campaigns. The largest debt among House
newcomers belonged to Ohio Republican Frank
Cremeans, whose 1994 campaign has repaid $174,000
in personal loans.
Alex Benes, an official with another watchdog
group, the Center for Public Integrity, said he is
not surprised by Nethercutt's
debt except maybe that it is not larger.
"Given that he beat the speaker of the House,
(Nethercutt's is) not a huge debt," said Benes.
This year's House freshman class raised
$133,186, on average, in the first part of this
year, putting Nethercutt in the middle among his
first-term colleagues in fund raising, according to
Common Cause.
The top freshman fund-raiser collected more than
three times what Nethercutt reported. Rep. John
Ensign, a Nevada Republican who also is retiring a
large debt from his 1994 race, had raised almost
half a million dollars through June 30.
Most of Nethercutt's contributions this yearboth
for last year's and next year's raceshave come from
individuals in Washington state. Political action
committees have given $42,500 to the 1994 campaign,
just less than half the total given to help retire
the debt.
However, Nethercutt's committee for next year's
race has received a far greater portion of its
money from individuals. Less than a fifth of the
re-election money has come from PACs.
The donations have come about equally from
fund-raisers and through mailed solicitations, said
Spokane attorney Lynn Watts, who has helped
organize fund-raising events for Nethercutt and is
a contributor herself.
Individuals who have given to Nethercutt range
from small-time contributors, who say they just
like his politics, to corporate executives, some of
whom already have given the maximum $2,000 each to
the campaign.
Spokane retiree Lola Jacobs is one of the
smaller contributors. Her February contribution of
$25 brought to $230 the amount she has contributed
to Nethercutt's campaign.
"I think he's honest," Jacobs said of
Nethercutt. "I knew his parents and they are very
good people, and I really don't like Tom Foley at
all."
Nearly half of the contributions to Nethercutt's
two committees have come from donors giving less
than $200.
But Nethercutt is not without large donors. His
biggest PAC contributor so far this year is the
American Medical Association, which gave him $5,000
to help pay off the 1994 debt.
By law, PACs can give no more than $10,000 to
each candidate $5,000 for the primary election and
$5,000 for the general election.
Jim Stacy, an AMA spokesman in Washington, D.C.,
said the organization does not publicly discuss its
contributions.
Corporate donors also include those with
interests in legislation considered by
appropriations subcommittees Nethercutt sits on, as
well as companies with local ties, such as Boeing,
which gave $2,000 toward helping retire last year's
debt.
Most major Spokane industries appear on
Nethercutt's funding report. Reynolds Metals and
Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. each donated,
as did the Forest Industries PAC and Plum Creek
Management, a large timber concern.
International Paper PAC helped Nethercutt retire
his debt by $500, while Weyerhaeuser's PAC gave the
same amount toward the 1996 campaign.
Nethercutt's position on the appropriations
national security subcommittee may be what garnered
him contributions from some large defense
contractors. Naval shipbuilder Tennaco's PAC gave
him $1,000, while defense contractors Textron and
Allied Signal each weighed in with $500. General
Dynamics, another large defense company, gave
Nethercutt $500 toward next year's campaign.
Spokesman Review August 22, 1995
Copyright 1995, The Spokesman Review Used
with permission of The Spokesman Review
(4)
Columbia River ecosystem: What
future?
Committee sinks bid to
put watersheds, fish in ecosystem project
report
U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., made a
failed attempt Tuesday to include the study of fish
populations and watersheds in the Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project.
A House-Senate conference committee rejected the
amendment as the panel met for a second time to
make changes to the 1996 Interior Department
appropriations bill.
The committee made no changes to the project,
which examines new strategies for managing federal
lands east of the Cascade Mountains' crest. The
fiscal 1996 budget is estimated at $4 million, the
amount included in the appropriations bill, which
now is expected to go to the House and Senate later
in the week for final action.
President Clinton already has said he may veto
the Interior bill, listing omission of aquatics
issues from the Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management
Project as one of the problems.
Murray is frustrated that the committee didn't
want to consider it, Murray's press secretary, Rex
Carney, said today. U.S. Sen. Slade Gordon and Rep.
George Nethercutt, both R-Wash, were among the
conferees who voted against consideration of her
amendment, Carney said.
"It is incredibly shortsighted of these
members of Congress ... to ignore
science."
--Sen. Patty Murray D-Washington
"It is incredibly shortsighted of these members of
Congress to put their heads in the sand and ignore
science," Murray said in a press release. "My
amendment would have allowed the agencies to
approach their enormous task of resolving land
management conflicts in the Columbia Basin."
The bill contains language restricting the
project's scientific assessment to "landscape
dynamics and forest and rangeland health
conditions." Murray's amendment would have required
a "thorough analysis of aquatic ecosystems,
watersheds and fisheries populations."
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin November 1,
1995
Scientists balk at
restrictions on ecosystem data
SUMMARY: Scientists urge Clinton to veto
Interior Department spending bill if restrictions
on release of data in Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project aren't removed.
WASHINGTON (AP) Forty-five scientists accused
Congress today of trying to suppress research
warning of significant damage to fisheries, forests
and watersheds in the Columbia River basin.
The biologists, ecologists and other researchers
said a Republican-backed proposal in an Interior
Department spending bill would censor information
on the declining condition of the basin in Oregon,
Washington, Idaho and Montana.
President Clinton earlier promised to veto the
bill because of concerns about mining reforms. The
bill failed on the House floor last week and has
been returned to a House-Senate conference
committee.
The scientists, in a letter to Clinton organized
by the Pacific Rivers Council, said a section of
the bill would restrict data in an upcoming report
from the Scientific Integration Team as part of the
Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management
Project, located in Walla Walla. The team contains
scientists from the Forest Service, Fish and
Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management.
The section dictates that the report "shall not
contain any material other than" information on
forest and rangeland health.
Congress called for the project two years ago
and spent $15 million on the research to determine
the effects of logging, livestock grazing, water
diversions and other activities on dwindling fish
populations.
The scientists said the restricted report called
for in the spending bill would be "a
half-truth."
The bill "deliberately attempts to suppress
scientific information about public resources on
public lands important scientific information that
was generated at public expense," the scientists
wrote in urging Clinton to veto it.
The research includes updated conditions of
watersheds, trends of water resources and
population status of threatened, endangered and
sensitive species, including chinook salmon, bull
trout, westslope cutthroat trout, grizzly bears,
lynx and wolverines.
"The free flow of ideas and information is
critical if scientific knowledge obtained at
taxpayer expense is to contribute to sound decision
making," they said.
Walla Wall Union-Bulletin October 3,
1995
- President William Jefferson Clinton October
13, 1995
- The White House
- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
- Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Our organizations have joined together to urge
you collectively to take a firm stand in
negotiations with Congress on the FY 1996 Interior
Appropriations Bill. We commend you on the strong
stand you have taken by threatening to veto this
bill in its current form, and we encourage you to
stand firm on your position not to compromise the
protection of America's natural resources. More
broadly, we urge you to forestall the enactment of
all riders that roll back environmental protection.
We further urge you to make the removal of Section
314 of the Interior Appropriations Bill and removal
of the language detrimental to the Tongass National
Forest non-negotiable items in your discussions
with Congress.
We represent a substantial part of the
sportfishing industry and many of the more than 50
million Americans who fish. The sportfishing
industry manufactures everything from rods and
reels to boats and motors and in 1991 accounted for
over 900,000 jobs and the production of goods and
services for many of our nation's anglers. Those
anglers in turn spent over $24 billion for direct
goods and services in that year.
Congress is currently finishing work on an
Interior Appropriations bill that we believe will
adversely affect sectors of the sportfishing
industry. The bill is harmful to our public lands
and could put jobs in jeopardy that would result in
economic hardship to communities that rely on
healthy sportfisheries. By reducing and eliminating
federal protections of our nation's western and
Alaskan fisheries this bill threatens resources
that are the basis of sportfishing communities'
livelihoods and of our sportfishing industry.
The Columbia River Basin's watersheds and
fisheries in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon
are increasingly at risk as a result of relaxed
federal regulations and policies which should be in
place to protect them. Passage of this
appropriations bill, particularly Section 314,
coupled with the recent enactment of the rescission
bill imperils public lands fishing by making these
uses take a back seat to logging and grazing on
public land. In addition we think it shortsighted
to reject science-based ecosystem management and
limits to public participation as well as to
truncate long range planning as would occur under
Section 314.
In Alaska the bill would impose a four-year old,
discredited logging plan on the world class salmon
watersheds of the Tongass National Forest. It would
prevent citizen challenges of that logging, no
matter how harmful it proved to be to fish and
wildlife. By rejecting this provision you can avoid
making the same mistakes in the Tongass that have
been made in the Columbia River Basin. You can move
proactively to protect the Tongass and avoid losing
unique salmon stocks. The old logging plan mandated
by this legislation would put the Tongass on a
course parallel to that of the Columbia River Basin
a decade ago and set it at the same risk.
As negotiations with Congress continue we urge
you to insist that Section 314 is removed from the
bill as well as the directive to manage the Tongass
under the 1991 plan. Now is the time to stop
Congress from including authorizing language on
appropriations bills which repeals environmental
protections and is potentially harmful to the
industries, anglers and the communities that rely
on our nation's fisheries.
- Sincerely,
-
- Steven N. Moyer Paul Brouha
- Director of Governmental Affairs Executive
Director
- Trout Unlimited American Fisheries
Society
-
- Liz Hamilton Norville Prosser
- Executive Director Vice President
- Northwest Sportfishing Industry Institute
Association Sportfishing Association
-
- Paul W. Hansen Judy Guse-Noritake
- Executive Director National Policy
Director
- Izaak Walton League of America Pacific
Rivers Council
-
- Thomas J. Cassidy, Jr.
- General Counsel
- American Rivers
Flyfishing, St. Joe River in N. Idaho.
Don't kill lands
analysis, both sides say
Environmentalists,
timber officials tell Congress they need Columbia
Basin study
By Jonathan Brinckman The Idaho Statesman
Environmentalists and timber industry officials
have joined forces against a proposal to halt an
assessment of the health of forests and
rangelands.
The unusual agreement between two sides in the
heated war over Idaho's public lands stems from a
House Interior Committee vote last week.
The panel wants to virtually eliminate funding
for the final phase of the $31.6 million Interior
Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. The
measure is to be considered by the full House next
Tuesday.
The project, launched in 1994, was to be the
foundation for logging, grazing and other
management decisions on 75 million acres of U.S.
Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management
property in seven Northwest states. That federal
land, in the eastern part of an enormous basin that
drains into the Columbia River, includes 31.4
million acres in Idaho.
"They're taking the first effort to do
large-scale ecosystem management and flushing it
down the toilet," said Rick Johnson executive
director of the Idaho Conservation League. Johnson
said he believes science-based timber management
would result in fewer clear-cuts.
Boise Cascade Corp. officials say a big-picture
analysis of public lands would enable the Forest
Service to free up timber sales now locked up by a
hodgepodge of interim environmental rules.
"As Boise Cascade sees it, the interim plans
have been very draconian. They've virtually shut
down the forests," said Doug Bartels, a company
spokesman. "We felt this would be the opportunity
for scientists to put their heads together, look at
the data and say, 'There, this is the right way to
manage this land.'"
The proposal to end the project would cut 1996
funding from $6.67 million to $600,000. It was
spearheaded by U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt,
R-Wash., a member of the House Interior
Appropriations Subcommittee. The subcommittee
called the project "too large and too costly to
sustain in a time of fiscal constraints."
The committee recommendation was lauded by U.S.
Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho: "Eliminating this
project has been one of my top priorities since
coming to Congress. The federal government spent
millions of dollars and created no tangible product
and no jobs. All it attempted to create were more
regulations."
The House committee calls for all the data
collected during the past two years of study to be
assembled, peer-reviewed and made available to the
public.
A proposed last phase of the project, the
creation of an environmental impact statement that
would develop and assess alternatives for public
land management, would be scrapped.
The idea sounds fine to Brad Little, an Emmett
sheep rancher who chairs the public lands committee
of American Sheep Industry, a trade group. He
called the science valuable but disputed the need
for an environmental impact statement.
"The bottom line is, we don't need another
decisions document to complicate the life of guys
who are trying to administer the forestlands,"
Little said.
Mike Sullivan, a spokesman for Potlatch Corp.,
said that while he supports the study, he doesn't
worry that a final evaluation may not be done.
"We agree it makes sense to look at whole
landscapes when developing management plans," he
said. "That science will not be lost."
Steve Mealey, formerly supervisor of the Boise
National Forest and now manager of the eastern part
of the study, said ending the study - breaking
leases, transferring personnel, completing salary
obligations would consume virtually all of the
Forest Service's share of the proposed $600,000
allocation.
Little money would be left for publishing the
data, and project managers would be unable to make
management recommendations, he said.
"The science is documenting that we've got
seri
ous ecosystem problems, and the public is highly
divided about what to do about it," Mealey
said.
"The thing we could lose is the opportunity to
develop alternative ways to solve those
problems."
Idaho Statesman July 4, 1995
Editorial
Land study deserves
rescue
The U.S. House has foolishly proposed stopping a
study of forests and rangelands in the
Northwest.
Idaho's two senators need to team up with other
Northwest representatives to rescue this important
project from the slash pile.
The study will, for the first time, provide
agencies and the public a much-needed big-picture
look at how federal lands can best be managed. When
complete, the study will finally allow lands to be
managed as they shouldas complex ecosystems, not as
dozens of individual and unrelated parcels.
But, at the behest of Rep. George Nethercutt, a
freshman GOP congressman from Washington, the House
Interior Committee eliminated funding for the final
phase of the $31.6 million Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project. The House panel cut
1996 funding from $6.67 million to $600,000,
leaving enough to complete the scientific portion
of the study, but not the second half, the
environmental impact statement.
Killing the study now would be a mistake. The
scientific data needs to turned into usable,
on-the-ground policy.
The alternative is depressing and wasteful.
With
out new guiding principles, gridlock will continue
to reign as competing interest groups lock horns,
leaving the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management immobilized in the middle.
Gridlock serves no onenot the loggers and
ranchers who make a living off public lands nor the
campers and hunters who recreate there. Yet
gridlock is virtually guaranteed unless the
Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management
Project is allowed to find solutions that avert
lawsuits and endless squabbles.
The project is designed to stop environmental
train wrecks before they occur. With proper land
management, groups wielding the Endangered Species
Act, for example, can be disarmed.
The project also can provide people who depend
on federal land for their livelihoods the certainty
they crave. When complete, the study can be a
useful guide for determining how timber and grazing
land can best be managed to sustain small
resource-based communities.
The study is a needed exercise that can lead to
more efficient use of public lands. It deserves
Congress' support.
Idaho Statesman July 13, 1995
Editorial
Ecosystem vote is
shortsighted
It's not often that the timber industry and
environmentalists join forces to fight
legislation.
But both groups are opposed to a House Interior
Committee recommendation to eliminate funding for
the final phase of the Columbia Basin Ecosystem
Management Project.
The project, launched last year, was to be the
foundation for logging, grazing and other resource
decisions on 75 million acres of federal property
in the eastern part of the basin, which includes
all federal land in Idaho.
Taxpayers have already funded a major portion of
the study, but some House Republicans want to kill
it with barely enough money left to publish the
results and make final recommendations, according
to Steve Mealey, former supervisor of the Boise
National Forest and a manager for the study. That
doesn't sound like wise use of tax dollars to
us.
Timber industry officials in Idaho support the
study because its recommendations could allow the
Forest Service to proceed with timber sales now
delayed because of temporary environmental
regulations put in place until an overall
management plan is completed. That's what this
study was supposed to do: make recommendations for
comprehensive plans that address management on a
ecosystem basis, rather than state by state.
Forests, watersheds, and plant and animal species
don't recognize state boundaries and often
management plans for adjoining states conflict.
Ironically, the committee vote to kill the
program came at the same time a report prepared for
the
Department of Interior revealed the nation's
natural resources are disappearing. Consider these
numbers:
· Ninety percent of the nation's old-growth
forests are lost.
· Ninety-five to 98 percent of virgin
forests in the lower 48 states had been destroyed
by 1990 while 99 percent of virgin deciduous
forests have been cut.
· Eighty-one percent of the nation's fish
communities have been harmed by human actions while
98 percent of the streams in the lower 48 states
are degraded to the point they can't qualify as
scenic or wild rivers.
· In the West, 99 percent of California's
native grassland is gone as are up to 90 percent of
western Montana's old-growth forests and
low-elevation grassland and half of Colorado's
wetlands.
· Numbers from other regions are just as
discouraging. In the Northeast, for instance, 97
percent of Connecticut's coastline is developed and
95 percent of Maryland's natural barrier island
beaches are gone. Almost all of Ohio's bottomland
hardwood forests are gone.
While some may disagree with the severity of the
damage, there is little debate that, gradually, we
are destroying the health of the land.
The House committee's vote may save money in the
short run, but is costly to taxpayers and natural
resources in the long run. Hopefully, the Senate or
the administration will overrule the House
committee's shortsighted vote.
Gene Fadness
Post Register July 18, 1995
Editorial
Restrictions on
ecosystem project undermine study
The House-Senate compromise over future funding
of the Walla Walla-based ecosystem study is a clear
victory for Rep. George Nethercutt and,
unfortunately, appears to be a loss for
taxpayers.
Nethercutt, a vocal critic of the project, was
successful in putting restrictions on the project.
Research related to fish and aquatics will not be
included in assessments of forests and rangelands
in the Columbia Basin.
"The money is really the only thing we've given
into," Nethercutt said after the compromise was
crafted.
The end result is that even though the
compromise brokered by Nethercutt and Oregon Sen.
Mark Hatfield authorizes $4 million to finish the
project, the study will be incomplete and ripe for
legal challenges.
The public, it seems, won't be getting its $4
million worth. Nor will the public fully benefit
from the nearly $25 million spent over the past two
years on the ecosystem management study.
A complete study of the ecosystem can't be done
without including all components. Fish and aquatics
have an impact on forests and rangelands. Streams
and rivers flow through forests and rangelands.
The compromise prohibits project leaders from
choosing a preferred management alternative from
the suggested options. Nethercutt said that each
forest and Bureau of Land Management district
will
be able to adapt the information for its use.
Congress, however, will likely have more to say on
how the study is used.
That aspect isn't particularly surprising or
troubling. This is, after all, a political process,
and it would be naive to assume that Congress would
abdicate power in this matter.
The original goal of the study was not, as
Nethercutt has contended, a "huge grab for federal
control." The intent was to study the ecosystem in
portions of six states, including Washington and
Oregon.
Ultimately, the study was supposed to bring
predictability to managing federal lands by helping
select logging and grazing levels that are
compatible to fish and wildlife and that can be
sustained. One goal of the study was to diminish
the number of species listed as endangered in the
future.
These goals were sound. The current practice of
making ecosystem management decisions on a
piecemeal basis is ridiculous. It invites court
challenges.
The best way to manage the forests, the
rangelands and all natural resources is by having
accurate scientific data on which to base
decisions.
Nethercutt's unfounded fears about the nefarious
goals of the ecosystem project have resulted in a
congressional compromise that threatens to
undermine the work that has been completed to this
point. The public has paid the bill but won't get
the product that was ordered.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin October 1,
1995
Spokesman Review December 5, 1993
Copyright 1993, The Spokesman Review Used
with permission of The Spokesman Review
Letter
Lands going to pay
political debts
Americans should wake up to the fact that the
Republican congressional delegation is stealing
local people's power to control the management of
public lands.
The politicians are using rider amendments on
appropriation bills to circumvent the democratic
process. Politicians are going to control public
lands from Washington, D.C., and allow the lands to
be exploited by the special interest groups that
contributed to their election campaigns.
The Republican politicians are against
scientific and ecosystem management. Some
Republicans have advocated a resumption of
clearcutting.
To achieve these ends the politicians
shamelessly manipulated the public with the "war on
the West" theme and "get government off the
people's back."
U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth has talked of
waging
spiritual war against environmentalists, even
though polls show 70 percent of the people favor
environmental laws. Republican politicians have not
passed any constructive environmental reform
legislation despite having control of both houses
of Congress. Public lands belong to the people, and
the people need to stand up for their property
rights against the Republican politicians.
The people should demand professional,
science-based ecosystem management of the public
lands with timber production a secondary
priority.
John Muir Sagle, Idaho
Spokesman Review October 8, 1995
Copyright 1995, The Spokesman Review Used
with permission of The Spokesman Review
Editorial
Inland forests demand
a different approach
While the fight for the West Coast's spotted
owls and ancient forests captured the nation's
attention, on the other side of the Cascade
Mountains the chain saw reigned.
A special section in this mornings
Spokesman-Review describes the results.
Some of us, here in the Inland Northwest, did
not fully grasp the significance of a central
point: East of the Cascades forests are slower
growing, their ecosystems more fragile. Yet
clearcuts here were carried out much as they were
in the more resilient coastal timberlands.
Annual rainfall here is less than a third of the
deluge which makes western forests so lush. When
loggers shave a watershed here the thinner soil
quickly erodes in spring's runoff. Replanted trees
here can take twice as long, even four times as
long, to grow back. If they grow back at all. With
less protective vegetation on the hillsides,
streamsa barometer for ecosystem healthfill with
silt and fish runs die.
That's what happened here for decades, and it
accelerated in the 1980s as the Reagan
administration's stewards tilted national forest
management way too far toward logging.
Multiple-use management, in theory the taproot
of U.S. Forest Service policy, is supposed to
embrace more than logging. Hiking, hunting,
fishing, camping, wildlife protection, berry
picking, grazing and longterm survival of the
ecosystem all are supposed to be well served by
Forest Service policies.
Gifford Pinchot, patron saint of the Forest
Service and its first chief, argued the cause of
conservation. Forests, he believed, were a trust to
be passed from one generation to another in
perpetuity. Not unchanged or untapped, for nature
changes and in good hands renews itself. But not
abused, either.
Some of the Inland Northwest's forests have been
abused.
Within the Forest Service, scientists
responsible for ecological protection sounded
alarms as logging trampled streams and scalped
steep slopes which should have been left alone. The
scientists were too few in number, and they were
overruled by the agency's emphasis on logging.
Meanwhile, public attention focused on the West
Coast forest controversy, where polarization
inhibited understanding. On one side was the
logging industry. On the other side was the
environmental movement, which in fact is diverse
but in political effect was engaged in a crusade to
stop logging in its tracks.
Neither extreme serves the interests of society,
which does need a steady supply of forest products
but also wants its forests managed for the long
haul.
The fate of coastal forests remains lost in fog
and political paralysis.
Let us hope fate, politics and the Forest
Service will treat inland forests more kindly.
A cessation of logging would go too far.
National forests should not be museums; for that
role, we have National Parks and wilderness areas.
But national forests ought to be managed
differently in the future than they have been
managed in the past.
Logging ought to continue. It will have to
continue at a slower pace. The scientists who
understand how to protect fisheries, for example,
ought to become more numerous and their advice
ought to carry weight in the planning of timber
sales.
In the dry inland forests, old-style clearcuts
ought to become a thing of the past. So should
logging near stream sides. Restoration of old scars
ought to become a priority.
If the environment begins to receive the respect
it deserves, litigation challenging timber sales
ought to subsideor at least, should enjoy a lower
rate of success.
Logging doesn't have to leave ruin in its wake.
With better forest management policies, it
won't.
Spokesman Review November 2, 1993
Copyright 1993, The Spokesman Review Used
with permission of The Spokesman Review
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