By Jonathan Brinckman of The Oregonian staff
In the first likely change to state timber cutting rules brought by new Endangered Species Act list ings of salmon and steelhead trout, the Washington Forest Practices Board is expected Wednesday to adopt restrictive logging measures.
The action will be watched closely because it would be the first in an anticipated wave of logging rules changing timber practices along the entire Northwest coast, from Puget Sound to Northern California, for the benefit of fish.
Washington state's new rules, proposed by the Washington Department of Natural Resources, would reduce the amount of wood that can be cut in three areas in which steelhead have been assigned federal protection: the lower Columbia River at Portland, the upper Columbia in central Washington and the Snake River in Eastern Washington.
The rule would require that timber companies seeking to cut trees within 100 feet of streams perform an analysis showing that logging, the use of pesticides and the construction of roads would not hurt the streams. Washington logging companies now are exempt from such requirements.
"This is the first tangible effort that shows we are going to have to change the way we do business if we are going to save salmon," said Kaleen Cottingham, deputy commissioner of Washington's Department of Natural Resources.
"It's like round one, and you've just been hit on the chin fairly hard," said Paul Barnum, a spokesman for Weyerhaeuser Co. "You wonder if you're going to be able to last for the full 10 rounds."
The areas affected include Weyerhaeuser's 430,000-acre Mount St. Helens Tree Farm east of Longview. Company officials say that while they have not yet analyzed the impact on their operation, they expect it to be grim.
Pete Heide, director of forest management for the Washington Forest Protection Association, an Olympia-based timber trade group, calls Washington's proposed measures onerous and unnecessary. "It may turn us from cooperating to battling the regulatory process," he said.
Environmentalists laud the proposed change and, in some cases, call it insufficient.
"Washington is taking the lead," said Paul Ketchum of the Audubon Society of Portland. "This is a significant step."
Environmentalists and timber industry officials have been circling for months, positioning themselves for battle on anticipated changes such as this. The early 1990s brought 90 percent cutbacks in logging levels from federal land along the coast. Now the fight centers on state and private lands, the core of the Northwest timber industry.
Environmentalists say that significant changes are needed if salmon and steelhead are to be saved from extinction.
The three areas covered by the proposed rule, however, represent just a fraction of the swath of land in which the National Marine Fisheries Service has added or proposed protective listings of salmon or steelhead. Ten runs of salmon and sea-going steelhead trout have been listed since 1996, with 13 more listings proposed.
The exception is the coast of Oregon, where the fisheries service decided not to list coastal coho salmon or steelhead, putting its faith instead in a salmon-recovery plan developed by Gov. John Kitzhaber. In exchange for not listing the fish, though, the fisheries service required that Oregon consider changes to its state logging rules to provide more protection to streams and rivers used by salmon and steelhead. Those proposals are fiercely opposed by Oregon timber officials, who say more harm is being done to the fish by farms and cities that damage streams than logging operations.
Timber industry officials concede that some changes to state logging rules across the three states are inevitable. But they promise a battle over how much harvest levels are tightened.
"It will be a big fight," said Jim James of Willamette Industries, Oregon's biggest timberland owner. "We have a lot at stake."
The continued decline of salmon and steelhead, they say, shows that the sharp reductions in federal forests logging levels enacted in the early 1990s was not enough for fish.
"It's turning out that it's not possible to save salmon just by protecting federal land," said Chris Frissell, an associate professor of biology at the University of Montana.
Logging is being restricted in different ways in each of the states. In Oregon, industry and conservation groups are battling over how much of the fisheries service proposal will be adopted by the state.
In Washington, industry groups, conservationists, tribes and federal agencies have been involved in a process called Timber, Fish and Wildlife -- a consensus-building discussion to improve logging practices. But the pace of those discussions has been slow.
Wednesday's proposed rule change is being put forward, state officials say, because Timber, Fish and Wildlife is not moving quickly enough. Still, that process is expected to bring widespread changes to Washington logging rules.
In California, the federal government is working to reach separate agreements with individual timberland owners over how their forests will be protected.
"Changes are coming," said Frissell. "We're on the verge of a giant leap forward, where in the past we have taken a series of reluctant baby steps."
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