Forest Summit

THE EVENT: Meeting of government officials, representatives of the timber industry, and environmental groups to resolve issues related to the management of federally owned forests in the Pacific Northwest

DATE: April 3, 1993

The plan of forest management that was adopted as an outcome of the Forest Summit failed to please either environmentalists or loggers.

In June, 1990, the northern spotted owl was declared an endangered species. In May, 1991, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer ruled that the presidential administration of George H. W. Bush was deliberately violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to develop a plan that would adequately protect the owl from extinction. The judge placed an injunction against logging on approximately 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of federally owned old-growth forestland in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington until an acceptable plan could be developed. The Forest Summit, held in Portland, Oregon, and officially known as the Portland Timber Summit, brought together disputing parties in the conflict between loggers and supporters of protection of the of the northern spotted owl. The aim was to allow participants to present their perspectives and to encourage them to identify mutually acceptable new directions in forest management.

President Bill Clinton held the daylong summit with Vice President Al Gore, cabinet members, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrators, and other federal officials. Prior to the summit, environmental activists and representatives of the timber industry and logger groups made a number of efforts to “sell” their perspectives on the logging situation to administration officials. On the day before the conference, government officials received helicopter, airplane, and four-wheel-drive vehicle tours of the forests. Employees of timber mills were given the day of the summit off, and many were bused to Portland to picket the conference hall with signs proclaiming the need to save jobs and protect families.

Views Presented

The conference was expressly designed as a forum for participants to present their perspectives on the conflict. Loggers tended to focus on the negative effects of the logging ban on logging communities. In these presentations, loggers were often depicted as environmentalists with a vested interest in a healthy forest and as modern-day Paul Bunyans unable to pass their culture on to the next generation. Logging company officials often focused on the economic difficulties they faced and on the country’s need for housing lumber and other wood products. Representatives of small logging companies described how they had successfully adapted to changes in timber supplies and markets. Native Americans described the traditional and continuing significance of the forest in their lives.

Environmentalists suggested that the economic problems of logging communities were not caused by the restriction of cutting on federal land but rather were a consequence of general economic conditions, such as the low number of housing starts and a general decline in the logging industry. Environmentalists claimed that the loggers’ desire for federal old-growth timber was a result of mismanagement of private lands. They also asserted that logging-related jobs in the United States could be saved if log exports to foreign countries were reduced.

Option 9

Following the summit, the task of developing a management plan was turned over to thirty-seven physical scientists and economists. The teams developed ten options, ranging from option 1, the “save it all” option, which would allow 190 million board feet of lumber to be cut and would save all the federally owned old-growth forests, to option 10, which would permit the cutting of 1.84 billion board feet. In June 1994, a committee of senior federal officials began considering the options and prepared decision memoranda for the president. Clinton selected option 9, which set annual harvests at 1.2 billion board feet, a level about one-fourth of 1980’s harvests but more than twice the level permitted since the northern spotted owl had been declared an endangered species. This option was known as the “efficiency option” because it focused on watersheds as the basic building blocks of the and included measures designed to protect dwindling salmon stocks. From 2010 into the 2020s, the annual lumber harvests remained steady between 2 and 3 billion board feet.

The management plan also called for the provision of $1.2 billion over five years to offset economic losses from logging. The plan eliminated 6,000 jobs in 1994, but created more than 8,000, retaining an additional 5,400 jobs. The option also established ten adaptive management areas in which local and government groups would work together to allow logging and protect wildlife. Salvage logging, the cutting of fire- and insect-damaged trees, and thinning would be permitted in some sections of old-growth forest if an interagency team determined that these practices would not be detrimental to the northern spotted owl’s habitat.

Reactions to Option 9

Clinton introduced his timber management plan with the prophetic words, “Not everyone is going to like this plan. . . . Maybe no one will.” Although many observers judged the plan to be a fair solution, none of the parties directly involved publicly expressed satisfaction with it. Loggers did not believe the promise of economic aid, especially at a time when the federal government was attempting to balance the budget through spending cuts. Loggers further concluded that the plan was unfair because it contained few provisions for meeting their main concern of preserving logging jobs and the logging-based economies of their small towns. Retraining funds were offered for the purpose of equipping loggers with the skills to be employed in other jobs. Timber industry leaders believed that the plan was based on faulty assumptions about forest productivity and that it placed undue restrictions on logging.

Environmentalists believed that the plan was unfair because it provided for more cutting than had been permitted under the court injunction and it had loopholes that would be used to permit even more logging. They believed that timber companies would use the provision to allow logging to cut green trees, as definitions of salvage logging had been stretched in the past. Whistle-blowers within the U.S. Forest Service had leaked a memorandum that explicitly directed employees to allow green cutting to happen. Workers in the Agriculture Department Inspector General’s Office had also found documents indicating that Forest Service officials may have in the past made questionable agreements with logging company officials prior to timber sales. Environmentalists further believed that expected cuts in the number of Forest Service staff would make policing of the plan more difficult.

Representatives of all sides in the dispute stated that they were considering bringing lawsuits against the plan. One basis for a lawsuit was the lack of public participation in and review of the plan’s development. Although the Portland Timber Summit was a putative effort to bring the sides together to discover mutually agreeable solutions, once the summit had concluded, the alternative management options were developed by experts working in seclusion. The summit gave participants voice by allowing them to articulate their ideas, but the participants did not have the power to determine the specifics of the selected management plan.

On June 6, 1994, Judge Dwyer ruled that the option 9 management plan satisfactorily addressed concerns about protection of the northern spotted owl that had prompted the original injunction. Despite the continued threat of lawsuits, U.S. Forest Service officials proceeded with plans to sell timber in the disputed areas.

Bibliography

Dietrich, William. The Final Forest: The Battle for the Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Ervin, Keith. Fragile Majesty: The Battle for North America’s Last Great Forest. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1989.

Riddle, Anne A. "Timber Harvesting on Federal Lands." Congressional Research Service, 25 Oct. 2022, sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R45688.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2024.

Spies, Thomas A., and Sally L. Duncan, eds. Old Growth in a New World: A Pacific Northwest Icon Reexamined. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009.

Stout, Benjamin B. The Northern Spotted Owl: An Oregon View, 1975-2002. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2006.

U.S. Forest Service. Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team. Forest Ecosystem Management: An Ecological, Economic, and Social Assessment. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1993.