A Jefferson Public Radio article. Text and audio.
The Northwest Forest Plan lays out how to manage millions of acres across Washington, Oregon and Northern California. But the scientists behind the plan say it hasn’t been very successful. It cost thousands of timber industry jobs and failed to protect vulnerable species. Now that the government is reconsidering it, the scientists reflect on what was considered the best option 31 years ago.
“One major regret Jerry Franklin had was about the so-called “adaptive management areas.” These were special areas of forests across the region designated for research.
“The whole idea there was that there’d be a lot of freedom to explore different approaches to management of the forest in the AMAs, the adaptive management areas,” Franklin said. “And we proposed additional funding for them so that they could go immediately to work.”
But, Franklin said in the final version of the plan, these areas ended up with more restrictions on them, making them inaccessible for experimentation. He said the wildlife advocates were worried these areas would be used to find ways to harvest more timber.
“The majority of them, nothing significant got done because it was so difficult, and there was no extra funding available or anything for it,” Franklin said. “And so they, for the most part, just sat there.”
He said despite the outcome, it was the best they had. At the very least, it ended the court injunction on logging in the Pacific Northwest and put the emphasis on the ecosystem rather than the commercial value of the timber.
“Even though almost nobody agreed with it, it’s still here,” said Johnson.”
Looking back, I think a review every 5 years as to how the goals were being achieved or not could have led to changes and dare I say adaptive management of the plan itself. Kind of like large-scale forest plan monitoring. So I think we could do better than “it didn’t work but it’s still here.” For example some of the work the FACA committee did recognizing dry site differences. Of course, we knew about that at the time, but some scientists’ views counted more than others.
Put me in charge, and get results. If it werent for peoples egos getting in front of the plans with pure obstacles.. A man plants trees, thins forests, leaves seed trees, takes notice of the wildlife involved and knocks off the bull…s..it that is those who prefer to sit and propose theory.. all these layoffs of manpower, the forest is still growing isn’t it? Does it take a scientist to produce lumber, recreation and reproduction of forest, or just a shovel, a chainsaw, machinery and hard working laborious men and women?
No surprise….
“Northwest Forest Plan advisers told their committee will be disbanded”
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/03/07/northwest-forest-plan-advisors-told-their-committee-will-be-disbanded/
“On Thursday, officials with the U.S. Forest Service told committee members the agency was likely to dissolve the group in the coming weeks. Some members said they had been expecting this news, given President Donald Trump’s goal of eradicating most of the Biden administration’s efforts.”
I guess anyone could have expected them to be disbanded for different reasons.. like.. .. “they worked really hard and made their recommendations and finalized the report.”
Maybe the Trump Admin wants to do a revision instead, which is what I think the committee originally wanted?
Or they’re sticking a fork in the whole amendment biz?
With all due respect to “some members of the FACE committee” my view of the Trump Admin is that a) different entities want different things within the Admin (you can pick any topic and see disagreements), and I don’t think Trump specifically said he had a goal of “eradicating most of the Biden administration efforts.” I think he campaigned on Biden Admin efforts he really didn’t like, so we don’t have to wonder.
Well, bravo this: I heartily second each recommendation. I left my Timber Staff job in the mid-90s for a number of reasons, with one being a wee bit humorous. Our computer system was the late unlamented Data General network, and when an early iteration of the online job bank came up, I inadvertently discovered that a downloaded announcement could be edited and uploaded (ahem). In a too-slow day in the back office of a dusty ranger station, a buddy and I quickly crafted an announcement for an SO based GS-11 No Action Officer, who would be responsible for ensuring nothing was done when the NEPA No Action alternative was chosen. We listed the essential KSAs for someone to do nothing, then uploaded it and forgot about it…until a mushroom cloud erupted from the SO after someone called the listed supervisor to ask about the job. That’s when I realized just how paralyzed our ability to manage had become, thanks to the legal situation ably described above.
I’d add a couple more to this lovely list. One is very simple: restore the online USFS employee directory and dump the national “contact us” page, https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/contact-us. The directory was exceptionally handy, not just for someone to talk to the person who actually might care about a downed allotment fence, windthrown trees blocking a trail, or problems with a special use permit. More importantly, it put a local human face on an agency which is often the dominant government entity in a small community, and that made for better relationships. Yes, you can call the front desk, but too often that’s a crapshoot–you get a summer seasonal, and off on a goose (or owl) chase you go.
Second, seriously answer the question: Why do you need three management layers above the District Ranger? Part of the answer is CYA politics: when my local district was pounded by two urban interface fires with dozens of homes lost, locals vocally demanded that the district be closed to the public until the fire danger moderated. The District Ranger agreed–but he also bumped that hot potato (in a hot summer, in a district that is a favorite landing spot for a nearby metropolis of forest visitors) to the Supervisor, who promptly went to the Regional Office to get an OK. Where’s Ranger Pulaski when you need him? (answer: terminated for toxic masculinity and carrying a firearm while not Level 4 LEO certified). Yes, there are wide-area specialties and resources that belong above the district, but we don’t need a management architecture defined by the limits of telegraphs and steam locomotives. Regional and Supervisors’ offices should be melded into a sensible mid-level, geographically defined management level (I’d guess six to eight would do it) and the D.C. office should be seriously winnowed to the senior management team only. Along with this, as implied above, the agency culture must be reformed so that the plum job is boots-on-the-ground on a District, and not some management slot five hundred miles away.
Lastly, I hope someone gently disabuses the new Chief that the FS is decentralized. That is true only in a geographic sense: the FS remains a painfully top-down, centralized management agency, and the Districts have long suffered from the trickle-down budgeting process reflecting that reality.
Tally ho–and I pray this outsider is given the room and grace to do all he can do to improve things!
“Regional and Supervisors’ offices should be melded into a sensible mid-level, geographically defined management level (I’d guess six to eight would do it).” So why not?
Letter in today’s The Oergonian:
Northwest Forest Plan revision should fix 2 errors
The U.S. Forest Service is currently amending the Northwest Forest Plan, the regional ecosystem management plan for 24 million acres across the Pacific Northwest. While the plan has been effective in conserving old-growth forests, it is also showing its age.
In amendments, we have an opportunity to fix two errors: the exclusion of Indigenous knowledge, and the exclusion of wildland fire.
For millennia, Indigenous peoples nurtured the land with stewardship practices that sustained their communities and promoted resilient ecosystems based on a rich diversity of habitats and species. The forced removal of Indigenous peoples and the criminalization of their fire stewardship practices — replaced by industrial forestry practices that centered on commodity timber extraction and aggressive fire suppression — has caused a decline in landscape and biological diversity along with a loss of resilience to wildfires and climate change. Proposed amendments to the plan would work to better incorporate tribal co-stewardship and facilitate a more beneficial role for fire.
The inclusion of tribal co-stewardship and Indigenous knowledge represents a profound change that goes beyond undoing past wrongs to Indigenous peoples — it will help restore species, habitats and landscape diversity. But these benefits are under threat. The Trump administration now threatens to subvert the progressive prospects of the Northwest Forest amendment by its effort to banish the words “diversity” and “inclusion.” That is why it is essential that forest conservationists and social justice advocates speak up in favor of tribal co-stewardship. This once-in-a-generation opportunity should not be squandered.
Timothy Ingalsbee and Tom Wheeler Ingalsbee is executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, based in Eugene.
Wheeler is executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, based in Humboldt County, California.
Hi Steve: Ingalsbee’s ridiculous claim that “the plan has been effective in conserving old-growth forests” is pure chutzpa. His coauthor’s location in northern California is the same. Maybe they haven’t noticed the mass mortality to old-growth trees resulting from the catastrophic wildfires created by the NWFP — as clearly predicted 30 years ago at its adoption — but everybody else has. Millions of acres of dead trees directly resulting from creation of roadless areas, streamside buffers, Wilderness designations, and taxpayer-funded litigation. As accurately predicted and thoroughly documented. Or maybe that was “Global Warming?”
Bob, you’re right about wildfire’s impact of old-growth/LSRs, but the NW Forest Plan did curtail cutting old-growth.
Hi Steve: Added problems when old-growth dies in a fire instead of being cut is the loss of income (“jobs”) from harvest and manufacturing; the cost of dealing with the wildfire (“taxes”); and the fact that had once been a large green tree filled with water has been instantly transformed into a massive tube of firewood filled with pitch — and certain to burn again, and even hotter and more completely. Then there’s CO2 for the folks concerned about that. Mostly, I think old-growth should be preserved and maintained wherever possible on public lands by keeping roads open and harvesting ladder fuels and competitive second-growth to better protect them and to pay for their upkeep.
For me, I don’t understand why folks don’t just want to give the land back, if Indigenous ideas ” will help restore species, habitats and landscape diversity. ” Then the rest of us could save money developing plans and litigating about it.
Co-stewardship to me, just means “Tribes share their druthers but we can always overrule them when we disagree.”
Well, by all means; convert public lands to sovereign tribal reservations, and prepare to be excluded from those sovereign lands. Happy recreating in your back yard or local park.
I think the Tribes should be given full (“sovereign”) control of current reservation lands and that all public forests be managed directly by the counties in which they are contained. More jobs, fewer major fires, and greater public access.
Once more we see advocates highlighting the need to incorporate indigenous fire management knowledge into contemporary practices, and if there is wisdom there then there is merit, and I’m all for meritocracy. That said, can someone please point me toward a couple scholarly articles that document successful management for a sustainable environment over a large area in a historical context? Seems to me that there are a lot of assumptions woven into this co-stewardship framing, much as “diversity” was assumed to have fantastic intrinsic value to employers, only to be abandoned as swiftly as it was adopted when political winds changed.
Hi Gary: My PhD was on that topic and largely ignored (“canceled”) by my own college as a result. So I published it just to make that point: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Fires-Catastrophic-Patterns-1491-1951/dp/1732127603
The principal problem with “indigenous knowledge” — or “TEK” (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) as its academic founders originally termed it — is its definition. During my career as a reforestation contractor I successfully hired and taught several Siletz Tribal members how to do a prescribed burn. One of my best friends was a Yaqui Indian and several of my Mexican “Indio” employees also learned these skills while engaged in these projects. If “indigenous knowledge” means a special insight restricted to a specific genetic population, then it is certainly racist.
I prefer to define “indigenous knowledge” as “living memory” of those native to — or long-time residents of — a particular river basin or county. Perhaps those individuals with a long ancestry in a particular area may have more knowledge of the local landscape, its history, peoples, and wildlife, or maybe not. In my world, it’s the people with the most experience and greatest insights — perhaps acquired from earlier generations, whether blood relations or not — with the most reliable “indigenous knowledge.” Others may think differently.
Thank you, Bob; pricey, but on-point and I worked six years on the Roseburg BLM district that abuts the coastal range, so this is certainly of personal interest. And your point is well taken as to what indigenous knowledge means in this context. When President Biden created the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, his Proclamation was replete with grand (and opaque) claims about indigenous use and wisdom woven into that 940,000 acre “landscape,” but when I asked for a few details via FOIA, the response was (and remains) two years plus of stonewalling. At least you contextualized the term and gave some clarity to it.
Gary M. when I hear “grand and opaque claims”, in my experience, that usually equates to “political calculations we don’t want to talk about.”
Exactly so. Being semi-retired, I followed up on my unanswered FOIA by filing comments on one of the first post-Monument management efforts, the renewal of a grazing lease on the (former) Tusayan Ranger District, noting perhaps half-a-dozen of those grand and opaque claims and asking how cattle grazing would be consistent with the Antiquities Act’s preservationist mandate. Ironically, I’m quite pro-multiple use and would be perfectly happy to have cows on the range (not so much the hordes of feral horses crowding the district now). But I was a bit irritated that the Forest Service, having sat mute during the run-up to the Proclamation, apparently thinks it is business as usual, as if statutory “landscape” preservation is tantamount to multiple-use management. Of course, I expect the responses to my objections will be grand and opaque, with a healthy dose of vagueness tossed in. Sigh. Cynic, I am.
Didn’t the Proclamation mention grazing or existing uses? Or maybe the FS can’t change until the Monument management plan is finalized? Interesting.
Oh, there’s language in there that some interpret as grandfathering in existing uses. The problem is that the Antiquities Act is going to take precedence, and existing uses must respond to the demands of the Act. The silliness is magnified by Biden’s determination that the “landscape” itself is an “object” to be protected under the Act. And that opens up a host of questions to poor old, linear and simplistic me: what are the boundaries of that “landscape?” What elements comprise the landscape? Why was the lowly and poorly esteemed Tusayan District swept into the Monument while the North Kaibab again escaped the designation, even though it ticked many of the “justification” boxes far more clearly than the Tusayan District? Candidly, to me, the real motive behind the Monument was twofold: securing Tribal votes in Utah and Arizona for the Democratic Party and taking an incremental step toward tribal governance over federal lands via a secretive co-stewardship arrangement. I’m not contesting that there are some protection-worthy sites within the new Monument, but if the Act were applied as intended, it would not be with a million-acre proclamation. And I might add that every issue raised as one ostensibly solved by the designation was already being addressed, or capable of being addressed, under prior management laws. For example, the Proclamation talks about the importance of protecting indigenous religious practices, and it happens there is a special management area set up years ago around Red Butte that constrains vehicle use, harvested game recovery, and permits area closures on tribal request. The same could be done for other areas of particular importance without invoking a million-acre preservation scheme. And one of my FOIA questions was how many times a tribe invoked the discretionary closure available to protect their ceremonies. Answer? Silence. The Monument was created on hyperbole, not data, and the designation adds nothing regarding funding, staff, or other management capability. Surprise.
Hi Gary: The reason the book costs so much is I used the most expensive binding and highest quality paper and inks available — but then Amazon takes 70% of the net, after first making a profit on printing and binding and on shipping and handling! Mostly I did it to learn how, and primarily to make a point with the agency and university folks that were completely ignoring my research. Hasn’t had an effect in that regard yet, though.
I did some reforestation contracts for Roseburg BLM in the early 1970s with an excellent forester who worked for BLM at that time. Much of that work was on the east slope of the Coast Range, which is covered in my book.
Well, I sprung for the book nonetheless; that will no doubt put you in the black! I look forward to reading it, and when I have a minute will tell my favorite reforestation story from those days.
Thanks Gary! I look forward to your comments! When you tell me your reforestation story, I’ll try and sell you my new book, an anthology of my reforestation writings over the past 45(!) years. Same Amazon pricing situation — if I sell two paperbacks I can afford a cup of coffee at Starbucks, and if I sell three I can leave a tip.