The Northwest Forest Plan — the 30-year-old set of management policies that governs 24 million acres of national forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California — is about to get a major update. Since its implementation under President Bill Clinton, the plan has dramatically reduced deforestation and protected some of the region’s oldest trees. But the U.S. Forest Service failed to consult with tribes during the plan’s development, and it does not address the growing threat of climate change.
Earlier this year, the Forest Service appointed a group of forestry scientists, lawyers, environmentalists, logging industry representatives, and tribal representatives to offer input on an update to the plan. On July 16, after months of meetings, the Forest Service published the committee’s recommendations.
Among the recommendations were 113 related to tribal inclusion. They advised the Forest Service to promote Indigenous co-stewardship and forest management, incorporate Indigenous knowledge into future forest administration and respect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. The committee also asked the agency to recognize cultural burning as an inherent tribal right, support and restore cultural use of species, and engage Indigenous youth in land stewardship.
Ryan Reed (Karuk, Hupa, Yurok), an Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter and the youngest advisory committee member, said he pushed the committee to start to address the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, citing the impacts of the agency’s long suppression of cultural fire: “If we’re able to empower Indigenous people, we’re also going to empower the various communities that are directly impacted by fire and have limited access to traditional foods or cultural practices.”
The Forest Service expects to finalize its environmental impact statement for the revised Northwest Forest Plan by Aug. 30 and complete the update this fall. Although the recommendations are nonbinding, the agency said in a statement that it will take them “very seriously,” adding that they will be “very influential in the decision-making process.”
Advisory committee members representing Indigenous and tribal interests are pleased with the strength of the recommendations. They noted, however, that the Forest Service needs to not only include tribal members on the advisory committee but continue to solicit feedback from tribes during policymaking processes. The agency’s tight deadlines, they said, have made it impossible to adequately consult the nearly 90 tribes affected by the plan.
“If we’re able to empower Indigenous people, we’re also going to empower the various communities that are directly impacted by fire and have limited access to traditional foods or cultural practices.”
“It’s the Forest Service’s responsibility to get feedback from tribes,” said Elaine Harvey (kah-pilt-mah), former environmental coordinator for the Yakama Nation tribal fisheries department. “I think our tribal recommendations are good for many tribes, but we don’t want to leave anything out.”
SINCE EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT, 72% of the old-growth conifer forests in the Pacific Northwest have been lost, largely through logging. The adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994 marked a truce in the “Timber Wars,” a series of bitter conflicts between loggers and environmentalists over the Pacific Northwest’s remaining old-growth forests. At the heart of the battle was the northern spotted owl, a threatened species that depends on old-growth stands for nesting and protection.
The plan designated 7.4 million acres of forest as protected reserves, called Late Successional Reserves (LSRs), where logging is prohibited. It also designated 4 million acres as Matrix Lands, a quarter of which were old-growth, which are managed for multiple uses, including timber harvest. The reserves have reduced deforestation, protecting water and aquatic habitats and keeping millions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, however, catastrophic wildfires and pest infestations have become increasingly common, and that, combined with growing competition from barred owls, has caused spotted owl populations to continue to decline.
The amendment will not make any changes to the management of aquatic habitats in the NWFP, or address changes to wildlife conservation strategies. But it could make other significant changes to forest management.
With few exceptions, the newly published recommendations advise prohibiting so-called “salvage” logging after wildfires in the LSRs, a proposal that logging interests initially pushed back on during advisory committee discussions but eventually accepted. In the region’s moist forests, most of which lie west of the Cascade Mountains, the committee recommended extending protections to all old-growth and advanced mature forests — defined as those with stands established before 1825 and 1905, respectively — including those outside LSRs. In dry forests, the committee recommended retaining trees older than 150 years but using thinning and prescribed burning to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
Historically, the Forest Service’s management policies have prevented tribes from effectively managing and accessing vital cultural resources such as huckleberries and beargrass, which benefit from frequent low-intensity fires. The advisory committee recommended corrective measures, including tighter regulations on the commercial over-harvesting of culturally-significant plants.
The recommendations that the Forest Service support prescribed burns and tribal cultural burning are also an important change, said Mike Anderson, a senior policy analyst for The Wilderness Society and an advisory committee member. The original plan restricted the clear-cutting, thinning and prescribed burning of dry old-growth forests in LSRs in keeping with the Forest Service’s policy of fire suppression. The resulting “vast buildup of vegetation,” Anderson said, has made dry old-growth forests increasingly vulnerable to severe wildfires, especially as the climate changes.
“We’re all feeling the negative impacts of fire suppression,” said committee member Ryan Reed.
MEANWHILE, sweeping changes are on the horizon for forest management nationwide: The Biden administration has also proposed to develop a National Old-Growth Forest Amendment for all 128 national forest land management plans. While the Northwest Forest Plan covers roughly one-third of the nation’s 32 million acres of old-growth forests, the national amendment would apply to all old-growth forests in the U.S., including those in Alaska and along the Rocky Mountains.
In a draft environmental analysis in late June, the Forest Service recommended that the amendment prioritize the preservation of old-growth trees. It did not, however, propose an outright ban on old-growth logging. In a statement, 10 environmental groups, including Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, called the draft analysis “a step” but added that the “final policy must be significantly improved, including ending the practice of sending old-growth trees to timber mills.”
“We’re all feeling the negative impacts of fire suppression.”
Anderson noted that if the Forest Service adopts the committee’s recommendations, the updated Northwest Forest Plan may contain some stronger protections than the National Old-Growth Forest Amendment, which does not protect mature forests. Until the amendments are finalized, it will remain unclear which will take precedence where the two overlap. In response to a query from High Country News, a Forest Service representative wrote in an email that the amended Northwest Forest Plan “will cover region-specific management practices and local ecological concerns, whereas the National Old-Growth Amendment will establish broad, national guidelines for old-growth forest conservation.”
Though both updates are likely to govern forest management for decades to come, few are aware of their importance, said Alex Craven, forest campaign manager for the Sierra Club. “Most people don’t know that the Northwest Forest Plan exists,” Craven said. “We think that these old trees have been and will be here forever, and that doesn’t happen without things like the Northwest Forest Plan in place.”
This story is part of High Country News’ Conservation Beyond Boundaries project, which is supported by the BAND Foundation.
