Forester Is On The Cutting Edge First In Nation To Offer Species Permanent Habitat Protections

For other timber owners, compromise seemed silly. After all, wasn’t Congress likely to drastically reduce the impact of the Endangered Species Act?

For Toby Murray, though, it was a question of how far to trust the prevailing political currents.

On Thursday, after months of negotiation with the government, he decided to make his company, Murray Pacific Corp., the first in the country to propose a forestry plan offering permanent habitat protection for fish, salamanders, bats, bald eagles and other species.

Under the tentative habitatconservation plan, submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and open to public comment through June 19, Murray Pacific would refrain from logging at least 10 percent of its 55,000-acre tree farm north of Morton for 100 years. Unlogged land would be the most productive habitat, mostly 100-foot forest buffers on each side of rivers and streams.

In addition, the company would leave more standing trees and snags in logged areas than required by state regulations.

Tim Thompson, a policy analyst who helped negotiate the deal with the government, pegged the company’s cost at about $100 million in lost revenues over the first 50 years.

In exchange, Murray Pacific would be spared from any penalty for accidental death or injury to a threatened or endangered species, and no further restriction would be placed on company logging operations at the site for a century.

“We’re not going to go back and ask them for more land and more money,” said Curt Smitch, assistant regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Charlie Raines, a Sierra Club representative, said he hadn’t seen the details but believed the plan could be a significant development in private timber management.

It’s the second pace-setting agreement for Murray, a conservative Republican.

Two years ago, the company was the first in the nation to adopt a longrange protection plan for the northern spotted owl. In exchange for establishing forested corridors to aid the bird’s migration, Murray Pacific was freed from “owl circle” restrictions that had tied up nearly 40 percent of its land.

Then a biologist surveying the tree farm thought he heard a marbled murrelet - also on the federal list of protected species - fly overhead. That meant another costly and timeconsuming effort to protect another bird.

“We were right back in the middle of it,” Murray said. “What I immediately determined was, ‘I can’t keep doing this, having the species of the week show up.’ “

Vice President Al Gore, who had praised the owl plan in 1993, met privately with Murray to encourage him to expand it to cover other species.

Other high-ranking officials - including Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who last fall proposed the habitat-conservation-plan alternative for timber companies trying to cope with species protection - also worked on the deal.

Murray said officials of other timber companies questioned why he did anything but wait for Congress to amend the law as expected. He says he is convinced environmental protection will still be important to voters.