Group Finds Consensus On Fish Issues Resources Association Hammers Out Rule To Protect Streams, But Big Tasks Ahead

Timber, Fish and Wildlife, a group formed to seek consensus on the touchy issues of managing those resources, has achieved something rare in recent years: consensus.

Now, the association appears to be on a roll.

The group has hammered out a compromise on a major stream-protection rule that has been adopted by the state Forest Practices Board.

It’s the first step in what members believe could become a comprehensive effort to protect fish that could be listed as endangered or threatened.

The group, made up of representatives of timber, tribal, government and environmental interests, also has agreed to begin a long-term look at how to protect fish on the state’s forested lands in the hope of keeping salmon and steelhead off the federal endangered species list.

Such a listing could limit logging, development, farming and other activities.

Members of Timber, Fish and Wildlife say they feel a sense of urgency.

“There’s a rising sense that it’s imperative that we come up with some effective policies to address these long-standing fish-habitat issues,” said Bern Shanks, director of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has said several salmon runs will be studied next year to determine whether the fish require federal protection.

After the group’s voluntary creation nine years ago, it achieved some early successes. But in recent years, as problems have grown more complex and the stakes have grown higher, members have been at odds, stalled in seemingly endless discussions that have gone nowhere.

What brought them together now were mapping errors.

It seems that thousands of miles of Washington streams were labeled as empty of fish on state-issued maps when, in fact, fish lived in the streams. Several environmental and tribal leaders say the errors opened the door to harmful stream-side logging, destroying fish habitats that were supposed to be protected under law.

The group drafted a rule that tries to correct the problem by essentially shifting that presumption. Based on the streams’ physical characteristics - such as width and gradient - hundreds of additional streams now are presumed to have fish in them unless landowners can prove fish don’t live there.

What Timber, Fish and Wildlife accomplished with its stream-protection rule is small compared with the task ahead of it.

A new package of rules to protect fish likely would put more land off-limits to logging, which could cost the timber industry millions of dollars.

“People don’t realize how much we’ve already given up, some 8 percent to 10 percent of our land base,” said Keith Simmons, manger of harvest planning and engineering at Simpson Timber Co. “The next 5 percent to 10 percent is really going to start to hurt.”

However, some say there’s a new commitment to the group partly because of the state’s mounting fish problems and partly because of Bill Wilkerson, new head of the Washington Forest Protection Association. Wilkerson co-chairs the group with Toby Thaler, legal director of the Washington Environmental Council.

“We wouldn’t have had this new rule if Wilkerson weren’t there,” Thaler said. “He knows how to negotiate, and he understands fisheries issues.”

“I think we’ve probably begun to break the ice jam,” said Marcy Gold, an environmental activist who helped create the group.