Group Rips Forest Protection Plan Loopholes Permit Clear-Cutting Of Ancient Timber, Report Says

Despite a protection plan President Clinton put in place five years ago, thousands of acres of centuries-old forests continue to be logged each year in the Pacific Northwest, environmentalists said Wednesday.

“The assumption that the Northwest forest plan is protecting ancient forests, salmon streams, drinking water and unprotected wilderness is erroneous,” the Forest Water Alliance said in a report.

More than 7,800 acres of old-growth trees were logged last year from forest reserves covered by Clinton’s plan in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, the coalition of 21 groups said.

Another 5,000 acres were logged on streamside reserves most critical to troubled salmon and trout species, the groups said.

“The Northwest forest plan is full of loopholes that allow logging in ancient forest and streamside reserves. Some loopholes even allow clear-cutting straight across streams,” they said.

The report notes more than a dozen logging projects occurred in reserves last year, along with logging in a variety of old-growth forests that remain unprotected in the three states. It also draws attention to 1998 old-growth logging planned in Oregon’s Winema, Washington’s Gifford Pinchot and California’s Mendocino national forests.

Forest Service officials had not seen the report and had no immediate comment Wednesday.

Environmentalists said they were renewing an attack on Clinton’s plan partly because the region was exempted earlier this month from the Forest Service’s proposed 18-month moratorium on logging-road construction in roadless areas of most national forests.

The Clinton administration maintains the Northwest plan provides adequate protection for the region. It calls for 1 billion board feet of timber to be cut annually in forests that contain endangered northern spotted owls - down from annual averages of 4 billion board feet during the 1980s - before federal judges ruled the harvests were illegally excessive.

Timber industry leaders say the cutbacks have cost thousands of jobs and that the Forest Service has failed to reach even the 1 billion-board-foot mark.

But Dan Beard, vice president of the National Audubon Society, said the northern spotted owl population continues to decline 4.5 percent annually in Oregon and Washington.