Plan To Save Salmon Could Hurt Loggers Senators Endorse ‘Bevan Plan’ Which Limits Use Of Lands

A salmon protection alternative that some Northwest senators like because of its goslow approach to changing dam operations carries some heavy costs for loggers, miners and ranchers, an environmental group said Monday.

Bob Doppelt, executive director of the Pacific Rivers Council, said some of the eight senators who offered support for the “Bevan plan” in a letter to President Clinton last month may not have been fully aware of its restrictions on logging, mining and livestock grazing.

The plan, named after University of Washington fisheries expert Don Bevan, urges more study before moving forward with controversial drawdowns at Snake River reservoirs.

Many lawmakers prefer that option to the more dramatic changes in dam operations they anticipate will be proposed later this week in a new biological opinion from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

In addition, however, the “Bevan plan” advocates an immediate moratorium on any commercial activity - on public or private lands - that further would degrade salmon habitat.

“Any further exploitation of resources on public lands should be precluded unless it can be shown that ‘no further harm’ will befall critical salmon spawning and rearing habitats,” the plan recommends.

A court order two weeks ago from U.S. District Judge David Ezra of Boise, Idaho,Although the ruling has been stayed for a week at the request of the Clinton administration, the court granted an injunction prohibiting the U.S. Forest Service from moving forward with logging on six national forests in Idaho until the agency had completed the necessary consultation with the fisheries service over the potential impact on troubled salmon species.

The consultation is required under the Endangered Species Act.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, railed against the court ruling in a Senate floor speech Friday. He rose again on Monday to condemn the Endangered Species Act as a federal law that is out of control.

“Men and women called my office crying, afraid their jobs are being taken away from them because of a bureaucratic boondoggle,” Craig said.

But environmentalists said Monday that the kinds of restrictions the court wants to impose on logging and grazing in the region are less stringent than the restrictions under the “Bevan plan” earlier praised by Craig and other senators. Doppelt said that plan “clearly states that habitat protection and recovery in the Upper Columbia basin must be equal in priority to mainstem dam recovery because all stages of salmonid life history need remedies.

Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Patty Murray, D-Wash., Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., Slade Gorton, R-Wash., Bob Packwood, R-Ore., Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Dirk Kempthorne, R-Idaho, also signed the Dec. 20 letter to Clinton.

The focus of the letter was a plea for the federal government to share in the burden of paying for measures needed to save the salmon from extinction.

But the senators also wrote that they believe the plan developed by Bevan’s team was “the only regional, scientifically peer reviewed” proposal available.

Aides to the senators said Monday that while the letter indicated support for Bevan’s approach to dam perations, it should not be construed to be an unconditional endorsement of the entire plan.

“We did endorse parts of the Bevan plan, not in its entirety,” said Bobbi Munson, Packwood’s press secretary.

David Fish, Craig’s press secretary, said Doppelt “missed the point of the letter.”

“The letter is talking about river operations, not habitat,” Fish said. Craig outlined his conditional support for some parts of the Bevan plan and his objections to many other parts in a six-page letter to Bevan shortly after the plan was released in 1993, Fish said.