Timber Bearish About Study Utah Student Says Saving Grizzly, Banning Logging Better For Economy

Doctoral student Michael Garrity has created a stir with his study concluding the Forest Service could save money and produce more jobs by replacing logging with grizzlies.

Garrity’s study on grizzly-bear restoration in central Idaho and western Montana suggested the Forest Service should stop logging the remaining roadless lands and rip out 3,482 miles of old dirt roads to make it more attractive to bears.

“You always read about the tradeoff between jobs and the environment, but I don’t think it is there,” said Garrity, who is working on his doctorate in public economics at the University of Utah.

His research was described as “slanted” and “twisted” by Phil Church, president of Local 712 of the United Paperworkers International Union in Lewiston.

“They tell organized labor that their proposal will create jobs, but fail to tell them it will destroy 10,000 jobs” in the wood-products industry, Church said. “They have to quit lying to organized labor and telling only part of the story.”

“I’m not sure Garrity’s numbers are real,” said Tom France, an attorney for the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula. “His numbers are based on assumptions in the forest plans that aren’t being borne out.”

Garrity’s conclusions are cited by proponents of the “conservation biology alternative” for grizzly-bear management in central Idaho being pushed by several bear experts and some national environmental groups. It is one of several management options that will be considered in an environmental-impact statement to be released this summer.

This alternative would combine existing wilderness areas with strict controls on surrounding lands to provide about 21,000 square miles of habitat for grizzlies and other species of wildlife that require large expanses of mostly undisturbed land. Included would be most of the land between Boise and Missoula - an area slightly smaller than West Virginia.

A competing proposal, known as the “citizen-management alternative,” has been developed by a coalition from the timber industry, the National Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife.

This option would allow moderate levels of logging to continue, but with special measures to protect the bears. Such an approach is “responsible to local economies,” builds community support for grizzly-bear protection and can be implemented easily, France said.

“Garrity’s economic analysis paints this as an either-or situation - timber or grizzlies,” said Seth Diamond, wildlife-program manager for the Intermountain Forest Industry Association. “We fundamentally disagree. We say you can have both grizzly-bear recovery and a healthy timber economy.”