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Archive for September, 2010

SFI takes Vancouver

September 25th, 2010

There’s been a lot of attention lately on the EPA’s proposed biomass rules and the new proposed spotted owl plan, but one issue that is also still going strong is the fight to get the U.S. Green Building Council to consider other forest product certifications. Right now the USGBC only considers the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for the popular LEED green building standard.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the world’s largest forest certification program, held its annual conference in Vancouver, B.C., this week. And SFI President Kathy Abusow made some great points to attendees about why the U.S. Green Building Council is falling behind, rather than pushing ahead, as it continues to turn away other forest certifications such as SFI.

Monte Paulson, from the Canadian website The Tyee, has been covering the SFI-FSC debate closely and he has a post this week about Abusow’s comments. She points out that most building standards around the world take into account multiple forest certifications, and that the USGBC has run out of justifications for holding out.

“It’s pretty clear that LEED is an outlier, that LEED is a laggard rather than a leader when it comes to wood recognition and forest certification,” Abusow said.

Abusow briefed her members on the five-year-long legal and lobbying war between the two leading forest certification programs.

Her organization, SFI, which has roots in the forest products industry, is engaged in a bitter struggle with the rival FSC, which has roots in the environmental movement, for access to the LEED standard, which is set by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Abusow described the U.S. Green Building Council’s position this way:

“They [the USGBC] recognize they certainly have created a gap that they can’t explain anymore… They understand that they need to have some criteria to explain why they have this position.

“And so for five years we’ve been painfully waiting for them to come out with this criteria. And we’re now in our fourth round of benchmarks. And what they’ve demonstrated is that they are experts in process and not yet at the outcome stage.”

Paulson says the USGBC is expected to release its fourth round of draft regulations this fall.

For more information about SFI and its conference this week, check out a full rundown of the conference, a video interview with Abusow and information about SFI’s three new board members.

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Posted in Canada, Green Building Standards, Timber Industry

EPA rule has high stakes

September 19th, 2010

The Oregonian had a good story recently about how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed changes in its greenhouse gas emissions rules could threaten the burgeoning biomass industry. The EPA’s “tailoring rule” is something we’ve written about several times before, and the Oregonian does a solid job of outlining why the stakes are so high.

Biomass, or using vegetation for fuel, has basked in a green glow in recent years, winning subsidies, bipartisan political support and a renewable energy designation in Oregon and nationwide that groups it with nonpolluting solar, wave and wind power. Oregon backers are hoping wood-fired power plants will spur thinning in the state’s abundant national forests, create thousands of rural jobs and provide a domestic source of fuel.

But the industry is in its infancy, supporters say, and new EPA rules could kill it.

“Biomass energy is economically marginal,” says Thomas McLain, head of wood science and engineering at Oregon State University and one of 100-plus forestry scientists who expressed concern about the proposed EPA rules in a July letter to Senate leaders. “Anything you do to (increase) the cost means it won’t happen. It will go away.”

The story also points out that 40 biomass plants already operate in Oregon, that the U.S. Department of Energy expects biomass plants to provide 14 percent of the the country’s electricity by 2030 and that politicians from both parties have come out in support of the EPA’s backing off its rule changes.

But the future of biomass is still far from certain, which is why supporters need to continue to be as vocal as possible.

In other news, the Oregonian recently also ran dueling opinion pieces on federal timber policy. In the first piece, Ben Shelton of the Cascade Policy Institute argues that the feds should allow local control of federal forests. A few days later, David Moskowitz of WaterWatch of Oregon writes that federal forest policy in Oregon is working.

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Posted in Federal Issues, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Washington Legislature

Draft spotted owl plan released

September 11th, 2010

As we wrote last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was expected to release a revised spotted owl plan very soon, and just this week, it did.

One of the key points to make is the 181-page revised plan is a draft, and the government is taking comments for the next 60 days. Here is where you can send your comments:

Emailed comments can be sent to: NSORPComments@fws.gov. Written comments should be submitted to: Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office, 2600 SE 98th Avenue, Ste. 100, Portland, OR 97266.

The reason the 60-day comment period is critical is there are some serious problems with the revised plan, and the Obama administration must hear from people who are concerned about the viability of working forests if the draft plan were to become final.

Here are just a small portion of the problems:

  • The plan itself is another example of an overreaching approach by the federal government.
  • New maps will come out in January 2011 with the final draft of the plan and redo all habitat reserves and incorporate private lands.
  • The federal government will redo the federal designation of critical habitat, which is now currently only designated on federal lands.

Take a look at the revised plan, as well as the additional information on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service site. We will be providing more context on this important issue as it develops.

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Posted in California, Canada, Federal Issues, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Spotted Owl, Timber Industry, Washington

Spotted owl: the next chapter

September 3rd, 2010

In June we wrote about the 20th anniversary of the spotted owl’s listing as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (see our posts here and here). The owl’s listing decimated the Northwest timber industry, and yet today, the spotted owl is actually worse off than it was 20 years ago.

What happened is a larger, more efficient species called the barred owl migrated to the Pacific Northwest from the East and is now squeezing out the spotted owl population. Both the timber industry and environmental groups agree the spotted owl is worse off, and apparently the barred owl’s arrival was a development no one anticipated.

And now, this week the spotted owl is back in the news again. A federal judge ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must redo its 2008 recovery plan for the spotted owl. But strangely, this redo is less about any failure to protect the spotted owl and more about what the judge said was influence peddling by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald.

According to the Associated Press, the judge’s decision is the latest chapter in a series of lawsuits. The spotted owl’s listing in 1990 came after lawsuits from environmental groups, and then the 2008 spotted owl plan by the Bush administration was the result of a lawsuit from the timber industry. The judge’s decision this week was part of a lawsuit from environmental groups claiming that the Bush plan ignored the latest science and was the result of political interference from the administration.

So what does the timber industry think of this latest development in the 20-year saga over the spotted owl?

The Obama administration had asked the judge to revert back to the 1992 plan, which set aside a much larger habitat area for the owl. Instead the judge this week ruled that the 2008 habitat area set aside by the Bush administration would stand until a new plan can be written.

According to the AP, the timber industry is glad that the judge’s decision at least didn’t go too far.

Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said a 2008 plan still left too much forest in critical habitat, but he was pleased that the judge left it in place until a revised designation is completed.

“It’s a lot better than going back to the 1992 critical habitat designation,” he said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was apparently already expecting the judge’s ruling. The agency will release a revised spotted owl plan next week, and the plan should be finalized later this year.

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Posted in Federal Issues, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Spotted Owl