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Archive for December, 2010

The shy and scared spotted owl

December 23rd, 2010

No one seems to be happy with the new draft spotted owl plan released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  We have outlined why the plan is bad policy, and the federal government received innumerable comments from interested parties before the public comment period ended last week.

But it’s not just timber companies and timber communities that are criticizing the plan for its bad science and false assumptions. Several prominent environmental groups, including the American Ornithologists’ Union, Society for Conservation Biology, The Wildlife Society and the Geos Institute, reviewed the plan and say it’s full of holes as wide as old-growth timber.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service just doesn’t get it,” said Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist for the Geos Institute in Ashland.

Problem is — while these groups don’t like the plan or the science behind it — when you drill down to the details, they oppose the plan for the opposite reasons that timber companies and timber communities oppose it.

While timber interests want the federal plan to stay out of private forestland and not expand owl habitat, the environmental groups say the plan doesn’t protect enough habitat. While timber interests believe that smart and reasonable forest management, including thinning to protect from fire, will help protect the spotted owl, the environmental groups say thinning could hurt the owl.

What is clear is no one likes the spotted owl plan, and there is still a lot of work left to do.

Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) did a story this week that demonstrates the complications that a spotted owl brings. And this involves just trying to find an owl in the wild.

The spotted owl, while being a political flash point for 20 years, is actually quite shy. OPB tagged along with University of Washington researchers who were attempting to record as many owls as they could in California’s Trinity National Forest.

It wasn’t easy. The owls don’t like to come out and play, and it’s so hard to find them that researchers have trained dogs to sniff out the pellets of rodent fur and bones on the ground that the owls have vomited up. Yes, this very important research sometimes comes down to owl vomit.

But the spotted owl has bigger issues. The main reason the owl population has declined in the last 20 years is because of the arrival of a bigger and more aggressive species: the barred owl. And the researchers say the owl sometimes doesn’t hoot because it’s worried about being attacked.

Lyle Lewis is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in California. He says these days aggressive barred owls are showing up in the Trinity National Forest. And hooting can get a spotted owl into trouble.

Lyle Lewis: “In some cases barred owls may actually run them off. And even though its rare, there have been documented mortalities of spotted owls being killed by barred owls”

So the spotted owl has a new problem.  If it hoots, it might get whacked by a bigger owl. If it stays quiet, it might not be counted by biologists and could lose its real estate to logging.

And while the researchers desperately try to find a dwindling and terrified population of spotted owls, the cost of protecting the owls keeps going up.

The state of Oregon alone spends about a million dollars a year tracking about 100 spotted owls that nest in state forests.

That’s about $10,000 per owl every year. And quieter owls could double that cost.

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

Delving into the impact of the spotted owl

December 17th, 2010

The same week that the public comment period ended on the new federal spotted owl plan, The News-Review in Roseburg, Ore., did a seven-part series on the impact of the listing of the spotted owl 20 years ago.

The series is illuminating, describing everything from death threats and lost jobs to how the city of Roseburg and Douglas County have tried to keep themselves going in recent years with new businesses and new ideas.

Unfortunately the News-Review this week just started a subscription-only model for its website, so the stories can’t be read in their entirety for free. But the series is well worth the $4.95 for a one-week subscription to the paper.

What is most striking about the series is the devastation that the spotted owl listing wrought on the timber-dependent community — and how fresh the wounds still are 20 years later.

Just take a look at some of the statistics reported by the paper:

Between 1988 and 1998, the number of lumber and plywood mills in Oregon declined by nearly half, from 252 to 127. Twenty mills closed in Douglas County alone, according to timber consultant Paul Ehinger of Eugene. Some 2,800 jobs in the wood-products industry in Douglas County vanished within two years of the owl being listed.

More than half of the 60,000 Oregon workers who held jobs in the wood-products industry at the beginning of the 1990s no longer had them by 1998, according to a report published in the Journal of Forestry in 2003.

By the end of the decade, nearly half of those who left the timber industry disappeared from state employment records. The missing workers were likely either retired, unemployed or living in another state.

Jim Geisinger, the (Douglas Timber Operators) executive director from 1976 to 1981 and now the executive vice president of Associated Oregon Loggers, said that in the early ’80s, the Umpqua National Forest sold 360 million board feet a year.

“Today, Umpqua National Forest is selling only about 10 percent of that,” he said.

A study by economists from the Portland-based consulting firm ECONorthwest, Oregon State University and the Oregon Employment Department tracked 18,000 former timber workers between 1990 and 1998 who found another job in Oregon. Nearly half found work in the service and retail sectors. One-third were employed in the manufacturing and construction industries.

The spotted owl listing impacted more than just job numbers — it affected lives. The bitterness was unleashed and received by both sides.

Probably the ugliest manifestation of the community’s anger came in the form of death threats to a variety of people.

Robert Heilman, a Myrtle Creek-based essayist and former laborer, said half-humorously the death threats seemed to follow a pattern.

“It struck me as odd at the time. Local environmentalists were getting (threatening) phone calls, and local timber people were getting letters from Lake Forest Park, Washington, and Garberville, California,” said Heilman, author of “Overstory Zero: Real Life in Timber Country.” “Timber people do hate by phone calls and environmental people by mail.”

Even after two decades, the bad feelings are still strong. Residents are understandably still reeling from the loss of their livelihoods, their traditions and their lifestyles.  The environmentalists, meanwhile, are unapologetic, even though the spotted owl listing has done absolutely nothing to save the spotted owl.

Heilman finds it difficult to say what the community has learned at this juncture, 20 years after the turmoil generated by a shy, forest-dwelling bird.

“In the short run, there’s an awful lot of anger out there still,” he said. “I’m optimistic in the long run … but history tells me that fundamental change takes a long time.”

If you do buy a subscription, here are links to all the articles in the series.

Part I: Overview

Part II: Interviews with five people who lived through the listing

Part III: Profile of a logger who weathered the storm

Part IV: Environmentalists say original forest plan was undermined

Part V: Barred owl causes spotted owl population to decline

Part VI: Businesses diversify from timber

Part VII: The job market adjusts

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Posted in Federal Issues, Logging Communities, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Spotted Owl, Timber Industry

Big news on biomass and green building

December 10th, 2010

Big news was announced on two issues that we have been following closely: the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to limit the biomass industry, and the ongoing battle over what forest certification systems the U.S. Green Building Council should use.

Both issues have high stakes for the timber industry. If the EPA’s proposed rule passes, it could stop the burgeoning biomass industry dead in its tracks. And as green building becomes more popular, it’s critical that the U.S. Green Building Council take into account all reputable forest certification systems.

The news was very positive out of Washington, D.C., this week on the EPA issue. The EPA said it planned to push back the issuance of the final greenhouse-gas emission rules for more than a year, from next month to April 2012. Not only that, but the EPA will come out with new rules altogether because of new information it received about the impact and science behind its original proposal.

This is a huge victory for the timber industry, though we caution that the rules are still up in the air and could eventually have an adverse impact on biomass.

The EPA’s announcement brought condemnation from environmental groups, such as EarthJustice, which said it would allow pollutants and endanger lives. And even less biased observers suggested that the political winds might be changing with Republicans taking over the U.S. House next month.

But industry groups hailed the decision.

Bob Cleaves, president of the Biomass Power Association:

“The EPA is listening, and we at BPA are hopeful that the agency will make the right decision, which could save thousands of American jobs and provide strong support for the American renewable energy sector.” (Full comment)

Cal Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council:

“There’s no question that EPA’s boiler rule as originally written would have resulted in significant costs for manufacturers and small business and ultimately would have cost jobs.” (Full comment)

Keith McCoy, VP at the National Association of Manufacturers:

“Clearly, the agency has heard the calls from manufacturers to thoroughly analyze the achievability and economic impact of these expensive and complex proposals…We hope this week’s announcements signal that the EPA is slowing down on overly burdensome and unnecessary rules that will crush economic growth and job creation.” (Full comment)

The second piece of news is the decision by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to reject new rules that would have allowed more flexibility in what forest certifications are allowed in the USGBC’s LEED standard.

As we wrote last month, the new rules were opposed by both sides of the debate. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification system did not want to lose its monopoly on LEED, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which has been trying to get recognized by LEED for years, said the new rules were too complex and didn’t go far enough.

So it wasn’t a surprise that the new rules — which were meant to be a compromise — only got 55 percent of the vote.

The problem remains, however: FSC gets to keep its monopoly on the LEED standard and the much more popular SFI is frozen out.

Both FSC and SFI say they want the Green Building Council to revisit the forest certification rules, but the council — understandably — is leery to jump back into the fray, at least right away.

In the meantime, Kathy Abusow, the President of SFI, sounds like she’s ready to change strategy. She says builders should stop trying to meet the LEED standard for wood and just use SFI wood instead.

For now the building community should forgo the one point in the certified wood credit and use SFI-certified products in LEED buildings to demonstrate their pride and support for North American forests, communities, and jobs.

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Posted in Biomass, Climate Change, Federal Issues, Green Building Standards, Timber Industry

Port Blakely leads the way

December 3rd, 2010

As the debate continues over the proposed new federal spotted owl plan, the Oregonian takes an in-depth look this week at a unique arrangement between a timber company and the federal government over protecting the owl.

The headline alone for the story indicates this isn’t going to be a typical tale of timber companies and environmentalists duking it out: “In a timber wars turnabout, Washington tree farm improves habitat for spotted owl.”

Port Blakely Companies, which is based in Seattle but has operations around the world, is doing the “timber wars turnabout” in question. On 45,000 acres in Washington’s Lewis and Skamania counties, Port Blakely is creating habitat for the spotted owl and marbled murrelet in exchange for being exempted from any future logging restrictions. The company gets to log its land but also has to make sure that significant habitat remains. This includes creating habitat by deliberately killing some trees because dead trees become homes for so many species, and leaving some limbs and fallen trees on the ground.

As the paper points out, entering into such a “safe harbor” agreement with the federal government is unusual, even if the benefits to Port Blakely are clear.

…(I)t’s a private landowner engaged in leap-of-faith collaboration with regulatory agencies, and safe harbor agreements are a relatively new option. Since the first one in 1995, protecting North Carolina woodpeckers, more than 400 landowners in 23 states have signed agreements to benefit 75 creatures listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Only three agreements cover spotted owls, however, and only two are for marbled murrelets. Port Blakely’s agreements are by far the largest in each category; the next-largest spotted owl safe harbor is 2,200 acres near Humboldt, Calif.

It’s a surprising turn, given that the spotted owl in particular was at the center of timber war lawsuits, noisy protests and rancorous legislation that drastically reduced logging in the federal forests of Oregon and Washington. Port Blakely’s agreements, signed in 2009, have environmentalists nodding cautiously while other timber companies look on with a mix of interest and skepticism.

“Nobody’s called us crazy to our faces,” laughs Teresa Loo, Port Blakely’s communications manager.

Creating habitat is one thing, but the spotted owl has bigger problems. Eric Forsman, a biologist at Oregon State University and one of the nation’s leading experts in spotted owls, tells the Oregonian that the Port Blakely project probably won’t help the owl much, the biggest reason being that the spotted owl is declining not because of poor habitat but because the larger barred owl is pushing the spotted owl out of its territory.

Still, Port Blakely, the federal government and environmental groups see the project as worthwhile because it represents a new paradigm: working together to achieve common goals.

Here’s how Court Stanley, president of Port Blakely Tree Farms, put it:

“The conversation has changed,” he says. “I firmly believe there is a good path where working forests and protection of wildlife and water go hand in hand.”

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Posted in Federal Issues, Oregon, Spotted Owl, Timber Industry, Washington