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More comments on spotted owl plan, but is it enough?

April 29th, 2011

After months of delay, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last week made a big move on the new spotted owl recovery plan, but it’s a move that few people expected.

It was just two months ago that the feds planned to release a final plan, without any further chance for public comment or changes. No one, from timber companies to environmental groups, was happy with the plan, and yet it appeared the federal government was still going to ram it through.

Then last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made the surprise announcement that it was going to reopen the public comment period after all. But with two major caveats.

First off, the Service is only taking comment on just one appendix of the 181-page recovery plan, not the whole document. This appendix covers a key portion of the plan, a computerized model that “assesses the owl’s habitat and the effectiveness of various conservation measures” but it’s only an appendix in a much larger plan.

From the Medford Mail Tribune:

Basically, the model compares potential spotted owl population responses to different habitat-management scenarios and conservation measures such as barred owl management. For instance, the model suggests that if the barred owl moves into areas already occupied by spotted owls, the latter’s population is likely to decline.

The model brings together information from some 4,000 spotted owl sites in Washington, Oregon and far Northern California, according to an agency spokeswoman. Information gathered in the model includes such factors as forest stand characteristics, slope locations and elevation, she said.

That data is combined with more than 20 years’ worth of demographic information, such as survival and reproductive rates, from annual surveys, she added.

Second, the Service made its announcement so late in the game that the new comment period may not make any difference in the final plan. The new 30-day comment period will run until May 23, just seven days before a court-ordered deadline of June 1 for the Service to complete the plan.

Forestry groups across the country said the full spotted owl plan — not just an appendix — should have been opened up for public comment, and that the limited comment period that was announced won’t do anything to improve the final version of the plan.

From the forestry groups’ statement:

Further public review is sorely needed in light of the chorus of criticism raised by Members of Congress, the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, the forest products industry, environmental groups and scientific peer reviewers.

David Bischel, President of the California Forestry Association:

“Ironically, some of the most robust populations of Northern Spotted Owls occupy sustainably managed private forests of Northern California.  The first draft of the recovery plan completely ignored the positive benefits provided by pro-active forest management.  We hope the Service recognizes the proactive measures that private and state landowners have already made towards owl conservation, and not add more regulatory gridlock.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service has run out of time to come out with a fully researched plan, the forestry groups said. The only solution is to try to get an extension of the June 1 deadline, said Tom Partin, President of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council.

“We hope the agency will ask the Court for additional time to complete the Recovery Plan.  That way, whatever comments come from the public can be used and not just ignored.”

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

Making Wash. state government better

April 22nd, 2011

We wrote earlier this month about a misguided campaign in Washington to raise forest practice fees on timber companies. State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark and environmental groups are trying to convince legislators to pour millions of dollars in increased fees into the state’s already bloated forest practices program.

In a year when our Legislature faces a $5 billion deficit, and all signs point to increasing deficits in the future, and when even Gov. Chris Gregoire has advocated for a fundamental streamlining of government operations, environmental groups have the gall to ask for an increase in an inefficient and badly designed government bureaucracy. Our state can’t afford to throw good money after bad, especially when what’s really needed is reform.

On top of all this, the environmental groups are still trying to spread falsehoods about the timber industry’s stance on the forest practice fee issue. Look at what Kerry McHugh of the Washington Environmental Council told the Vancouver Columbian today.

“What industry is saying is, ‘We’ll pay more fees, but that means protections need to be rolled back,” McHugh said. “We can’t support fees that reduce protection…”

What the timber industry is calling for is not less protection at all, but a more efficient permitting system that doesn’t have multiple inspectors from different state agencies doing the exact same thing. This bloated bureaucracy is not good for the environment and it’s not good for a state that is desperately trying to be more efficient and save money.

Even in the current permitting system, the timber industry is in 91 percent compliance on state forest practices. Most of what environmental groups try to claim are compliance issues are deemed by the state to be “trivial or minor.”

The forest industry is one of the state’s leaders in ensuring our streams, wildlife and other natural resources are protected, contributing $130 million a year in fees, taxes and environmental protection, and committing to the 50-year Forests & Fish Habitat Conservation Plan to protect salmon and clean water.

Meanwhile, the state’s forest practices permitting program’s budget has ballooned by 64 percent – to $23 million – while state timber harvest volumes have declined during the same period by 44 percent.

The state of Oregon is the number one timber-producing state in the country and the budget of its forest practices program is only $15 million, 35 percent smaller than Washington’s.

Washington’s forest practices permitting process is the most needlessly complex in the nation, and it’s this government inefficiency that environmental groups want to protect, not the environment and certainly not taxpayers. The time for real reform is now.

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Posted in DNR, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry, Washington, Washington Legislature

Banking on biomass and “Wood First”

April 15th, 2011

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced $30 million in federal biomass projects, just two weeks after he said the U.S. government would promote and research the use of wood as a green building material.

The departments of Agriculture and Energy will devote $30 million to the Biomass Research and Development Initiative, which will pay for 5-10 projects over the next 3-4 years. The research projects will cover not just woody biomass but also feedstock, biofuels and other farm waste.

“These projects will help to reduce America’s dependence on imported oil by accelerating the development and commercialization of cleaner, alternative fuels that can power our vehicles and our industry,” said U.S Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Producing renewable fuels from biomass right here in the United States will improve our nation’s energy security and give us an innovative edge in the global market for clean energy technologies.”

In an op-ed in the Oregonian this week, Tom Holt, the chairman of the Oregon Forest Industries Council, compliments the USDA for its stance on using wood as a green building material and says that the Oregon Legislature might take it one step further.

House Bill 3429….would direct the state of Oregon to use wood as a preferred building material. Called the Oregon “Wood First” bill, it states that for structures built with state funds after July 1, 2012, the building materials used should be — to the maximum extent possible and economically feasible — made from wood…

The Oregon bill is modeled after British Columbia’s Wood First Act, passed in October 2009. Passage by the Oregon Legislature would make the bill the first of its kind in the United States.

Holt points out that British Columbia’s Jobs Minister even flew to Salem to testify in favor of the bill. With British Columbia and Oregon leading the way on “Wood First,” it’s only a matter of time before Washington and California step to the plate.

Holt describes why “Wood First” is so critical for Oregon, but the sentiment holds true for all the states on the West Coast.

Oregon is the nation’s number one supplier of softwood lumber and plywood panels. We are among the nation’s most forested states, second only to Alaska. The forest and wood products sector makes up about 8.5 percent of Oregon’s total payroll and ranks in the top four among Oregon traded sectors — those industries producing income for goods and services sold out of state…

…Just think of the possibilities if Oregon were to become the nation’s leading advocate for wood products — more innovation, more stable markets, more jobs and a cleaner environment. The sustainable use of forests and wood products defines us as Oregonians. In this state, it just makes sense to embrace “wood first.”

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Posted in Biomass, British Columbia, Green Building Standards, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry

Timber groups praise USDA decision on wood

March 31st, 2011

It’s long been known that wood is one of the greenest building materials in the world, and that wood was green before “green building” was even a buzzword. Now the U.S. government officially agrees.

This week U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the federal government will promote and research the use of wood as a green building material, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Forestry Service will preferentially select wood in new building construction.

According to Vilsack: “Wood has a vital role to play in meeting the growing demand for green building materials… (the) USDA has made a strong commitment to conserving and restoring our forests to protect watersheds, recreation, and rural jobs.”

Vilsack directed all USDA agencies to make domestic wood the preferred choice for new construction, just like the Forest Service already does. And Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said his agency will increase its use of locally milled timber in new buildings.

“Our country has the resources, the work force and the innovative spirit to reintroduce wood products into all aspects of the next generation of buildings,” Tidwell said.

The announcement was also a boon for the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) because Vilsack said the Forest Service will promote not just the LEED building standard but also Green Globes and the National Green Building Standard, both of which recognize SFI.

Here’s some of the reaction from SFI President Kathy Abusow:

“We thank Secretary Vilsack for his leadership and for sending a message that the Administration is serious about the role wood can play in supporting green building initiatives, rural communities, and the overall sustainability of the forest sector.  The USDA strategy makes it clear that opportunities for wood and choice in green building rating tools are part of the solution.”

Several other groups also commended federal officials for their new stance.

Dave Tenny, CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners:

“Secretary (Vilsack) understands that for the past century the increased use of wood to build homes and other buildings has been our nation’s most important forest conservation tool. Thanks to growing markets for wood we have 50% more trees today than we had 50 years ago.

These same markets also provide jobs for 2.5 million Americans and $87 billion in paychecks annually for American families, particularly in rural areas. Wood provides a perfect blend of economic and environmental benefits. As we promote the use of building products from wood we help clean our air of excess carbon, keep rivers and streams pure and maintain wildlife habitat while at the same time providing economic security to rural communities and creating jobs and economic growth throughout the country.”

The Nature Conservancy:

“Managed properly, forests are, literally, a green resource. The use of wood is good for the American economy and, particularly for the economy of rural America. These economic uses are compatible with protection of our environment.”

Mr. Cees de Jager, Executive Director of the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, a nonprofit created by the U.S. and Canadian governments, said the U.S. decision was a “triple win.”

“This will create new jobs in rural communities, reduce energy use in buildings, and lower overall construction costs in buildings. USDA is taking a leadership role in the U.S. to put people back to work in rural communities and help our environment.”

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Posted in Green Building Standards, Timber Industry

Seattle Times strikes out on biomass

March 25th, 2011

The Seattle Times dropped the ball in its front-page story this week on the biomass industry. As the story points out, Washington is one of the country’s leading producers of biomass power, with a dozen plants operating and four more in the works. So taking a look at the state of the industry is a legitimate news story.

Unfortunately, the Times allowed the views of environmental groups to take control of its story, shifting it from a fair-minded look at the industry to a polemic that inaccurately portrays the industry as struggling, when in fact biomass is one of the fastest-growing energy industries in the world, with the support of the Obama administration and local and federal elected officials across the political spectrum.

The Times article cites “new studies” and “sophisticated calculations” that purportedly question the greenness of biomass, but the evidence is nowhere to be seen in the story. The only study cited is a study out of Massachusetts from June 2010 that has been widely discredited and whose own authors have said was misreported by the media and environmental groups. (We wrote about the study here and here.)

The Times’ reliance on a single study, as well as an inaccurate description of its conclusions, was so egregious that the Washington Department of Natural Resources posted a response to the story’s errors this week.

Here is an excerpt:

The (Times) article refers to a study commissioned by the Massachusetts’ Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences to report that using biomass for energy is “more polluting …than coal”.  This claim, widely circulated in the media when the study was first published, has been repudiated by Manomet as a misinterpretation of their findings in June of 2010.

The Massachusetts study is actually the only major study that the press or biomass opponents can hang their hat on, and yet that study does not even make the conclusions that environmental groups try to claim it does.

Biomass is still a new technology, but the only “challenge” to the growing biomass industry is from environmental groups who don’t have the facts on their side. Their views are worth reporting, but the Times treated them as gospel, which shattered the credibility of the paper’s story.

What is clear is that biomass isn’t just carbon neutral; it gives forest owners an economic incentive to keep their land free from development, provides jobs for struggling rural communities and is one of our country’s most promising clean energy sources.

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Posted in Biomass, Timber Industry, Washington

The dark side of green policy

March 17th, 2011

While it is very popular nowadays for everything to be green and environmentally sustainable, as it should be, the federal policies pursued for the sake of a so-called “green” standard can have negative consequences.

Niger Innis, the spokesman for the Congress on Racial Equality, delves into these questions this week in a three-part series, “Green Injustice,” in the Washington Examiner.

In the series (Part I, Part II and Part III), Innis describes how large corporations, environmental groups and the Obama administation hurt poor people and poor countries in their quest for “green” products and policies.

In Part I, he says that Obama is raising the price of energy through his pursuit of a cap-and-trade policy and increased emission controls, and also advocating for budget cuts to the national low-income home energy assistance program.

…(I)t is simply mind-boggling that Obama would push such a heartless one-two punch by advancing policies that raise energy costs while at the same time removing policies that help poor people meet energy needs. It’s as if they want the poor to freeze in the winter or suffer heat stroke in the summer.

In Part II, he takes a look at the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a wood certification standard that was started by environmental groups and is being pitched as a way to ensure wood products are green and sustainable. But the FSC standards vary widely by country, which makes it more difficult for developing countries to compete in the wood products marketplace. FSC also purports to be the best wood certification standard, when in fact the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is the most popular standard in the U.S.

What this means in practice is that poor countries in the developing world are penalized in the marketplace. Green groups don’t care about the fate of the people in these countries. And the greens’ business partners in Europe’s forestry and paper industries are laughing all the way to the bank.

The results are not pretty.

Simply put, FSC certification raises the costs of almost, well, everything. In addition to coffee cups and grocery bags, paper products are a basic material used widely by just about every industry you can imagine. Globalization as we know it isn’t possible without abundant paper goods made for packing and transporting.

…The greatest harm is to poor men and women in developing countries. Trade in global markets is their lifeline and their best chance for raising living standards to those we in wealthy countries enjoy. But unfair schemes like FSC make the rise from poverty that much harder.

In Part III, Innis turns his eye on large corporations and says their policy of “Corporate Social Responsibility” has them pursuing products and policies that are supposed to be sustainable and make the world better, but in practice unfairly cut developing countries out of the new global economy.

At the end of the day, (Corporate Social Responsibility) is an infinitely malleable term that, like fair trade, has been hijacked by politically motivated ideological and special interest groups to undermine commerce and entrepreneurship. In its current form, CSR offers no hope that it will improve the living standards or dignity of those most disadvantaged in society.

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Posted in Federal Issues, Forestry Research, Timber Industry

Newspaper series on forestry goes off track

March 11th, 2011

The East Oregonian Co., which owns seven small newspapers in the Northwest, started a series of articles this week called “Fate of Our Forest.” The stories examine the changing face of the timber industry in Oregon and Washington, and we appreciate the coverage. Unfortunately, the newspaper company has already had its share of inaccuracies and distortions in the series.

Here are a couple examples:

One of the company’s papers, The Chinook Observer in Pacific County, Wash., took a look this week at the changing face of land ownership in the county, including the timber companies that are among the county’s biggest landowners.

But the Observer tried to make it sound like timber companies are trying to get away with something:

On the other hand, the recent purchaser of much of (Weyerhaeuser’s) hemlock forestland in the county, John Hancock Life Insurance, now is 16th on the list of biggest property owners in the county. Though it paid $126 million for the land, it is valued at only $2,312,800 due to a state law that grants timber companies an exception to the prevailing rule for everyone else that requires property assessments and taxes to be based on full market value.

In fact, John Hancock will be taxed on the full value of the land. Like all companies, when the timber is harvested, Hancock will have to pay forest harvest excise tax to the state. The Washington state timber industry as a whole paid $23 million in forest harvest excise tax, a significant boost to state coffers.

The Observer, in two other stories (here and here), also gives a lot of ink and quotes to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest certification system and its adherents. The paper tries to paint the FSC standard as the future of the industry, even while it admits “FSC-certified wood is not big business yet and may never be.”

It’s true that the market for sustainably harvested wood continues to grow, but FSC is a small and minor standard. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) standard is the leader both nationally and in the Pacific Northwest, by a large margin, and yet the Observer never even mentions it.

A newspaper series can’t provide an accurate depiction of an industry if it ignores the realities of the business on the ground.

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Posted in Oregon, Pacific Northwest, State Issues, Timber Industry, Washington

Old hands contribute to timber industry’s future

March 4th, 2011

Jerry Franklin, a retired professor of ecosystem science at University of Washington, and Norm Johnson, a retired professor of forestry resources at Oregon State University, are veterans of the timber wars of the last few decades. They even helped write the Northwest Forest Plan, which is still in effect today.

And now, in Roseburg and Medford, Ore., Franklin and Johnson are helping lead pilot projects on federal land that might be a significant step toward timber solutions that address the needs of not just timber companies but rural communities and environmental groups.

It’s a tricky proposition, but if anyone has the know-how, it’s Franklin and Johnson.

(The professors) have proposed two strategies based on the type of forest being managed.

Moist forests — flush with Douglas fir and western cedar that experience fewer but more catastrophic fires — would be treated differently than dry forests dominated by pine and which experience more frequent but lower-intensity fires.

Managing dry forests would mean leaving the oldest trees, thinning to reduce the fuels that can drive intense wildfire and increasing the diversity of age classes among the trees.

Management on moist forests would put an end to regeneration harvests, a technique also known as clear-cutting, in favor of “variable retention harvesting,” a strategy that leaves 20 or 30 percent of the trees.

Tom Partin, the president of the American Forest Resource Council, told the Eugene Register-Guard that his group supports the dry forest strategy but not the project for wet forests.

Francis Eatherington with the environmental group Cascadia Wildlands said she’s not so sure about the projects and that there is no gridlock to solve in how forests are managed.

But the pilot projects are a start. And we’re glad to see two veterans of the timber wars out there trying to come up with new solutions.

Another compelling project, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, is studying the feasability of growing moss commercially. There is a high demand for moss from the floral industry, which consumes 37 million dry kilograms of moss each year. Because of the high demand, many people harvest moss illegally from private and public forestland, which can hurt the health of forests.

The commercial viability of moss is another example of the richness of our working forests. Our forestland is about much more than just trees.

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Posted in Federal Issues, Forestry Research, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry, Washington

New spotted owl plan is rushed and off-target, forestry groups say

February 25th, 2011

Forestry groups representing timber companies across the territory of the spotted owl recently sent a joint letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service saying that the new owl recovery plan is coming out too soon and without the best science to back it up.

The new plan is expected to be released any day now, and the federal government says it will be final, even though there are still several months before a court-ordered deadline of June 1.

The letter was signed by the National Alliance of Forest Owners, American Forest Resource Council, California Forestry Association, Washington Forest Protection Association and the Oregon Forest Industries Council.

Here is what the groups had to say in a press release accompanying the letter:

Instead, the recovery plan would hurt forest owners and the rural economy by tying up private lands, and increase the risk of wildfire by reducing efforts to thin forests and improve forest health.  The plan also offers few remedies for the central factor in the spotted owl’s decline: the invasion of a more dominant species, the barred owl.

“We agree with the communities, conservation groups and Federal agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service, who continue to express grave concerns about the spotted owl plan as written.” said David Tenny, President and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners.  ”The draft plan was incomplete and in need of additional science and input from resource experts to address key shortcomings affecting owl recovery.  The expedited pace for publishing the final rule ahead of the June 1 deadline suggests that the agency has not adequately addressed these shortcomings, and the agency hasn’t provided a good answer for why it is moving so quickly.”

No one seems to be happy with this spotted owl plan — environmental groups and timber companies both — and yet the federal government is still trying to ram it through.

California Forestry Association President David Bischel stated, “Ironically, some of the most robust populations of Northern Spotted Owls occupy sustainably managed private forests of Northern California.  The proposed recovery plan completely ignores the positive benefits provided by pro-active forest management, and potentially adds more regulatory gridlock without focusing on the two most significant impacts to Northern Spotted Owl populations … namely risk of habitat loss from catastrophic wildfire, and the invasion of the more dominant Barred Owl species.”

“The new federal plan focuses instead on the taking of private forestland, which will hurt timber communities without helping the spotted owl,” said Ray Wilkeson, President of the Oregon Forest Industries Council.

“There is no evidence the sweeping policy changes contained in the draft plan will help the owl.  Instead, they will lead to at least a 30 percent reduction in commercial thinning harvest volume on Forest Service lands where the owl lives.  This not only hurts forest health, it will lead to further job loss in a time of unprecedented unemployment in our rural communities,” said Tom Partin, President of the American Forest Resource Council.

The battle to come up with a plan that actually helps the owl, while still maintaining our rural economies, will be an ongoing process and continue long after the new plan comes out in the next week. But what federal officials have come up with so far is not promising, to say the least.

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

The promise of biomass over coal

February 18th, 2011

The Seattle Times recently ran a laughable op-ed from an anti-biomass activist, full of wild and unsubstantiated claims about the industry. Duff Badgley tries, for instance, to claim that there won’t be enough woody debris to supply the biomass plants that are being built in Washington, when in fact the University of Washington just completed a study of the six counties most likely to host biomass plants and found there would be plenty of debris to supply the plants.

Badgley also criticized Peter Goldmark, the state commissioner of public lands, for his proposal to use biomass to make jet fuel. Goldmark is coming up with innovative solutions to meet our country’s renewable energy goals, and all a guy like Badgley can do is make empty complaints.

Goldmark himself had an op-ed in the Times a few days later, where he describes the benefits of biomass and contradicts the small number of activists who would rather live with dirty fossil fuels than explore clean alternatives.

At the same time, we have no time to waste. If we let our fears about the challenges of renewable-energy technology stop us in our tracks, we will never achieve the very real environmental gains that these technologies offer. If we refuse to move forward with biomass, then the burning of more coal and fossil fuels will be the alternative. A renewable-energy future fulfills our state and national imperative to wean ourselves off imported oil.

Meanwhile, biomass has been at the forefront of discussion in Oregon as well. Gov. John Kitzhaber just announced a grant program that will allow forest product companies to complete feasibility studies for possible biomass plants. Kitzhaber, who was newly elected in November after serving as governor from 1995-2003, has made biomass one of the highlights of his economic agenda.

President Obama visited the Portland area this week, and Tony Hyde, a Columbia County commissioner, used an op-ed in the Oregonian to encourage the president to let the biomass industry move forward and become a viable alternative to fossil fuels. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently delayed its regulatory decision on biomass emissions for three years, but it’s still unclear what its final decision will be.

Hyde said the biomass industry could have faced “possible extinction” if the EPA had decided this year to treat biomass emissions just like those from coal plants.

In fact, recent data supported Oregonians’ concerns about the effect of the (EPA) tailoring rule on the biomass industry. In December, Forisk Consulting found that the tailoring rule would have jeopardized as many as 26,000 renewable energy jobs and $18 billion in capital investment, as well as put more than 130 renewable energy projects at risk of delay or even cancellation. In addition, as many as 30 states would have been unable to achieve a 15 percent renewable energy standard — a standard much lower than the 25 percent that our state is attempting to achieve.

Hyde certainly speaks for everyone involved in the biomass industry when he writes:

I urge the president to take a look at our state’s potential for renewable energy generation and green job creation and affirm the carbon neutrality of biomass while taking steps to support the long-term growth of the industry.

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Posted in Biomass, Climate Change, Federal Issues, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry, Washington

Taking a shotgun approach to a thorny problem

February 11th, 2011

The federal government just does not seem like it knows what it wants to do about the spotted owl.

First, the Bureau of Land Management pulled out of a timber sale in Southern Oregon because it said the sale could not meet new logging restrictions designed to protect the spotted owl.

This did not go over well with timber companies.

“If (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar) is sincere about trying to get timber going again for counties and local businesses down there, they’ve got to take on things with big problems,” said Scott Horngren, an attorney for the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group in Portland. “If they are not going to do that, you’re just basically playing games.”

The federal government doesn’t even know what those new logging restrictions are going to be. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is still working on a new spotted owl recovery plan, and the early draft that’s been released is full of problems.

Just last weekend, the Oregonian broke the news that the feds are considering shooting barred owls as part of the new spotted owl recovery plan. As part of the story, the reporter tagged along with timber managers as they shot barred owls with a shotgun, and accompanying the story is a photo of 4 dead barred owls splayed out on a table.

The Oregonian’s story has attracted a lot of comments, and both environmental groups and timber advocates seem to be somewhat surprised that the federal government would take such an unusual step.

In the article, some timber leaders and local officials say the proposal is a sign that the federal government is grasping at straws and doesn’t know what it’s doing.

Down in timber country, Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson  calls the proposal to shoot barred owls an example of “dysfunctional” forest policy. Counties like his depend economically on federal timber, which Robertson says is managed to benefit a species that can’t be recovered.

“When nature takes a turn, it’s going to prevail no matter what we try to do,” he says. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s nonsense to shoot one species to benefit another. I don’t think the public will accept it.”

The proposal is also another reminder that the barred owl, a larger and more aggressive species, is the primary reason why the spotted owl is still in decline 20 years after being listed as endangered. So why does the federal government still seem intent on taking more forestland away in the new recovery plan to provide for habitat, while at the same time going to such radical means to eliminate the barred owl?

The shootout does interfere with what happens in nature all the time: survival of the fittest.

“Population dynamics between two native species should not be artificially manipulated,” says Blake Murden, wildlife and fisheries director for Port Blakely Tree Farms in Tumwater, Wash. The company is not anti-owl. In 2009 it agreed to manage 45,000 acres as spotted owl habitat in exchange for protection from additional logging restrictions.

Murden says barred owls expanded rapidly because they adapt well to mixed habitat and eat a variety of prey, while spotted owls prefer old-growth to nest and, in most of its range, flying squirrels to eat.

“It’s a generalist and a specialist,” Murden says, “and invariably the generalist will win.”

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

Three-year EPA delay is a big statement

February 3rd, 2011

While biomass projects have recently made the news in Mason County and Thurston County in Washington state, the burgeoning biomass industry is also continuing to resonate on a national scale.

The Boston Globe recently ran dueling op-eds, in favor and in opposition to biomass, and both pieces use as a jumping off point the EPA’s recent decision to put off any potential biomass restrictions for three years.  Writing in opposition to biomass are Mary Booth and Richard Wiles, advocates from environmental groups, and in support is Bob Cleaves, president of the Biomass Power Association.

Booth and Wiles rest their entire op-ed on the straw man argument that biomass plants sometime in the future will cut down entire trees, rather than wood waste. This was the same false pretense behind a fundamentally flawed Massachusetts study last year whose own authors said was misreported by the press, and in turn, environmental groups.

At least Booth and Wiles admit the EPA’s decision to put off potential greenhouse-gas restrictions on biomass for three years was a negative development for the parties who are trying to kill the biomass industry. Nathanael Greene at the National Resources Defense Council, in his description of the Boston Globe op-eds, said the three-year delay was “only a timeout.” We agree that the EPA could still end up hurting the biomass industry with onerous regulations, but three years is quite a timeout.

Cleaves, in his op-ed, points out that the EPA has concluded that “biomass plays an important role in ‘addressing climate change and enhancing forest management’’ and that states now have a legal and scientific basis for concluding that biomass for energy is the ‘best available control technology’’ to curb greenhouse gases.”

He goes on to conclude:

The EPA’s three-year deferral is a clear signal of support for owners, operators, and developers of biomass projects looking for some modicum of regulatory certainty in the near-term. And it has important implications for natural resource-based economies throughout rural America. That stack of waste wood left over from a logging operation in Massachusetts, or orchard prunings left behind in California, or rice hulls from a mill in Louisiana — it’s all renewable and will be a wasted opportunity if we don’t grow and promote this sector…

…The EPA is finally beginning to embrace biomass, and we promise it will benefit our country. The decision is a win for the environment and a win for the nation’s energy future.

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Posted in Biomass, Carbon Sequestration, Federal Issues, Massachusetts, Pacific Northwest, Timber Industry