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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And joining me is my friend and Chief Legal Counsel and Principal of Silvix Resources, Susan Jane Brown, or SJ as I'll call her throughout the show. Hey, SJ.

SJ BROWN:

Hey, Tom, thanks for the invitation. I appreciate it.

WHEELER:

All right. So we're talking about the Northwest Forest Plan today, which I, in my opinion, is the most consequential single thing to probably ever happen to a Pacific Northwest forest ever. I don't know. Like maybe there was like a volcano eruption that I'm not familiar with, but this is, this is a really important part of Pacific Northwest legal history, environmental history, and it's up for revision or amendment this year. And so let's get into what the heck the Northwest Forest Plan is because even though it's so consequential, so important, I think a lot of people, if they're not weird forest nerds like ourselves, may not know what this thing is. So take us back in time to maybe like the listing of the Northern Spotted Owl or maybe even before the Northern Spotted Owl was listed, the kind of events that inspired the generation of this plan.

BROWN:

Yeah, you're right that we've been implementing the Northwest Forest Plan for about 30 years or so. And over that time, I think a lot of folks have forgotten about the Northwest Forest Plan and how we got here. So it's a really good opportunity now that the Forest Service is considering an amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan to refresh our history. I think it's important for us to know our history because if we forget it, we're bound to repeat it and in probably not the best way possible. So yeah, a little historical deep dive.

So going back to the 1980s is where we should probably start. Back in the 1980s and early 90s, the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management were logging old growth forests. That was primarily what those agencies were doing at the time. That was the most popular land management, forest management approach on our national forests and federal public lands was to clear cut old growth forests. At the time, scientists and land managers believed that old growth forests were dark and decadent and biological deserts. And the best thing that we could do for those forests were to clear cut them and to replant them with thrifty young forests to grow new forests that were better for dimensional lumber and other wood products other than old growth trees, which are very large but tend to have, because of their age, a lot of defect in them. They've got rot or broken limbs or what have you. And if you're trying to make a two by four, that's not really what you want.

So clear cutting those decadent forests, those ancient forests was what we were really doing in the 80s and 90s. That turns out to be a pretty poor land management tactic for wildlife. Expert wildlife biologists and others who were starting to research old growth forests were learning that there is this critter called the northern spotted owl that is dependent on old growth forests for survival. And as we were logging that habitat in the 80s and 90s, we were starting to see a corresponding drastic decline in spotted owl occurrences across the range of the species.

So that gave advocates like you and like me an opportunity to use this new biological information to try to stem the logging of old growth forests. Environmental advocates used this scientific information, ginned up a number of lawsuits challenging Forest Service and BLM management of these old growth forests and argued that the liquidation of ancient forests were pushing the owl towards extinction. And this was actually even before the owl was listed in 1990, that its numbers were in decline. It was a management indicator species being as so goes the species, so goes its habitat. And we were learning that its habitat was declining as was the viability of the owl, which pushed it to be listed under court order in 1990. So when the owl was listed in 1990, that was a bit of a wake-up call for those land managers for the Forest Service and BLM. And they spent the next couple of years in federal court losing, I might add, to the point where Judge Dwyer, who was a district court judge in the Western District of Washington, eventually issued a range-wide injunction on logging and spotted owl habitat.

And that was a real big wake-up call for the land management agencies. And they huddled and eventually came up with a scientific document that we call FEMAT, the Forest Ecosystem Management and Assessment Team's Report, which is a hefty compendium of best available science around how to manage these old growth forests. Based on FEMAT, the Forest Service and BLM crafted a land management plan that was an amendment to all national forests and BLM districts within the range of the northern spotted owl in 1994. And that amendment is called the Northwest Forest Plan. So in 1994, we implemented the plan, which the best way to think about it is it's a large-scale zoning plan. It divides up the landscape into different management areas. We have matrix lands, which are where program timber harvest is to occur. We have late successional reserves, which is a system of reserves where old growth forests are designed to be grown and stewarded over time. Riparian reserves, which are buffers around aquatic features. And then some other management prescriptions were also part of Northwest Forest Plan that were adopted by the Forest Service and BLM in 1994.

So we think of that plan and that era as the timber wars and Northwest Forest Plan being detente in those forest wars. And we've been living under it for the past 30 years. Forest Service is now thinking about making some changes, which is what we're here to talk about.

WHEELER:

All right. We've been living under it for the past 30 years. Was it a success? Has it been a good 30 years?

BROWN:

In a lot of ways, the Northwest Forest Plan was a huge success. Probably the biggest success from the Northwest Forest Plan is the aquatic conservation strategy, a strategy, as well as some land use allocations for riparian reserves, so buffers around those aquatic features like rivers or streams or headwaters or meadows or wetlands. And so there are no cut buffers around those aquatic areas, and then a requirement to maintain and restore nine principal functions and processes associated with the aquatic resource. So things like maintaining the temperature regime or the sediment regime or peak flows that are native to these forest ecosystems.

So the aquatic conservation strategy has been a huge success. It's increased water quality in our region and has dramatically improved salmon habitat. Now downside of the Northwest Forest Plan is that it probably, frankly, came a little too little too late. It did not stop the listing of the spotted owl or the marble marilet or any of our Pacific salmonid species. So in that way, we probably didn't stop the clear cutting of old growth soon enough. And those species are still trying to rebound as we go about protecting and restoring forest and aquatic ecosystems. In that way, it was kind of a mixed result. The Northwest Forest Plan also did put off limits to harvest some older forests in late successional reserves, but it did allow for the logging of about a million acres of old growth forests in the matrix and the harvest land base.

So on one hand, we conserved a bunch of forests in late successional reserves, but we also left a fair amount of it open to logging in the matrix, which really has been where the controversy has shifted over the past 30 years is to old growth logging in the matrix. The Northwest Forest Plan was a great start. It was the first ecosystem management plan of its kind, and perhaps the only one of its kind in the world. So a real innovative strategy that was way ahead of its time back in 1994. And we've learned some stuff since 1994. So it's time to amend the plan to incorporate that new information, best available Western and Indigenous science, and really improve upon what we did in 1994.

WHEELER:

So obviously 30 years ago, a lot's changed. I know that there were conversations about climate change 30 years ago, but they are far different than the conversations that we're having now. Fires and the risk to rural communities from fires was different than it is now. And so we have this struggle before us, which is we've had this plan, which has been successful in many respects, that was beloved by the environmental community because it was the kind of first of its kind, right? It was the ecosystem-based plan that ignored political boundaries and managed all the Pacific Northwest federal lands as one unit, which was really cool and inspiring and really spoke to a lot of what environmentalists would want have happened. But there's a need for change, and here we are in 2024 thinking about those changes.

One other piece that you mentioned, the incorporation of indigenous knowledge. That has also been a place of failure of the original 94 plan. What the Forest Service could or should be doing better to recognize the tribes that have been managing the forest of the Pacific Northwest since time immemorial. So you are part of a federal advisory committee, a group of citizens who come together at the behest of the federal government who provide recommendations to the federal government about what it should be doing. What did the federal advisory committee for the Northwest Forest Plan amendments, what did it end up saying about how it should rethink the relationship between federally recognized Native American tribes and the federal government in terms of forest management?

BROWN:

Yeah, so one of the things that the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994 did not do is it did not incorporate or reflect or involve the 82 plus tribes that call the Pacific Northwest region home. And so when you read the plan, there's nothing there. There is no real mention of treaty rights or tribal trust responsibilities or co-stewardship or co-management, nothing like that. And so it is a blank slate. Well, first of all, I should I should note that the committee is is a really interesting composition. First of all, we're all citizens. We're all volunteers. So we are not paid for our service on the Federal Advisory Committee.

It is a 21 member committee, a very diverse view. So you've got folks from the conservation community, from the timber industry, elected government, tribes, scientists, got all kinds of folks that are at the table here, which has been a really great and amazing experience. And one of the things that the committee has is eight members who are either Native or identify, self-identify as Native or work for tribes or both. That was intentional.

So there's the committee is heavily weighted with not only scientists, but also Indigenous perspectives, which is which is great. And that intention there is to correct the oversight in 1994 where no tribes were involved at all. So the Federal Advisory Committee has been meeting and we did just submit our first slate of consensus recommendations to the chief of the Forest Service and secretary of agriculture. In those recommendations are more than 100 recommendations having to do with tribal inclusion and trust responsibilities, treaty rights and Indigenous knowledge. And those plan components are very robust and really do center that Indigenous perspective right alongside Western science as a type or source of best available information, which under the Forest Service's planning rules is required to incorporate into plan revisions and amendments like the one that we are undertaking.

And so those amendments in particular really focus on issues that the committee heard from tribes and tribal staff during over the past year or so that we've been working. And we've heard concerns around access to first foods or access to places of ceremony and the desire to exclude non-Indigenous folks from those areas when tribes are practicing ceremony, for example. We heard a lot about hunting and gathering rights. We heard a lot about knowledge sovereignty, which allows for Indigenous folks to retain that information without disclosing it to sources that may not treat it with respect, for example.

We also included a number of plan components and recommendations around cultural burning, co-stewardship, tribal workforce development, Forest Service education about the treaty responsibility and trust responsibilities. So a lot of stuff came together in our recommendations around tribal inclusion in particular. And Forest Service leadership is very excited about that content because, again, we're working on a blank slate. Things have changed quite a bit over the past 30 years. And one of those things is the recognition of the role that Indigenous knowledge and science should play when it comes to land management. So we're pretty happy about being able to include a bunch of that in our recommendations. And I have every confidence that the Forest Service is going to adopt the bulk of that as part of their proposed action that we hope to see end of August or so.

WHEELER:

And speaking as one of the representatives of a forest defense organization that works within the Pacific Northwest, something I was very proud of was that all of our letters on Northwest Forest Plan amendments have started with a recognition that we need to do better by our Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest. There's a lot of buy-in from the environmental community on this, which it makes me very proud that this is a more big tent environmentalism that we're a part of.

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking about the Northwest Forest Plan, the most consequential single thing to probably ever happen to a Pacific Northwest forest, a really important part of Pacific Northwest legal history, environmental history, and it's up for revision or amendment this year.

Other things that are different now than 30 years ago, climate change and- The internet.

BROWN:

The internet, yeah.

WHEELER:

We have a stack of paper documents at EPIC that date from the original 94 plan that we still frequently thumb through. Climate change and the role of forests in sequestering and storing carbon. How are you thinking about climate change and what it means for the Pacific Northwest forests? And where has the Federal Advisory Committee come down on potential changes to the Northwest forest plan to better recognize the role of forests in mitigating the effects of climate change?

BROWN:

Yeah, so the amendment itself is styled as a climate smart forestry amendment. And so the question kind of is, well, what's climate smart forestry? And it looks like a lot of things, frankly. And it's kind of hard to put them into discrete buckets because we're talking about forest ecosystems and those are all related. But the committee was thinking about climate change through a number of our sets of recommendations, which are divided up into themes. So we have a theme on fire, we have a theme on climate change, we have a theme on forest stewardship. But they're all kind of related. And so the committee was thinking a lot about a warming climate and what that's going to mean for both the dry forests and the wet forests in the range of the spotted owl.

We were thinking a lot about disturbance, particularly fire, but also insects and disease, which we expect the rates of fire and insects and disease to increase with climate change. So how do we manage these forests to be resilient and resistant to those stressors and disturbances, understanding that we're not going to eliminate them nor would we want to, but how do we help these forests cope better with a changing climate? So we thought about fire, we thought a lot about a lot of time talking about mature and old growth conservation. And one of the best ways that we have to resist climate change is to protect our older forests because these forests are pretty resilient to stressors. They're pretty resilient to climate change, but some forests in the range of the spotted owl can do that better, particularly in our drier forests, which are typically found on the East slope of the Cascades and the Southern part of the range in Southern Oregon and into your neck of the woods in Northern California. As your members and followers know, it's hot and dry out there and it's getting hotter and drier, less precipitation when we expect it. And so how do we ensure that the forests that are properly functioning, so those moisture forests that have not missed a fire regime or a fire cycle and are properly functioning, how do we conserve those forests?

And for the forests that are out of whack and have missed a fire cycle or two, particularly our drier forests, how do we steward those forests in order to restore the resilience? In some places, it's going to mean some careful thinning and reintroduction of prescribed fire and cultural burning. In other places, it's going to look like leaving it alone. And so the committee recognized that different forests need different things to be resilient to climate change. And we tried with our recommendations to thread that needle, to express that difference in forest type and in responsible forest management and restoration.

So we think we did a pretty good job of threading that needle. I'm sure it was not perfect. We knew it was not perfect. And again, the committee, although we have a lot of scientific expertise on the committee, at the end of the day, how we manage our forests is really a social question. It's a question for average, ordinary people to decide. And experts can tell you, if you want X condition on the landscape, we can do A, B, C to get you there. But it's up to the public to decide how we want these lands to be stewarded. And the committee recognized that when we came to our consensus recommendations, that we could do more, we could do things differently, but based on where we think the social agreement is, we struck a balance where we're going to conserve a lot of forests, but we're also going to identify some forests for proactive stewardship at a pretty aggressive clip in order to give these forests as much hang time as we possibly can in an era of a warming planet or warming climate.

WHEELER:

So when you when you say these things, I think in theory, I agree with all of them. Right. I think that there is a need for greater force management, that we have historical conditions that are out of whack or we have current conditions that are out of whack with historical conditions that are leading to more extreme fire behavior.

The thing that I think makes me nervous is I don't trust the Forest Service. I'm not alone. I know that you don't trust the Forest Service either, because we've had many a conversation about the Forest Service. And so there's this element of faith that we're putting in the hands of the Forest Service here where we're saying, all right, we are going to remove some of the shackles from your your toolbox. You're going to be able to do more in the forest. We're encouraging you to do more in the forest. How can we ensure, though, that the force management that the Forest Service is going to do is actually going to be for the better? Because you and I have both seen the Forest Service come in and make fuel conditions worse through a supposed fuel reduction project, right? They'll they'll transfer fuels from vertical to horizontal. They'll take trees, they'll film, they'll create jackpots.

So talk me down off a ledge here. And I think that you're going to be doing a lot of this in the next couple of months as forest defense groups in the Pacific Northwest all see potential amendments. And we go, I've never trusted these people. They've always lied to me. Why should we give them more power and more discretion?

BROWN:

Yeah, I think it's that's the crux of the issue here. And again, I go back to what I said before, which is forest management really is a social question. The Forest Service is really struggling with a legacy of mistrust on the part of the public, because either managers actively misled the public, or were not clear about what the public could expect from land management. And when the public found out what it what the Forest Service meant, we didn't like it. There is a legacy there of PTSD, for real, on the part of the conservation community, also on the part of rural communities, and certainly on the part of tribes. Everybody's got some serious trust issues with the Forest Service.

I talk about that a lot with the Forest Service and encourage them to be honest and to own that and be like, Hey, look, we made some bad decisions. But we've learned from those decisions. And here's how we've learned from those decisions. But it's still really going to be up to the Forest Service at the end of the day to demonstrate that they understand that and that they are willing to hold themselves accountable. The Federal Advisory Committee submitted our recommendations to the agency. And it's now up to the Forest Service to to translate those recommendations into a proposed action that does what the committee intended, which is to allow for some flexibility in some places, not everywhere, but in some places that comes with an accountability price tag. So if you want flexibility, you're going to have to accept accountability, which means you need to be very transparent and honest with the public about how these forests are going to be managed.

I hope that the Forest Service, I believe that they, there are a lot of good people in the agency. And I believe that those folks want to do the right thing and are going to try to do the right thing. But they're probably not going to get it right either out of the gate, which is why we have a draft environmental impact statement that folks can weigh in on and provide comments on. And there will be changes between the draft environmental impact statement and the final environmental impact statement. So we have an opportunity to correct any oversights.

WHEELER:

You aren't a Forest Service employee, you served as a volunteer citizen on this federal advisory committee, but you probably know best, between the two of us, of what the Forest Service's process is for moving forward with completing this amendment. So where are we now, and where will you anticipate we will be, or what does the process look like for amending the Northwest Forest Plan?

BROWN:

Yeah, so right now the Forest Service is writing the draft environmental impact statement. That environmental impact statement will have a no action alternative, so no amendment. It will have a proposed preferred alternative, which the advisory committee understands will be based on our recommendations. And then at least two additional action alternatives, maybe a third. And those different action alternatives will explore, I presume, different levels of protection for forests and different levels of active management. So we'll get a range. The Forest Service right now is on track for releasing the draft environmental impact statement by the end of August, so in a month. That will go out for a 90 day comment period. So that will be September, October, November, and into December. And then the Forest Service expects to issue a final environmental impact statement in middle of 2025, maybe around May, which will initiate the administrative review process. So folks can file administrative objections if you don't like the proposed action that the Forest Service selects. And then the Forest Service will issue a record of decision selecting an alternative and choosing an amendment pathway by December of 2025. So we're looking at another year or so until this process is complete. And of course, a lot will depend on what happens in November.

WHEELER:

Yeah, a lot will depend on what happens in November. We're talking about the election. So SJ, I'm curious, as somebody who has been on the outside throwing stones, you have represented EPIC on a number of lawsuits against the Forest Service. You have been a good ground soldier in the timber wars. You have in the last year been on the inside of this federal advisory committee process. Has that changed the way that you think about these sorts of forest management issues? Or are you still kind of the same SJ that you were before all this started? I'm trying to get you just to reflect on the process of engaging on these thorny issues where you're trying to find consensus and trying to move forward with a room full of really disparate viewpoints.

BROWN:

I am certainly still the same person, but I still want to hold the Forest Service accountable. I think that, collectively, this group of people on the Federal Advisory Committee have done an incredible amount of work, and we've done something that no one has been able to do before. Even the Gang of Four and the team that drafted the Northwest Forest Plan, they were not able to put the old growth off the table, because it was still socially acceptable to log it. And we have done that, which is huge.

So I'm really proud of some of the changes that we've made, particularly around the tribal inclusion piece. And for stewardship, I think we've done some really incredible, amazing work there. And by God, I want to hold the agency accountable to it, so they better get it right. I hope that they will. I'm trying to be optimistic. I hope that they will. So I think that accountability piece is still really important. It is very interesting to be on the inside of this administrative bureaucratic process. It's not my first rodeo being on the inside, but at the scale and with as much history as there is behind the Northwest Forest Plan, it's weighty pressure, for sure. And what I've learned through that process is that the Forest Service is a giant bureaucracy. There are some really good people in the agency, and often best intent is foiled by that bureaucratic inertia. On one hand, I am still quite frustrated with my Forest Service partners and their inability to do stuff at the pace and scale and quality that I think they should. But I also have a better appreciation for the headwinds that they are facing. So I get that.

I think it's also been a really interesting opportunity to really hear from leaders of various stakeholder communities through the federal advisory process. For example, I'm co-chair of the Federal Advisory Committee with Travis Joseph, who is president of American Forest Resources Council, so the timber industry. So you've got environmental litigator and a timber beast co-chairing this committee. It's been a really good opportunity for me to talk with Travis and also Lindsay Warnas, who's on the committee, represents the timber industry as well, to get their understanding publicly and on the record about how the timber industry is looking at this stuff.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how honest the timber industry has been about what they want and what they need out of this process. They don't want the old growth. They don't want the oldest of the mature. They want something that is predictable. And if they can log forests that are younger than 120 years of age with some predictability, that's what they want. And that's kind of it. They don't want the old growth. They don't want a bunch of salvage volume and late successional reserves. That's refreshing. And I wouldn't have had that kind of insight. And that kind of insight would not have become publicly available without this committee and the work that we've been doing and our recommendations.

So I think it's been an opportunity to cut through and to let wildlife advocates or forest advocates or community advocates say their truth and be out there to have other people hear it. And for all of us to agree that, yeah, all of those things are important and we can do all of those things in this amendment. We've given it our best shot. Hopefully we'll deliver. Hopefully the Forest Service will deliver.

WHEELER:

Well, SJ, thank you so much for both coming on the show, but also for the service over the last year on the Federal Advisory Committee. I know that that work is not easy, and it's been evident how much time that you've invested and how much of yourself you've invested in this process. So as a friend, I really appreciate that. So be sure to pay attention to EPIC's homepage. Sign up for emails. There'll be more to come on Northwest Forest Plan amendments. I'm sure we will have a call to arms, so to speak. When things come out to try to get folks to advocate for a better, better amendment. So be on the lookout. And SJ, thank you so much again for for joining the show.

BROWN:

I appreciate the opportunity and yeah, everybody take a look at things and look forward to seeing you at the public comment opportunities. All right.

WHEELER:

This has been another episode of the Econews Report. Join us next week for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.