CALENDAR
March 12 - Wed. 7 p.m. - QUAFCO meeting - 210 Taylor, #19 upstairs, Port Townsend
March 20 - Thurs. 7 p.m. - Adaptive Management Area discussion - Sightlines Theater at Jefferson County Fairgrounds - see following article
April 15 - Tues. 7 p.m. - Native Plant Society mtg.- Dan Norris on "Role of Bryophytes in Temperate Rainforests" - WSU Cooperative Extension office, Shold Business Park
May 3 & 4 - Sat. & Sun. - Western Washington Forest Conference - Cispus Center near Randle, Washington
Call 385-6271 for info on any of the above
ATTENTION AND ATTENDANCE NEEDED
Olympic National Forest (Oly) staff are meeting with various groups during planning for their Adaptive Management Area (AMA). On March 20 they will be meeting with local environmentalists in Port Townsend to explain the planning process, and to solicit ideas and comments.
The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, identified land allocations -- such as LSRs, Riparian Reserves and AMAs -- for Northwest federal forests.
In the Record of Decision (ROD), Late-Successional Reserves (LSRs) are identified with an objective to protect and enhance conditions of late-successional and old-growth forests. Riparian Reserves generally parallel the stream network but also include other areas necessary for maintaining hydrologic, geomorphic, and ecologic processes. Adaptive Management Areas were identified to develop and test new management approaches to integrate and achieve ecological and economic health, and other social objectives.
The Olympic AMA was described in the ROD to "Create a partnership with the Olympic State Experimental Forest established by Washington Department of Natural Resources. Develop and test innovative approaches at the stand and landscape level for integration of ecological and economic objectives, including restoration of structural complexity to simplified forests and streams and development of more diverse managed forests through appropriate silvicultural approaches such as long rotations and partial retention. All occupied marbled murrelet sites will be surveyed for and protected. LS/OG 1 and LS/OG 2 [ecologically-significant classifications of late-successional and old-growth forests] are to be managed as Late-Successional Reserve except in the Quinault Special Management Area. The Quinault Special Management Area will continue to be managed in accordance with Public Law 100-638 which designated the area."
Now the Oly is developing a plan to implement the above direction and we need to let them know what issues and concerns we have. At the meeting we will see a map of the area (really many separate pieces of the Forest around the Peninsula) and be able to have our questions addressed.
The Oly AMA consists of 125,000 acres of the Olympic National Forest. About half of this area lies along streams and is classified as Riparian Reserve. These lands are primarily made up of managed and naturally-initiated younger forest stands.
The Olympic National Forest states that "Learning is a key element in the adaptive management process. Learning may involve everything from biological and technical research to new ways of interacting with communities and doing administrative business."
"Because this AMA is dominated by younger, smaller diameter timber stands, it provides an opportunity to investigate a variety of approaches to managing younger stands in ways that balance ecosystem management goals with social and economic goals. The AMA can be considered a testing ground for strategies which may later be applied to other areas such as Reserves..."
"Other possible areas for exploration include alternative forest products, watershed restoration, fish habitat improvement, and recreation."
The Oly is developing its AMA Guide, which "captures the vision of the managers and communities in the area for the AMA...This vision is intended to be the result of a thorough interchange of ideas with the communities served by and affected by the AMA."
The meeting will be in the Sightlines Theater at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Come in the main fairgrounds entrance, and it's the third building on the right. The Forest Service needs to hear support for ecologic AMA goals, as well as economic ones.
The Western Ancient Forest Campaign (WAFC) coordinated the creation of The Grassroots Forest Appropriations Initiative (FY 98). Though not sponsored legislation, it is being used to educate Members of Congress throughout the appropriations process. The text follows:
The Timber Logging Rider clearly demonstrated the Forest Service's lack of accountability: healthy, green forests were logged as "salvage sales," water quality was endangered in the name of "forest health," and no record exists that even a dime from any of the salvage sales sold under the Rider made its way to the U.S. Treasury. As a result of the failure of the Forest Service to protect the full range of forest values in the national forests under their management, both the ecological integrity of our forests and the well being of federal taxpayers were sacrificed.
We urge the 105th Congress to take the following steps to restore the accountability of the Forest Service and protect the interests of both taxpayers and our natural environment:
1. Prohibit new road building on the national forests by ending any appropriation for new roads and by prohibiting the use of purchaser road credits to build new roads. The elimination of purchaser road credits in the President's budget is a good first step.
2. Prohibit logging and road building on unstable and potentially unstable national forest land. Re-cent landslides in the West have demonstrated the "hidden costs" to public safety and to the environment of subsidized logging and road building on steep, unstable slopes.
3. Restore accountability by reforming or abolishing off-budget funds. There is a growing consensus that the various off-budget funds -- the Knudsen-Vandenburg (KV), Brush Disposal and Salvage Funds -- must be either reformed or abolished. The Green Scissors Coalition urges abolishing the Salvage Fund and the Clinton Administration proposes new limits on this fund in the 1998 budget. The
Administration has also proposed the creation of a new fund for ecosystem restoration called the Forest Ecosystem Restoration and Maintenance Fund (FERM). While we support the intent of the new FERM fund, as currently envisioned it would only perpetuate the same perverse incentive to log that plague the other funds. Instead, we support the Administration's request for $30 million of appropriated funds for restoration activities and urge Congress to appropriate necessary funds for restoration rather than creating another off-budget fund.
4. End money-losing timber sales. The annual report of the White House Council of Economic Advisors shows that the Forest Service spent $234 million more than it collected in timber receipts in 1995. "Generally, the Forest Service subsidizes timber extraction from public lands by collecting less timber sale revenues than it spends on timber program costs," the report says. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO), the timber sale program lost nearly $1 billion from 1992-1994. For the sake of both the environment and the tax-payer, it is time to end subsidized logging on the National Forests.
Sen. Larry Craig's "workshops" on his proposed timber industry legislation began their second phase, after two sessions in which "the arguments were the same as ever," according to AP.
He said that one thing all sides agree on is that the "laws need fixing," but Kevin Kirchner of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund disagrees. "The laws aren't broken," Kirchner told AP. "The problems are with implementation and the Forest Service's drive to manage trees for production of timber."
A committee aide told AP that after the workshops are completed late this month, the next step "is to see if the Administration is interested in sitting down and talking about what a bipartisan bill would look like." Craig has said it may take "years" to complete his agenda, but individual sections of the bill may be pulled from the package and moved on their own.
WAFC reports that in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Chief of the Forest Service Michael Dombeck stated, "The unfortunate reality is that many people presently do not trust us to do the right thing. Until we rebuild that trust and strengthen those relationships, it is simply common sense that we avoid riparian, old growth, and roadless areas." We hope to translate this statement into tangible policy to keep logging out of these critical areas.
The annual meeting of the Wash. State SAF will be held at Fort Worden in Port Townsend, April 3-5. Programs available to non-members will be presented on April 4 and tours offered on April 5.
General areas of topics include: Using Reflection as a Tool to Predict the Future; Current Strategies to Control Dynamic Change at the Local Level; and Where Do We Go From Here?
Speakers include federal, state and private land managers, as well as Chad Oliver, Silviculture Professor at UW, who will speak on "Landscape Management and Forest Health: Tools in Managing Dynamic Change in Forestry."
Non-member registration is $75 and should be sent by March 17 to Admiralty Inlet Chapter, c/o Ed Hartley, 246 Payne Road, Quilcene, WA 98376. You may also call 385-6271 for more information.
NOTE THE MAY ACTIVIST CONFERENCE
Remember to contact the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, P.O. Box 84542, Vancouver, WA 98684-0542, call David Jennings at 360/866-7551, or e-mail him at 71634.127@compuserve.com to get a conference brochure and registration form. See our Feb. newsletter for the May conference description.
QUAFCO News March 1997
Copyright © 1997, Quilcene Ancient Forest Coalition All rights reserved.
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