"It's premature to lock something in for 50 years when we see this
radical ... and rapid change coming," Williams said. Some Native
Americans also were unhappy that the plan didn't protect certain animals, such
as elk that live in old-growth forests.
Federal wildlife officials say that despite the doubts, Forests and Fish is
one of the best big plans to save salmon they have seen.
"The state really needs to be commended for stepping out and putting
into place some constructive actions long before the federal government took
any regulatory action," said David Allen, regional director of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service.
Supporters argue that the deal represents real progress in keeping streams
clear and cold enough to safeguard salmon -- with rules stricter than those
imposed on timber elsewhere in the country. They promise to tighten
restrictions if necessary to save salmon -- but only if it keeps the timber
industry in business.
"This leads to actually getting habitat improved on the ground, rather
than arguing for years," said Tim Thompson, a lobbyist and former
congressional staff member who helped broker the deal. "Every day, with
those protections, (fish) get better. Without them, they don't."
Thompson asks: Are Washington's cities doing anything this far-reaching for
salmon? Washington's farmers? The timber industry's competitors in Idaho and
Oregon?
He says the answer is an emphatic no, and the timber industry should get
plaudits for its promises.
What do Weyerhaeuser, Longview Fibre and a host of other companies get out
of the deal? Just the promise of protection against prosecution, business
certainty and the peace of mind that goes with it.
The roots of the deal stretch back to a cooperative forum in the 1980s
among timber companies, tribes, environmentalists and others. After the
spotted-owl battles of the '90s, timber industry officials saw protections for
salmon coming down the pike.
So they began fashioning a plan to head off a showdown over the Endangered
Species Act. In 1999, the Forests and Fish agreement was reached -- minus the
environmentalists, who withdrew from the talks when they saw that the plan
headed toward an unacceptable result. Internal government documents obtained
by the P-I show that government scientists were leveling similar criticisms at
about the same time. A few tribes also refused to sign.
Theodore Meyers, a scientist in the Fisheries Service office in Boise,
Idaho, complained in February 1999 to superiors in Seattle, who already were
recommending the plan to the Legislature. He noted "significant
unresolved technical issues" and said their advocacy of the pact put the
agency in "a terribly awkward position."
Meyers' memo called the rationale for streamside tree buffers, a key
element of the plan, "thinly supported."
And yet, the man President Bush put in charge of the Fisheries Service in
the Northwest, Bob Lohn, now says of Forests and Fish: "This looks like
the answer."
"Nothing is more delightful than to come across the results of this
process, which come to us not only with a good scientific foundation, but also
with social support," Lohn recently told Gov. Christine Gregoire and
other state leaders.
Still, a key Lohn lieutenant, the Fisheries Service's Bob Turner, said of
the critics: "They're smart and they have this opinion, and we need to
respond to what they said, and we will. We're going to have to answer that
stuff."
When the deal was being cut in the late 1990s, Turner, head negotiator for
the Fisheries Service, saw a familiar face across the table representing the
timber industry: Wilkerson, the timber lobbyist, his childhood friend.
Occupying a third key chair at the talks was a longtime chum of theirs who
represented the state: Curt Smitch, the governor's chief salmon adviser.
Turner, Smitch and Wilkerson go way back, having crossed paths for years in
state and federal agencies.
Before Wilkerson was head of the timber lobby, he had the same job Smitch
was in during the negotiations: chief salmon adviser to the governor. Smitch
and Turner also once worked for Wilkerson at the state Fish and Wildlife
Department.
And they are, Smitch acknowledged, fishing buddies.
"We are friends and have been friends for a long time," Turner
said.
This close relationship among principals representing the timber industry,
the state and a pivotal federal agency calls into question to what degree the
timber industry got a sweet deal -- the deal Wilkerson bragged of publicly.
"The person who's supposed to be advocating for the endangered fish is
a buddy of the person representing the timber industry," said lawyer Toby
Thaler of the Washington Forest Law Center, which represents environmental
groups. "It's just unseemly. ... The public wasn't privy to the
discussions."
After the deal was sealed, Smitch left state government and now works --
promoting more habitat plans -- at the lobbying firm where Wilkerson once hung
his hat.
That firm, in turn, represents Wilkerson's timber group before Congress,
records show.
All three defended the deal and said their friendship, if anything, made
the pact better.
"We have been leaders on a variety of issues around here for along
time," Wilkerson said. "It's for other people to decide if we did
our jobs properly, but I can guarantee you there were some strong
disagreements between us."
Said Turner: "It's bigger than any one of the individuals
involved."
Stream buffer debate
The man Washington voters elected to regulate the timber industry points to
a stream passing under a forest road as it pours out of a plastic pipe 4 feet
above ground level, cascading down a pile of rocks.
He is beside a dirt road near Oakville, in Grays Harbor County, and he
fervently wants to impart the message that Forests and Fish is a good deal for
creatures.
"For a fish, that's like trying to swim into a fire hose," said
Doug Sutherland, commissioner of public lands. "There's no fish that's
going to go through that."
But nearby, at another stream, the problem has been fixed. Here, the
culvert carrying the stream under the road is big enough that Sutherland can
stand up inside. Water flows gently and slowly. This single repair cost about
$16,000, courtesy of the Port Blakely Tree Farms.
"It opens up that much more stream for spawning," Sutherland
said.
And the chief beneficiary is the coho salmon, said Kris Knutzen, a forester
at the state Department of Natural Resources. "The silvers -- they like
to get up in the smaller streams."
A few miles away, Sutherland points to one of the streamside tree buffers
required under Washington's rules before the Forests and Fish deal. A few
alders extend for perhaps 25 feet from the stream. Light and heat penetrate
easily to the water. It's easy to see the hills denuded by logging nearby.
But at another stream not far away, where new, larger buffers have been
left, the forest is deep, dark and wet. This fixing of culverts and leaving of
streamside trees are among the most important protections offered by the
Forests and Fish deal, along with the repair of logging roads that shed dirt
into streams.
It is all good for fish, but critics ask: Is it enough?
The streamside buffers accomplish a lot -- if the buffers are big enough.
That's an area of huge controversy.
As for fixing the roads, after the deal was reached, the law was changed so
that about a quarter of the roads, the responsibility of small timber owners,
came under more relaxed requirements.
The Legislature reasoned that getting the big timber companies to do their
part was better than having no improvements, and the old policy threatened to
backfire: Some owners of small timber plots, having no ready cash to fix the
roads, were preparing to log the land for the money or sell it for
development.
The negotiators of the plan said the state would need to spend $10 million
a year for 15 years fixing fish-blocking culverts on the small landowners'
property. In the last two years, the state has spent $2 million. The
Legislature last month doubled that for next year, but funded only $16 million
of the $29 million state officials said they needed to carry out the plan.
The Forests and Fish Plan also includes new restrictions on pesticide use,
some additional protection against logging-caused landslides that can smother
fish habitat, and more protections for wetlands.
But environmentalists and some scientists inside federal agencies have
other criticisms:
Buffer acreages are set too low.
More than 40 percent of the stream miles would not be protected by
buffers, including streams that run dry part of the year, even though
scientists say these streams are important to salmon.
Trees could be cut along half the length of small streams where no
fish live, even though scientists say those streams appear at least as
important to fish as are larger streams. Forests along small streams cool
the water, hold in place and filter out stream-clouding dirt, provide leaves
that feed the food chain and send logs tumbling downstream to block streams,
creating fish-friendly pools.
A complicated formula would determine how many trees may be cut in areas
near but not immediately adjacent to streams. That formula would have to be
enforced by a Department of Natural Resources staff too small to adequately
monitor the cutting.
DNR acknowledges that it is impossible for its foresters to inspect each
of the approximately 6,500 timber cuts it authorizes each year, so it
concentrates on the most likely problem areas. The average workload is about
160 per inspector per year, the agency says.
Complaints spur few changes
Ask any proponent about the plan's alleged shortcomings and he will point
to the plan's promise of an ongoing, collaborative research program to learn
the science of saving fish.
But after five years and $24 million in federal spending, the program has
yielded few changes. When the deal was reached, crucial questions were left
to be sorted out later: How many miles of streams would get the timber
buffers? How many trees could be cut inside the buffers?
Two critical pieces of science have been churned out by the research
effort to answer those questions. Those answers mean big money for the
timber industry, and probably won't be settled before federal officials
approve the overall plan.
Then two committees with heavy industry input, one of scientists and one
of policy-makers, will recommend action to the Forest Practices Board, which
has the final decision.
This setup concerned the Independent Science Panel, a group of experts
authorized by the Legislature and appointed by Locke to analyze the state's
salmon-recovery efforts.
"Such control of the process by groups with a vested interest in the
outcome has the potential to jeopardize the integrity of the scientific
process," the panel said in May 2000.
In recent weeks, however, the opposite happened. Timber industry
representatives were angered when state officials refused to go ahead with a
study measuring where fish are found in streams. The upcoming drought might
skew the results, state officials reasoned.
Timber lobbyist Josh Weiss called it a stall. "It is a serious
allegation. Our caucus feels very strongly about it," he said.
"It's (one of) a thousand little decisions that don't get us over the
goal line."
A review organized by the American Fisheries Society and the Society for
Ecological Restoration concluded that the Forests and Fish plan doesn't back
up its assertions with citations of scientific studies. "A surprising
portion" of the information presented is inaccurate and the plan
appears "ill-informed," that review said.
The plan sets a goal of streamside tree buffers that function as if they
were 140 years old, but settles for stands equivalent to only 80 or 90 years
old, the review said. "This apparent error will lead to higher rates of
logging in the inner zones of buffer strips than appear to have been
intended," the scientists said.
Lands Commissioner Sutherland and Lenny Young, head of Department of
Natural Resources' Forest Practices Division, didn't know about those
criticisms. They said they learned of it while on a forest tour with a P-I
reporter.
Wilkerson, the timber lobbyist, faulted the scientific critics for
failing to understand the deal.
"They weren't in the room. They weren't in the day-to-day
discussions and negotiations," Wilkerson said. "It wasn't the
industry that decided this outcome. We decided to go along with it."
Now that the plan is heading for approval by federal agencies, a huge
threat looms that could derail the whole process.
Federal agencies have been bankrolling the research program to justify
the plan scientifically, at the rate of about $4 million a year. But that
obligation ends in 2006. Who will foot the bill after that?
At a meeting last month of the self-selecting committee that runs the
Forests and Fish effort, representatives of the state, timber companies,
tribes, federal agencies and environmentalists wrestled with how to sustain
the research effort critical to the program's success.
Regarding a study scheduled for 2006 to 2010 to determine how well
streamside buffers work, research coordinator Geoff McNaughton at the
Department of Natural Resources said, "Even though it's a very high
priority project, that one project could wipe out all our available
monies."
Just keeping federal money flowing next year could be difficult --
despite support from U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a senior member of the
House Appropriations Committee.
"We're committed to it," said George Behan, Dicks' chief of
staff. "Now the question is, given the priorities of Congress, can we
continue to do that on an ongoing basis?"
The true test of whether Forests and Fish is a habitat conservation plan
worthy of the name will come not in the next few months, as federal agencies
review the plan, but rather in the years ahead as the research program goes
ahead.
John Warjone, president of Port Blakely Tree Farms, said the public
should trust that the timber industry will do the right thing. "It's a
collaborative and scientific approach." he said. "We will go where
the science takes us."
Environmentalists have warily rejoined efforts to carry out the plan,
after failing to stop it in court.
Said Peter Goldman of the Washington Forest Law Center, a longtime plan
critic: "We are very concerned about the politics and the economics
trumping science. We're concerned that this thing has a glass ceiling over
it."
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