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- Title
THE WORLD'S LARGEST ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT PLAN: THE NORTHWEST FOREST PLAN AFTER A QUARTER-CENTURY.
- Authors
BLUMM, MICHAEL C.; BROWN, SUSAN JANE M.; STEWARTFUSEK, CHELSEA
- Abstract
For decades, the public forests of the Pacific Northwest were subject to widespread clearcutting of their old-growth trees as part of a federal policy promoting industrial logging. That era came to an end in the early 1990s, due to court injunctions enforcing environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, as a response to diminishing old-growth dependent species like the northern spotted owl. Fulfilling a campaign promise to resolue the contentious issue by protecting both wildlife habitat and a logging industry important to local communities, President Clinton and his administration conducted a remarkable 1993 symposium on the economics and science of preserving rapidly disappearing habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species like the northern spotted owl and several salmonids. The result was the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (the NFP or the Plan), widely recognized as the largest commitment to ecosystem management worldwide. Somewhat surprisingly, the NFP is still in effect ouer a quarter-century later, despite determined efforts to euiscerate it. This Article examines the NFP, its antecedents, provisions, court interpretations, and future. In many respects, despite persistent controversy ouer the legal underpinnings of the NFP, the Plan has provided substantial protection for the Northwest's federal forests, and-although it did not end allpublic timber haruests-largely ended harvesting of public old-growth forests. Moreover, the Plan's aquatic protection strategy has proved quite effective and worthy of emulation elsewhere. A postscript to this Article considers the effect of the recent Biden Administration executive order concerning old-growth forests on the NFP. Although the Bush administration's repeated efforts to terminate the Plan failed, the Obama administration removed about ten percent of the federal forests subject to the Plan from its reach, substantially undermining its ecological premises. The courts have so far sustained these removals, casting a pall of uncertainty over efforts to update the NFP to reflect current challenges posed by witdfires and climate change. This Article suggests that the goals ofa revised NFP should be linked to the role that federal public Pacific Northwest forests can play in the U.S.' international obligations to combat climate change. We recommend a number of changes to the NFP, including ending both post-fire saluage sales and the logging of mature and old-growth forests. To accommodate these changes, we suggest providing a "just transition" for affected rural communities and increased flexibility concerning the boundaries of protective terrestrial reserues in the southern reaches of the Plan. We maintain that despite lingering uncertainty about its scope of coverage, the NFP can and should continue to provide the signature example of landscape planning worldwide.
- Subjects
ECOSYSTEM management; LOGGING; NATIONAL Forest Management Act of 1976 (U.S.); WILDLIFE habitat improvement; ENDANGERED Species Act of 1973 (U.S.)
- Publication
Environmental Law (Lewis & Clark Law School), 2022, Vol 52, Issue 2, p151
- ISSN
2831-9028
- Publication type
Article