It's Nature, Stupid

By Ted Gup/Washington

For three months, a team of bleary-eyed scientists, sociologists and economists was sequestered behind an unmarked door on the 14th floor of the U.S. Bancorp Tower in Portland, Oregon, working 14-hour days, seven days a week, amid a welter of maps, coffee cups and stale pizza. Their mission, direct from the President: explore every conceivable option for preserving the Northwest's ancient forests and its wildlife, while saving whatever can be saved of the once proud and productive timber industry.

That mission may have been virtually impossible, judging from the outraged reaction to the unveiling last week of Bill Clinton's long-awaited timber plan. Trying to strike a balance between the needs of nature and the demands of man, the President decreed that the amount of logging on federal land would be sharply reduced and offered a $1.2 billion aid package to help timber communities diversify their economies.

But neither side in the great forest debate was pleased. A shocked logging industry claimed that the plan would wipe out 85,000 jobs and devastate timber-dependent towns. "The program is dead on arrival," fumed mill owner John Hampton, chairman of the Northwest Forest Resource Council. And while protesting loggers in the Northwest tossed empty caskets on a flaming pyre and sent a funeral wreath to the White House, House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington State was smoldering.

Conservationists winced at the notion of any additional logging in the remaining old-growth forests, warning it could push endangered species to extinction and imperil one of the nation's most vital natural habitats. Still, the antilogging forces sensed they had advanced. "We had a chance for a major victory ending the war," said National Audubon Society vice president Brock Evans. "Instead we conquered another ridge and drove the enemy back, but it's a very shaky victory because much of the policy is vague."

The White House's plan establishes an array of reserves encompassing key watersheds and old-growth stands, an innovative strategy intended to protect the most ecologically essential areas of the forests and thereby preserve the habitat of spotted owls, salmon and countless other species. The blueprint allows for average annual timber harvests of 1.2 billion bd. ft. -- less than one-third of the mid-'80s peak of 5 billion bd. ft. a year. Administration projections put job losses at fewer than 10,000, not quite the apocalyptic vision of the timber companies. But neither the $1.2 billion for worker retraining and community investment nor Clinton's proposed removal of a federal subsidy on log exports -- a step intended to encourage the processing of more logs in the Northwest and the creation of more sawmill jobs -- placated the industry's fury. The plan contained unsettling news for environmentalists as well. An additional 1.9 million acres -- 22% of the remaining old growth outside of wilderness areas and parks -- will be vulnerable to the chain saw. Even more disturbing to conservationists were hints that to ensure the timely release of timber, the White House might not oppose congressional efforts to exempt logging in those areas from court challenge.

While Clinton's plan is a patchwork of political compromises, it is part of a real shift in federal policy that shows a new respect for nature. Throughout most of U.S. history, government actions have encouraged human exploitation of natural resources: logging, mining, drilling, grazing, damming rivers. That philosophy reached its height during the Reagan years, when Interior Secretary James Watt favored mining in wilderness areas.

When Clinton and his environmentalist sidekick, Al Gore, took office, they were already well aware that America's ecology was in crisis. From the spotted owls and salmon in the Northwest to woodpeckers and salamanders in the Southeast, many species were on the brink of extinction, and the implications were ominous. Says Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, architect of the Administration's natural-resource policy: "This really isn't about just preserving strange species with incomprehensible names. In every single case, that species is the warning light about the decline in productivity of an ecosystem." In the past, the debate was framed in terms of economics vs. environment. But, observed Clinton, "the one cannot exist without the other." Pollution from logging operations in the Northwest, for example, runs off into rivers and threatens the spawning grounds of salmon. And if the salmon die out, 60,000 jobs will be lost in fishing and other industries.

This October the Administration will launch the $179 million National Biological Survey, in which an estimated 950 biologists will, for the first time, conduct a comprehensive inventory of the nation's plants and animals. The experience in the Northwest has taught policy planners to focus not on individual species but on entire ecosystems. And a determination to avoid the protracted court battles that deadlocked the owls-loggers dispute has spurred the Administration to bring together industries, environmental groups and local governments. An accord to protect the Southern California breeding grounds of the endangered gnatcatcher was reached in March by local developers, environmentalists and the state government. One month later, the Fish and Wildlife Service entered into an unprecedented arrangement with Georgia-Pacific Corp., which agreed to conserve the habitat of the endangered red cockaded woodpecker on the company's 4 million acres in the Southeast.

The Administration's new conservation policies got off to a false start with its on-again-off-again effort to raise the fees businesses pay for such activities as mining and cattle grazing on federal land. Those proposals were originally part of Clinton's budget plan, but the President backed away from the idea after members of Congress from Western states squawked. Babbitt sees the setback as a temporary retreat and vows to raise land-use fees gradually through administrative actions and support for legislation.

Ultimately, the most dramatic policy shift could be the changing view of dams, long the symbol of man's dominion over nature. They are now seen by some as a testament to man's hubris -- redirecting rivers, flooding dry lands and evicting wildlife. For years, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission paid little or no attention to environmental issues as it relicensed dams. Now it is faced with a record number of relicensing applications -- 230 dams on 59 river basins -- and is using this unique opportunity to respond to pent-up ecological concerns, particularly the needs of fish. Many of the dams up for relicensing will be required to take costly steps to help fish reach their spawning grounds and then return. That could mean ladders, lifts, pathways or "trap-and-truck" measures, in which truckloads of fish are ferried around the dam and released.

A few dams could face a more radical solution. The modest-size Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine, produces electricity but prevents many fish, including salmon and shad, from reaching their spawning grounds. Audubon and Trout Unlimited have called for the dam's removal. So too has the state's Governor, John McKernan Jr.Studies of the proposal and the potential legal brawls could take years, but even the thought of tearing down a dam for ecological reasons is highly unusual.

The Glines Canyon Dam and the Elwha Dam on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula are also possible candidates for removal. They block five species of salmon -- the Chinook, the pink, sockeye, chum and coho -- from spawning grounds. Observes Shawn Cantrell, director of Friends of the Earth's Northwest Rivers Project: "If the final decision is made to remove the dams, it will be a statement by our national government that past exploitation of our natural resources can be corrected. We can go back and fix the mistakes we made in previous generations."

While such concern for endangered species can be irritating and costly, it can also yield unexpected benefits for both wildlife and man. Consider the case of Edwards Aquifer, which flows about 175 miles across six Texas counties and is relied upon for irrigation and as the sole source of water for 1.7 million people in and around San Antonio. It is what biologists call a "hot spot," because the aquifer's spring system is home to 65 species found nowhere else on earth. Among them: the fountain darter, the Texas blind salamander and Texas wild rice. Falling water levels in the aquifer, caused by unregulated and excessive usage, threatened the species, and in 1991 the Sierra Club sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, forcing it to take action.

"They were just pumping the place dry," says Interior Secretary Babbitt. Last month, under threat of increasing federal intervention, the Texas legislature passed a bill empowering the state to regulate and manage the withdrawal of groundwater in Edwards Aquifer. The state will now devise a plan for equitable water distribution that will enable the springs to flow even in times of drought, while protecting the delicate ecosystem that provides that water. "This is a spectacular success," says Babbitt, "a really remarkable evolution in which a small fish facing extinction triggered a lawsuit, which triggered a legislative response that is now going to work for the benefit of everybody in Texas."

The conflict in the Northwest would not be so easily resolved. After a decade of unsustainable logging, court injunctions and federal inaction, the situation was dire when Clinton came to the White House. Said the President: "We have to play the hand we were dealt." In April he convened the much ballyhooed "Timber Summit" in Portland, where he promised to break the gridlock. Clinton set up three teams to tackle the problem, of which perhaps the most important was the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team, or FEMAT. Dressed in jeans, flannel shirts and running shoes, the 37 members , could look out from Portland's U.S. Bancorp Tower and see the Willamette River and Mount Hood in the distance. Their mission was simplified in the slogans that often flitted across their computer terminals. One message read, "It's the fish, stupid!" Another, "It's the ecosystem, stupid!" And finally, "It's all of them, stupid!"

But early on, team members were dumbstruck by the complexity of their task. Joe Lint, a wildlife biologist with the Bureau of Land Management, recalls discussing the forest's 20,000 species of insects, spiders and other arthropods: "I sat there saying to myself, 'Wow, this thing is so big and complex, I have no idea how this might all fit together.' It put us in a different frame of mind." Out of the assemblage of foresters, biologists, economists, plant and fish experts, geomorphologists, hydrologists and social scientists emerged perhaps the most sophisticated conservation analysis to date. A pioneering effort, says Babbitt. Noted team leader Jack Ward Thomas, chief wildlife biologist at the Department of Agriculture: "We're moving into ecosystem management, which nobody has ever done before."

Team members developed 10 options. At the far end of the spectrum was option one, nicknamed "Save-It-All" because it allowed for a minuscule 0.19 billion bd. ft. to be cut, and would have set aside all ancient forests. At the opposite end was option seven, which would have allowed 1.84 billion bd. ft. to be cut annually. Thomas bristles at any suggestion that there was political interference in the deliberations, but he refuses to discuss the substance of periodic conference calls with Katie McGinty, the White House's environmental- policy director. "Politics is not our bag," he says. Still, two weeks ago, Thomas and forester Jerry Franklin were flown to Washington to brief anxious members of Congress from the Northwest. The meeting was described as "tense."

By June 2 a committee of senior government officials from numerous agencies began sifting through the options and prepared a decision memorandum analyzing them for the President. In the margins of the document, which had fewer than 50 pages, Clinton scribbled, "Let's discuss" beside various options. White House sources say the decision was Clinton's alone, though he discussed it with Vice President Gore over their regular Thursday lunch in the President's dining room. Clinton chose option nine -- also known as "the efficiency option" -- which focused on watersheds as the basic building blocks of the , ecosystem and reflected the growing importance assigned to fish.

Just as important, of the 10 options, that one produced the second highest amount of timber -- about 1.2 billion bd. ft. -- and preserved the second highest number of timber jobs -- a projected 119,500 in the region. That compares with 125,400 jobs in 1992 and 145,000 in 1990. No one disputes that some timber-dependent communities could be hard hit, but FEMAT economist Brian Greber forecast that the job losses would have little effect on the regional economy and negligible impact on the American consumer.

Lawmakers from the Northwest did not agree. "This is a sellout," said Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, who vows to fight the plan. "The ratio of common sense is inversely proportional to the number of scientists and bureaucrats involved," declared Oregon's other Senator, Mark Hatfield. But it appears that Clinton will not need to submit his plan to Congress, and for that, many on Capitol Hill may be grateful. They can publicly attack the proposal for the consumption of the audience back home, deflect the heat, then quietly draw some measure of comfort from the fact that, at last, there is a plan -- a plan that most owls and some loggers may be able to live with.

With reporting by Margaret Carlson and Nancy Traver/Washington and Lynn Steinberg/Seattle, with other bureaus