BLM rejects protests to "Whopper" logging plan

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has rejected the major protests against its plan to ramp up logging in old-growth forests of Western Oregon and is racing to finish by the New Year's Eve deadline.

Among the more than 260 protests, several conservation groups called for scrapping the Western Oregon Plan Revision, known as "The Whopper," because the BLM did not consult with federal biologists over potential harm to spotted owls and other wildlife protected by the Endangered Species Act.

BLM spokesman Michael Campbell acknowledged that is likely the key issue in court challenges sure to follow once the plan is signed.

BLM has argued the plan itself has no impacts on endangered species, and it will consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries Service on actual timber sales as they are proposed in coming years.

Andy Stahl, executive director of the conservation group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, lodged one of the rejected protests. He said federal courts have consistently rejected the argument adopted by BLM, and suggested the Obama administration is likely to scrap the plan on those grounds when it takes over next month.

Stahl showed The Associated Press a BLM document and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service e-mails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicating that last July BLM had found the logging plan was likely to harm fish protected by the Endangered Species Act, which would normally trigger formal consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The draft biological assessment found the logging increases "may affect or were likely to affect" Lost River suckers and shortnosed suckers in the Klamath region, and bull trout in the Columbia Basin.

However, after "high-level discussions" between BLM and Interior, it did not look like consultation was going to happen, Robin Bown of Fish and Wildlife e-mailed her staff on July 21, 2008.

She followed up with another e-mail July 25 saying, "It appears highly unlikely that we will be consulting on the WOPR at the plan level."

An e-mail from Bob Progulske of Fish and Wildlife described an Aug. 7 meeting where BLM staff said they were still discussing how to "close" the consultation issue, and noted that unless consultation began by Aug. 11, the 135 days it would take would put completion of the logging plan past the deadline.

BLM spokesman Campbell denied Interior intervened in the decision.

"There wasn't any specific direction from on high that said, 'You will do the following,' " Campbell said.

The plan to increase logging in old-growth forests came out of the Bush administration's settlement of a lawsuit brought by the timber industry challenging the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging on federal lands in the Northwest more than 80 percent to protect old-growth-forest habitat for the northern spotted owl and salmon.

The Whopper represents the Bush administration's last gasp at fulfilling promises to the timber industry to increase logging on federal lands. Most efforts to boost logging within the confines of the Northwest Forest Plan adopted during the Clinton administration have been rejected by the courts.

Besides increasing timber available to Oregon mills, the new logging plan is intended to restore federal timber payments to Oregon counties which have suffered since logging was cut back in the 1990s.

Campbell said it would likely be 2011, when federal safety-net funding for timber counties runs out, before the logging plan is in full swing.

Legal challenges are likely, and the plan cannot go forward without a critical habitat plan for the northern spotted owl, Campbell said.

Conservation groups have sued to scrap the latest owl-habitat plan, which was drastically reduced to make way for The Whopper, arguing it was politically influenced by the Bush administration.

One minor protest that was accepted involved a land acquisition along the Little Sandy River, and the plan was revised to correct the problem, Campbell said.