Chronology

1891 Congress gives the President authority to set aside portions of the federal government’s vast western land holdings as “forest reserves.”

1894 Regulations are adopted stating that no one could “cut, remove, or use any of the timber, grass or other natural products” on forest reserves. Livestock grazing was “strictly prohibited.”

1897 Congress passes the Organic Act as a rider to an Appropriations bill, opening the forest reserves to logging.

1950 Industrial logging accelerates. Ninety-five percent of U.S. forestlands are logged within 45 years.

1964 Congress passes the Wilderness Act, creating a National Wilderness Preservation System permanently protecting 9.1 million acres. The system now includes more than 40 million acres of National Forest.

1969 Congress passes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring federal agencies to inform the public of the environmental impact of major federal projects.

1973 Congress passes the Endangered Species Act (ESA), committing the federal government to prevent the extinction of native plants, animals and their habitats.

1976 Congress enacts the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), requiring forest plans that protect watersheds, maintain minimal levels of biological diversity, and limit clearcutting.

1981 John Crowell, former Louisiana Pacific executive and Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, says he believes the cut on National Forests can be doubled without adverse environmental effects.

1983 Environmental activists blockade the Bald Mountain road into the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest. Protests continue in National Forests throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

1985 Congress passes the first in a series of appropriations bill amendments, or “riders,” lifting a federal injunction in a lawsuit brought by the National Wildlife Federation over logging on unstable slopes in the Oregon coast range.

1988 A federal judge rules that a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service not to initiate a study of the status of the northern spotted owl is arbitrary and capricious. Public interest environmental organizations begin filing legal challenges against timber sales throughout the nation based on the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and National Forest Management Act.

1989 U.S. District Judge William Dwyer blocks most National Forest timber sales in western Oregon and Washington until the Forest Service adopts a scientifically credible plan for protecting the northern spotted owl.

1990 The northern spotted owl is listed as a threatened species throughout its range due to destruction of its old growth forest habitat. In the following few years, the marbelled murrelet, several salmon and trout species, the Mexican spotted owl, the Indiana bat, and several other forest dependent species are listed as threatened and endangered.

1993 Clinton convenes the Northwest Forest Conference and promises to produce a balanced plan for the management of the old growth forest ecosystem within 60 days. Clinton adopts a plan that reduces logging and increases protection for sensitive watersheds but also allows about one-third of the remaining old growth to be cut and sanctions salvage logging and thinning in old growth reserves.

1995 Clinton first vetoes then signs a budget bill containing a provision called the “salvage rider” that exempts virtually any timber sale on federal land from environmental laws.

1997 Reps. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Jim Leach (R-IA) introduce the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (NFPRA) that ends commercial logging on federal lands and redirects the Forest Service timber budget to ecological restoration, worker retraining and community assistance.

The National Forest System encompasses 191 million acres. Fifty percent of the rain and snow in the West falls on the National Forests. Many of America’s great rivers emerge from National Forests, including the Colorado, Rio Grande, Snake, Missouri and Allegheny, supplying water for thousands of communities and tens of millions of people. These public lands provide habitat for 2/3 of the big game in the West. More than a 1/3 of nearly 1,600 threatened, endangered and sensitive species depend on public forests for food and shelter. More picnickers, hikers, backpackers, hunters, boaters, anglers, birdwatchers and sightseers use National Forests than any other federal land system in the U.S.

A Policy of Disposal Changes to Conservation

In the 19th century, the notion of placing some forestlands in public ownership drew strong opposition. The prevailing policy was “disposal” — getting land in private ownership as quickly as possible. By the 1890s, however, the unrestrained market economy was causing severe environmental deterioration as well as the concentration of wealth that resulted in economic insecurity for millions.

In response, land use reformers focused their criticism on: 1) the concentration of land in the hands of powerful corporations; 2) the depletion of natural resources; 3) the damage caused by logging, mining, grazing and agriculture on soil and water, sometimes affecting whole regions; 4) rural instability caused by migratory industries that would exploit resources and move on; and 5) waste and inefficiency in natural resource use. After considerable controversy, Congress finally endorsed the idea of retaining some public ownership of lands to be managed in the public interest as a buffer against the complete privatization of all lands. But most of the forests set aside were on marginally productive and inaccessible lands that settlers and industry had rejected.

Protection of federal forests was established in 1891 when Congress granted the President authority to set aside portions of the vast federal land holdings in the West as “forest reserves” to protect watersheds, wildlife and recreational opportunities. Regulations were adopted in 1894 stating that no one could “cut, remove, or use any of the timber, grass or other natural product” on National Forest land; nor could anyone “settle upon, occupy, or use any [National Forest] lands for agricultural, proprietary, mining or other business purposes.” Livestock grazing on National Forests was “strictly prohibited.” The reserves were to be preserved in their natural state.

Conservation Turns into Exploitation

When livestock interests in Oregon and California lost a court decision upholding the eviction of sheep from the forest reserves, they pressured Congress to open the reserves to logging, mining and livestock grazing. An amendment to an appropriations bill passed on June 4, 1897 allowed resource extraction on the forest reserves for the first time. The Forest Reserves became a permanently protected system of National Forests to be managed scientifically to ensure a sustained yield of products and services that include wood, clean water, livestock rangeland, wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities and wilderness. Problems have arisen because some of these uses are contradictory and the Forest Service, lacking clear direction on how to reconcile them, has been heavily influenced by the demands of extractive industry.

Exploitation Becomes Abuse

After World War II, exhaustion of private timber supplies in the last great forest frontier — the Pacific Northwest — caused the timber industry to turn to public lands. The Forest Service enthusiastically expanded logging on marginal public lands as maximum material production became a national duty and moral imperative during the cold war years. Clearcutting replaced selection logging and roads into the backcountry were built at breakneck speed.

The timber sale process was driven by the fact that commendations, promotions and salary bonuses rewarded forest managers who achieved or exceeded production targets. As a consequence, a system developed that has maximized timber sales and road building budgets to generate revenue and profits, while neglecting resource conservation and rehabilitation.

Suislaw National Forest

The Winds of Change

The 1964 Wilderness Act represented a crack in the ideological edifice of intensive management for maximum production. While the Act prohibited roads, timber harvesting and the use of motorized equipment in Congressionally designated areas, it allowed commercial livestock grazing, water development and mining on valid existing claims as well as camping, hunting and fishing. Very little commercial timberland was in the nine million acres originally set aside as wilderness. Wilderness designation had virtually no effect on the accelerating timber harvest program.

In 1976, in response to growing dissatisfaction with National Forest management, Congress passed the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which required preparation of forest plans with public involvement. It reduced the size of clearcuts which had to conform to landscape contours rather than be cut in large square blocks. NFMA also required the Forest Service to preserve minimum viable populations of native wildlife and adopted a more restrictive definition of sustained yield. Nevertheless, 50-year plans, prepared under NFMA and completed in 1986, called for a doubling of the timber harvest and construction of more than 100,000 miles of roads on National Forests. As a consequence, unsustainable harvest levels and accelerated old growth liquidation continued through the late 1970s and into the 1980s.

Revolt in the Woods

Effective cutbacks in National Forest logging began in the late 1980s with efforts in the Pacific Northwest to protect the last seven percent of America’s native forests. Conservationists used the results of scientific research conducted during the 1970s and 1980s to argue in the courts, in Congress and in the media that the native forests must be saved for their wildlife and salmon, for the pure drinking water that flowed from their headwater streams, for the trees that anchored soil and streambanks and for their irreplaceable genetic legacy. Litigation focused on providing enough habitat to maintain viable populations of the northern spotted owl, wild salmon and the marbled murrelet. Thousands of Americans participated in acts of civil disobedience to draw attention to the destruction of some of the last stands of ancient forest in the nation.

Recently, the limitations of science in resolving contentious issues of public policy have been shown in the unfilled promises of President Clinton to preserve a significant remnant of virgin forests for future generations, the environmental backlash unleashed by the Republican led 104th Congress on behalf of its corporate constituents and the passage of the “salvage” rider, a law that ordered logging to proceed in the most vital forest sanctuaries regardless of whether or not environmental laws were obeyed.

Zero-Cut, the effort to end logging on public lands, is fast becoming the most promising strategy for forest protection in the U.S. While summing up their goal in a simple phrase, Zero-Cut proponents have developed a sophisticated analysis of the ecological, economic, and social costs of public lands logging, and of the benefits and opportunities that would follow an end to such practices.

In 1997, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Congressman Jim Leach (R-IA) responded to the public’s call for an end to public land logging by introducing the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (NFPRA). Intended to save taxpayer money, reduce the deficit, cut corporate welfare, and protect and restore America’s natural heritage, the Act eliminates the commercial logging program on federal public lands and assists communities dependent on this program with economic recovery and diversification.

Source: Hirt, Paul, A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of National Forests since World War II, University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

Zero-Cut

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