-- Campaign For Old Growth | Reference Article --

A new public opinion poll indicates that three of every four people in Oregon and Washington want an end to the logging of old-growth trees in national forests, a conviction that holds true even in rural counties long dependent on logging and other resource industries.

It also extends across political party lines, according to the poll scheduled for release today.

The survey, commissioned by Northwest environmental groups and completed by the research firm Davis & Hibbitts Inc. of Portland, suggests thatthe public has reached a strong consensus on a prominent public land issue that policy-makers continue to debate.

"People today view old growth as something different and special," said Adam Davis of the polling firm, which has conducted surveys for the timber industry and political polling for The Oregonian. "I'm impressed by the breadth of support extending across every subgroup we had for protection of old growth."

Among the 600 Oregon and Washington residents surveyed, 75 percent wanted protection of the mature forests known as old growth. But pollsters and forest activists were especially struck that residents of urban counties distanced from logging and those in rural counties long tied to logging, agriculture and other resource industries held largely the same views.

In the urban counties of Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, Benton, Lane and Deschutes in Oregon and Clark, King, Pierce, Thurston, Snohomish, Whatcom and Kitsap in Washington, 79 percent either strongly supported or somewhat supported old-growth protection, while 16 percent opposed it and 5 percent didn't know.

In the other, more rural counties, 67 percent wanted protection for old growth, 26 percent opposed it and 6 percent didn't know. The percentages do not total 100 because figures were rounded. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points. About one-third of those polled lived in rural counties.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said Wednesday that the sentiment suggests a public desire to stop logging old-growth trees, which inspire emotional protests, and instead focus on less-controversial thinning of younger, crowded trees. DeFazio unsuccessfully proposed such a strategy during discussion of the Northwest Forest Plan, the 1994 Clinton administration compromise to protect wildlife habitat while allowing limited logging.

"Maybe the time is right to make another run at this issue and try again to resolve it," DeFazio said.

Support for old-growth protection declined an average of 5 percent in both urban and rural counties after arguments both in favor of and against protection were presented to people surveyed. That small change suggests that most are not easily swayed, Davis said. "The rhetoric isn't having an impact -- it's what they're seeing out in the forests, and there's less of it."

The fate of old-growth trees has long been a centerpiece of the debate over Northwest forests, partly because they hold imperiled species such as the northern spotted owl. Douglas fir forests on the west side of the Cascade Range usually take on characteristics of old growth, including large trees and downed debris, at about 200 years old.

Old growth made up 50 percent to 70 percent of forests west of the Cascade crest before logging began, according to a 2000 report by the National Research Council, and it constitutes about 15 percent of the same forests today.

The Northwest Forest Plan placed 86 percent of the 8 million remaining acres of federal old-growth forests in reserves to protect their character, leaving the other 14 percent available to logging. Agencies project that 3 percent -- a quarter-million acres -- of the old growth open to logging will be cut during the next decade, although more younger forest is expected to mature into old growth during the same period.

Mike Dombeck, U.S. Forest Service chief in the Clinton administration, had called for an inventory and protection of the remaining old-growth forests. New Chief Dale Bosworth supports continued mapping of old growth but has taken no position on whether or how it should be protected, agency spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch said Wednesday.

The new survey makes clear that the public wants old growth left out of the logging mix, and Bosworth should take heed, said James Johnstonof the Cascadia Wildlands Project in Eugene, one of the groups that sponsored the poll.

"There's no real constituency for old-growth logging anymore," he said. "People know that they need wood products, but we can get those from second-growth and other forests. Getting wood products from old growth is like getting ivory from elephants, oil from whales or making toilet paper from silk."