-- Campaign For Old Growth | Reference Article --

A group of seven scientists this week called for an end to logging old growth in national forests on the west side of the Cascades.

The scientists, whose letter to federal forestry officials echoes previous appeals by environmental groups, cited dwindling economic reliance on logging in the region and increasing public support for protecting old growth.

David Perry, professor emeritus in ecosystem studies and management at Oregon State University, and six other scientists wrote that knowledge of the ecological importance of old growth has increased substantially since former President Bill Clinton brokered the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994.

Clinton's plan attempted to maintain the rich biodiversity of old-growth forests while supplying about 1 billion board feet of timber annually to rural communities dependent on logging.

"The social and economic scene in the Pacific Northwest has changed sufficiently during the 1990s to make this an acceptable and, judging from polls, even popular decision," the scientists wrote.

One key author of the Northwest Forest Plan took issue with the letter.

Jerry Franklin, a University of Washington forestry professor considered a pioneer in the concept of ecosystem management, acknowledged that the politics and economics of old-growth logging may well have changed. But the scientific underpinnings of the plan have not, he said.

"I don't see this as being a science issue," he said in a telephone interview from Seattle. "This is strictly a value issue."

The Clinton plan calls for setting aside about 80 percent of old-growth forest for wildlife, such as the threatened northern spotted owl, which can't survive outside that ecosystem.

Even so, the plan has a goal of cutting 811 million board feet of timber per year from the 24.5 million acres of west-side national forests in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. To hit that target, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management projects about 240,000 acres of old-growth forest will have to be cut over the next decade.

The federal timber program has been virtually halted over the past three years. Sales have been tied up in lawsuits or delayed by requirements for cataloging old-growth-dependent plants and animals.

The scientists who petitioned the federal Regional Interagency Executive Committee this week wrote that much more is known about the value of old-growth habitat to species of lichens, fungi and mollusks. Perry and the others argued those species "are intimately tied to older forest habitats and likely to disperse poorly through (the area available for logging)."

They also cited global climate change as another reason for preserving as much old-growth forest as possible.

But most of those issues were on the table when the forest plan was developed, Franklin said.

"I don't believe really things have changed that much," he said.

Conservation groups are nonetheless ratcheting up their campaign for an outright ban on old-growth logging. A recent report cited by Perry and colleagues noted that old growth now accounts for only between 10 percent and 18 percent of all forested areas in western Washington and Oregon, with most of that on federal lands.

The scientists cited a recent poll, commissioned by the Gifford Pinchot Task Force and other environmental groups, showing 75 percent public support in the Northwest for protecting old trees in national forests.

Forest Service and BLM officials had no immediate comment on the letter, which was dated Tuesday.

Besides Perry, the scientists included Reed Noss, past president of the Society of Conservation Biology; Timothy Schowalter, professor of entomology at OSU; Terrence Frest, a mollusk expert and senior partner with Deixis Consultants; Bruce McCune, an OSU professor of lichenology and plant ecology; David Montgomery, a geology professor at the University of Washington; and James Karr, professor of aquatic sciences and zoology at UW.