Obama administration motion may mean WOPR reevaluation
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On Tuesday, March 31, the Obama administration filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. stating that it would not defend the Bush administration’s decision to decrease protection for the northwest spotted owl.
That announcement was met with tempered enthusiasm at the Ashland-based Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center (K-S Wild). Campaign Director Joseph Vaile said that “it’s hard to know yet” what affect the court motion would have on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR).
“Essentially, the Obama administration has said it’s going to reevaluate the legality of the Bush administration recovery plan,” Vaile said. “I don’t know how that’s going to play out. I’m presuming that’s going to mean the WOPR will have to be reevaluated as well, since the WOPR was based on that recovery plan.”
The administrative action follows an Inspector General report that alleged political interference in the recovery plan by Julie MacDonald, the former deputy assistant for the Interior Dept.
“All of the work Julie MacDonald did with the Fish and Wildlife Service has definitely been called into question, including the recovery plans for several species, one of which was the spotted owl,” Vaile said.
“If you have to defend a decision in court, it certainly doesn’t make that job easy if there’s a clear trail of political interference in the decision, since the law requires a scientific decision, not a political decision.”
But not everyone is convinced that the court filing could potentially scuttle the WOPR. Southern Oregon Resource Alliance (SORA) vice chairman and legal counsel Jack Swift said the WOPR deals specifically with the 1937 O&C Act and the lands falling under that federal designation.
“The environmentalists keep wanting to spin the WOPR as a management exercise regarding the proper use of the forest. That’s not the legal context at all behind the WOPR,” Swift said. “There is no reference in the law dictating the management of the O&C lands to anything regarding any endangered species.”
Swift points out that the WOPR was the settlement of two lawsuits filed by the Association of O&C Counties and the American Forest Resource Council alleging that the 1994 Northwest Forest Management Plan was illegally applied to the federal O&C lands.
When the Obama administration made its court filing, attorneys for the Interior Dept. told the court they would negotiate with representatives from the timber industry and conservation groups some time in April to try and resolve the litigation.
Vaile said that K-S Wild is “going to be involved” in the decision making process, and plans to be contacted by federal authorities within the next couple of weeks.
However, SORA still has legal standing with regards to the WOPR, and so does the Association of O&C Counties. Josephine County has dual standing, both on its own and as a member of the association. As such, any of those three entities can file suit to try and force the WOPR’s implementation, Swift said.
“They all have standing to demand that the O&C lands be managed according to the law for the O&C lands,” Swift said. “The great political question is, will they?”
The 1937 act called for sustained yield timber production on the O&C lands. Many of those tracts of land are scattered throughout Southwest Oregon in a checkerboard pattern.
SORA, Josephine County and the Association of O&C Counties have all filed protests against the WOPR due to its various administrative withdrawals.
“SORA is not satisfied at all with the alternative that was adopted,” Swift said. “Where you have a plan that does not even have one-third of the land being utilized for sustained yield timber production, I cannot say that measures up to the primary utilization.”
The major underlying issue is the funding that counties received from timber harvests under the O&C Act. Vaile said he would rather see the federal forest management agencies implement a more sustainable strategy for those lands.
“I hope that maybe instead of the pendulum always swinging so drastically that maybe we can try to come up with a solution that will meet everybody’s interests, including protecting old growth forests and thinning mostly small diameter trees,” Vaile said. “I think there is a lot of work people can support on federal land but to try and go back to 1985 when we were getting all kinds of county revenue from BLM lands, I don’t think, is realistic.”
