Dear HCN:
The February 20 High
Country News article about the Idaho salmon lawsuit painted a
misleading picture. The issues are not about minor legal
technicalities, nor gaps between urban and rural folks.
The court’s slam-dunk decision was the result of
the continued failure of the Forest Service to follow the law and
protect dwindling habitat for endangered salmon in Idaho. The
agency had failed to consult with the National Marine Fisheries
Service on both individual projects and the forest plans; it failed
to stop activities that damage salmon
habitat.
This is not about dotting i’s and
crossing t’s. The science is clear that degradation of streams’
ecosystems is caused by the accumulation of small wounds from
multiple projects throughout a watershed. The only way to assess
and minimize cumulative impacts is to look comprehensively at all
of the ongoing and proposed projects, which means assessing the
entire forest plan, and then at how individual projects fit into
the big picture.
This principle is fundamental to
sound ecosystem and watershed management. It is also vital to
saving endangered salmon habitat. The Forest Service is being
hypocritical if it claims to want to implement ecosystem
management, while trying to deny its obligation to consult on the
forest plans.
We originally thought this case
would be cleared up years ago. The case started in 1992 when the
Pacific Rivers Council joined a raft of other environmental groups
to sue the two nearby national forests across the Snake River in
Oregon. Even then we filed suit only after all other remedies were
exhausted. Because salmon are protected under the Endangered
Species Act in the Upper Columbia Basin, not just the Oregon side
of the Snake, and because the Forest Service was avoiding the
consultation process everywhere, we filed a similar suit in April
1994.
The Forest Service could have avoided these
legal challenges by promptly consulting in good faith after the
chinook salmon were protected under the act in 1992. The land
management changes required could have been phased in, thus
softening whatever economic impacts may exist. Yet the cases bumped
along in the courts for years while the Forest Service repeated the
same pattern of delay and denial that created the spotted owl
fiasco.
They clearly should have resolved it in
July of 1994, when the Oregon case was decided in the first
slam-dunk decision in our favor. Many high-level people within the
Forest Service and other federal agencies have told us that the old
guard in the agency is using this case to sandbag the Endangered
Species Act.
The Idaho situation shone some
light on issues boiling behind the scenes for years. The
controversy exposed the differences between some forest-protection
groups concerned with hammered watersheds and land management, and
some fish conservationists focused on fixing main-stem Columbia
River dams. While a few fish advocates seem unhappy with the
lawsuit, an equal number of forest activists screamed at us for
agreeing to the 45-day stay. In fact, many forest activists
attacked us for not going far enough to protect salmon habitat and
watersheds (HCN, 3/6/95).
The forest activists
are probably right. The Snake River Salmon Recovery Team Report
(the Bevan Plan) to the National Marine Fisheries Service called
for a moratorium on all projects that could damage salmon habitat
on public or private lands in the Upper Columbia Basin, a proposal
that goes far beyond what our lawsuits sought. These
recommendations indicate the seriousness of the stream habitat
problems in Idaho. Ironically, all eight Northwest senators
endorsed the Bevan Plan in a letter to President Clinton on
December 20, 1994.
This exposed a corrolary
issue: the debate about whether it is primarily the main-stem
Columbia River dams, or a combination of stream habitat loss, dams
and other factors that have put anadromous salmon at risk of
extinction. Scientific data indicate that habitat loss and
degradation may be roughly equal to the impacts of the main-stem
dams on salmon – a fact few in Idaho want to acknowledge. Both
issues must be addressed.
Endangered salmon are
the “canary in the coal mine,” indicative of a much larger
ecological crisis. Despite public denials from some state agencies,
the dirty little secret in Idaho is that almost all native fish and
aquatic organisms are endangered or declining, not just anadromous
salmon. In fact, these problems are found throughout the Upper
Columbia Basin and Northern Rockies. Native resident fish which do
not run the Columbia River hydro gantlet, such as bull trout,
westslope cutthroat trout and others, are endangered regionwide.
The dominant reason is habitat loss, which
indicates that stream ecosystems are in crisis almost everywhere.
Many of the resident fish have overlapping habitats with anadromous
salmon.
Two major environmental impact statements
are under way that may set the direction for federal land
management in the Upper Columbia Basin in years to come. How can we
avoid addressing the stream habitat problems in Idaho? Ironically,
much of your Feb. 20 issue was devoted to Idaho’s “Obvious:
exhausted rivers.”
The ecological crisis gets
directly to the economic issues. Growing evidence indicates that
continuing to allocate forest resources to activities that degrade
salmon habitat may be generating some jobs and incomes in the
traditional timber, logging and ranching sectors, but at the
expense of jobs, incomes and economic health elsewhere in the
state, regional and national economy. This isn’t about rural vs.
urban – it is about economic equity.
A recent
analysis completed for Pacific Rivers Council by a private
economics firm confirms this and came to four major conclusions
regarding the economic consequences of protecting salmon habitat in
the six Idaho forests: The primary economic issue is jobs vs. jobs,
not jobs vs. salmon. That is, we are losing or depressing jobs in
other sectors of the economy, and are forcing others at the state,
regional and national levels to bear explicit and implicit costs by
continuing logging, grazing and mining jobs that degrade salmon
habitat.
Habitat protection would likely
strengthen, not weaken economies; curtailing damaging activities
will have minimal adverse consequences for Idaho’s economy; and
acting now will accelerate economic transitions that would have
occurred eventually anyway.
The pressures for
change come primarily from powerful economic forces that will not
dissipate even if laws such as the Endangered Species Act are
changed, or pressure from environmental groups
ends.
Which leads to the last issue. Since the
origins of the environmental movement, one of the most important
roles has been to expose environmental problems, to flush out the
truth about government actions, and to hold government
accountable.
Salmon loss and stream degradation
in Idaho – especially on public lands – are primarly caused by the
failure of government to follow the law. If the environmental
community does not tell the public about these issues, and hold
government accountable, who will?
Should we deny
or try to sweep these problems under the rug simply because we are
concerned about the public reaction, or want the public to focus on
other issues? Should Rachel Carson have refrained from publishing
Silent Spring for fear of the reaction of the chemical industry?
Should environmentalists have refrained from protecting the
northern spotted owl (itself just the “canary in the coal mine”
about old growth forest health) for fear that it would upset some
in the timber industry?
Telling the truth is
hard but necessary.
Bob
Doppelt
Eugene,
Oregon
Bob Doppelt is
executive director of the Pacific Rivers
Council.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Telling the truth is hard but necessary.
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