The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was designed to quell the decades-long “timber wars” between loggers and environments.

The plan placed 24 million acres of federal forests in Oregon, Washington and northern California under a single management model that was supposed to protect spotted owls and promote ecological, social and economic stability for the next 100 years.

Yet 30 years later, it has failed to recover owl populations. Wildfires scorch Northwest forests, destroying old-growth and owl habitat. And many historically timber-dependent communities continue to struggle.

Revolutionary plan

The intent and scale of the plan were revolutionary.

“It showed a light on the fact that clearcutting old growth on public lands in the ’90s and ’80s was not sustainable and we needed to transition,” said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade group representing the timber industry.

It was also the first time a government executed land management on an ecosystems level.

“(The plan) was way ahead of its time when it came to innovation and it did a lot with not a lot of tools,” said Susan Jane Brown, chief legal council of Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

Joseph and Brown are the co-chairs of the Northwest Forest Plan advisory committee that spearheaded the recommendations for upcoming amendments.

They come from opposite sides of the aisle.

Brown is a conservationist and Joseph is part of the timber industry, but they agree that the plan needs to change.

So where did things go wrong?

Spotted owl impact

You can’t discuss the Northwest Forest Plan without mentioning the northern spotted owl. The bird was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, and it became the poster child for species threatened by logging old growth. Every acre in the plan was within spotted owl habitat.

“(The Northwest Forest Plan) was essentially developed to save the spotted owl,” said Lindsay Warness, western regional manager of the Forest Resources Association, which represents to timber industry.

But the spotted owl is still in decline. Despite prohibiting timber harvest on significant swaths of the owl’s territory, populations have plummeted by 65% since the plan was adopted. In some areas of Washington, that number is closer to 90%.

Some of their decline is attributed to the barred owl, a larger, more aggressive breed that’s displacing its cousins.

Increasing wildfires, insects and tree disease are also to blame. It’s estimated that Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day fires burned over 560 square miles of suitable nesting and roosting habitat for the species.

Advocates in the forestry community aren’t happy about sacrificing timber land when logging is no longer the owl’s primary threat. Over the past 30 years, timber harvests on federal land have fallen 80%, while wildfires have burned four times as many trees.

“It’s offensive to us that all this land has been put aside to save the spotted owl, and it’s still declining,” said Nick Smith, director of public affairs for the American Forest Resource Council.

The fraction of forest that is available for harvest has failed to provide a reliable timber supply. The original Northwest Forest Plan stipulated 1 billion board-feet of timber a year to support rural communities. Today, less than one-tenth of that is being produced.

Communities hurt

Following mill closures and job loss in the late 1990s, some timber towns successfully shifted to other revenue streams like tourism. But communities like Skamania County that lack the infrastructure to diversify have been devastated.

About 80% of Skamania County lies within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. For centuries, timber was the lifeblood of the community. When the Northwest Forest Plan was established, that blood supply was cut off. Since 1996, the average annual harvest from the Gifford Pinchot has been less than one-third of promised quantities. Skamania has now lost six of its seven mills and 85% of its timber jobs.

“We have struggled to figure out how to survive,” said Ann Lueders, superintendent of emergency medical response and rescue in Skamania.

Tribes left out of plan

Timber towns weren’t the only communities neglected by the plan. Native Tribes weren’t just left behind, they were left out. Joseph, the  advisory committee co-chair, estimates that the federal government failed to consult more than 80 Tribes when developing the plan.

This oversight has been detrimental because Northwest forests were heavily impacted by Native American management.

“Indigenous people were out in the forest every day, so they could tell how vegetation was drying out or changing, and what techniques to apply when,” said Andrew Gray, a research ecologist with the Forest Service.

One technique Tribes employed was cultural burning. Native peoples across the country periodically set fires to the landscape to prevent larger fires and promote plant species that served their cultural practices.

“Through an accumulation of history and practice, (tribes) could readily decide, ‘This is the week we need to apply fire to this stand,’” Gray said.

When white settlers seized the land, they prohibited cultural burns, and opted to suppress fire.

A century later, fire exclusion had turned Northwest forests into a matchbox: overly dense and ripe for wildfire. The NWFP failed to heed Indigenous wisdom and implement management strategies that would compensate for the damage.

‘Reserve’ category

The plan segmented forests into three main categories: Matrix lands, Late Successional Reserves (LSRs) and Riparian Reserves. Nineteen million of the 24 million acres of NWFP territory fall under a “reserve” category, which means they were set aside from active management to cultivate old growth.

Joseph opposes the entire premise of reserves.

“I fundamentally reject the view that human beings are not a part of the forest and should stay out of them,” Joseph said. “We are a part of these forests, and that means responsibly managing them.”

When the Forest Service established reserves, they included the stands that had become dense and homogeneous from fire suppression. The hands-off management approach has only increased wildfire risk. As of December 2023, catastrophic wildfires had destroyed more old-growth and mature forests than were added since the Northwest Forest Plan was enacted.

“We should never have put static lines on a dynamic ecosystem,” Joseph said. “That system isn’t nimble enough to allow us to get in there and do work to protect our forest.”

And what of the other 5 million acres that aren’t in reserves? Most are matrix land where timber harvest, among other management activities, occurs. Another 6% was dubbed “adaptive management area (AMA),” and was set aside for scientists and foresters to test new management techniques. AMAs were an exciting innovation, but dwindling budgets caused agencies to pull the plug on the monitoring and management programs in the early 2000s.

“I would really love for the AMAs to work,” Brown said, “but that ship has sailed.” Now, most AMA forests are lumped in with matrix.

Neither conservationists nor the forest sector approve of how matrix lands are managed.

Industry representatives are concerned that matrix lands aren’t yielding the timber supply promised.

For environmental groups, the controversy lies in the fact that old-growth in the matrix can still be logged. According to Joseph, policymakers believed leaving some old-growth up for grabs would facilitate the transition into a new era of sustainable logging.

“The idea was, ‘Let’s throw some old-growth into the matrix and we’ll slowly cut it until it’s gone,’” Joseph said.

That’s not exactly what’s happened. Instead, the decision prompted more fighting and litigation.

“The public wouldn’t stand for it, and the Forest Service got tired of getting sued real quickly,” Brown said. So, the agency simply stopped approving old-growth timber sales on matrix land.

In response, mills have been re-tooled over the years to handle smaller logs.

“I have not seen a federal timber sale allow the harvest of a tree over 30 inches (in diameter) since I started at WKO,” said Garret Stump, president of High Cascade, a branch of the Pacific Northwest-based lumber manufacturer  WKO Stevenson, Wash.

“The timber owners I know are no longer interested in logging old growth, they’re interested in a sustainable supply of raw product,” Brown said.

The NWFP succeeded in stopping the old-growth harvest that sparked the timber wars. But conservationists, industry, Tribes and other stakeholders largely agree the plan is falling short in meeting today’s challenges. Now they are presenting their own recommendations for a plan that’s more responsive to climate change, wildfire and other stressors that are putting the future of Northwest forests at risk.

Despite their profound differences over forest management, will the committee find consensus on a path forward for the next 30 years of the Northwest Forest Plan?

Part I of a series.