Northwest Forest Plan Oral History Collection, 2016-2017

Hailed as a landmark of the twentieth century conservation movement, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) is a series of policy guidelines and directives adopted in 1994 by multiple agencies of the United States government. The NWFP was implemented as a response to serious gridlock in federal land use policy, as brought about by legal challenges to logging activities in the Pacific Northwest's old growth forests. By 1992, the court proceedings driving the stalemate had grown to a dozen lawsuits and three separate injunctions, many of them focusing on the need to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl, which was listed as a threatened species in 1990. At that point, timber sales in wide swaths of federally managed forests had come to a stop, with compliance managed by at least three federal agencies working independently of one another.

On April 2, 1993, President Bill Clinton convened the Northwest Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon; Vice President Al Gore and five members of the Clinton cabinet were also present at the gathering. The objective of the conference was to provide a public forum for expression of the many values people hold for public forest lands and also science-based interpretations of the status of those lands and the species within them. Following the conclusion of this meeting, Clinton directed Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to develop a set of options with different levels of timber harvest and protections for species, especially those associated with old growth forest, so that elected officials and the federal judge holding the injunctions could determine the preferred plan to meet federal environmental laws while permitting timber cutting. A Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team (FEMAT), consisting of scientists, academics and public policy analysts, was charged with devising those options to determine how best to balance interests and activities that often opposed one another.

On May 20, 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan went into effect. Covering some 24 million acres of federal forest land in the range of the northern spotted owl, the plan designated specific land allocations, designed specific management objectives and practices for each of them, and created a "comprehensive ecosystem management strategy." About eighty percent of lands defined as "late successional and old growth forests" were protected from logging, and one immediate impact of the plan was a dramatic reduction in clearcutting operations on public lands. The plan also placed an increased emphasis on protection of riparian zones and other habitats critical to endangered fish and wildlife; defined "matrix" areas where timber harvesting could continue, so long as it was conducted in compliance with certain environmental requirements; and reclassified a subset of lands as "Adaptive Management Areas," where novel approaches to land management could be tested. Today, the NWFP continues to govern use of those same 24 million acres in Washington, Oregon and northern California, as organized into 19 national forests, 7 Bureau of Land Management districts, 6 national parks, and an array of national wildlife refuges and Department of Defense lands.

The oral history interviews held in this collection were conducted by Samuel Schmieding, an independent research historian and photographer with interests in environmental history as well as the history of science, geography, cartography, Native American history and Latin American history.

Many of the oral histories in this collection are from participants in FEMAT and focus on the processes leading up to and following it. The narrators who contributed to the project are as follows:

Kelly Burnett, a research fish ecologist based in the Corvallis Forestry Sciences Laboratory of the Pacific Northwest Research Station who served on the FEMAT Aquatic/Watershed Group.

Eric Forsman, a Forest Service wildlife biologist and northern spotted owl expert who served on the FEMAT Terrestrial Ecology Group.

Jerry Franklin, a distinguished research forester and chief plant ecologist with the Forest Service, professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington, and a member of the FEMAT Terrestrial Ecology Group, who played a central role in merging the terrestrial and aquatic teams' conservation strategies.

John Gordon, a professor of forest science at Oregon State University and, later, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, who was regularly involved in conversations with industry leaders, members of Congress, and others about the issues and implications of the NWFP.

Becky Gravenmier, a Forest Service science coordinator who facilitated NWFP work conducted by the Regional Office of the National Forest System, the Pacific Northwest Research Station, and the Bureau of Land Management.

Richard Haynes, a forest economist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the Forest Service who specialized in assessing forest resources and markets, and participated in the formulation of the NWFP.

Norman Johnson, a professor of forest policy at Oregon State University and leader of the FEMAT Resource Analysis Group, charged with evaluating timber harvest levels for the various options under consideration.

Bruce Marcot, a Forest Service wildlife ecologist and member of FEMAT.

Cindy Miner, Assistant Director for Communications and Applications at the Pacific Northwest Research Station, and a member of the FEMAT social science team.

Martin Raphael, Pacific Northwest Research Station wildlife biologist and deputy team leader of FEMAT.

Gordon Reeves, Pacific Northwest Research Station fish biologist and co-leader of the FEMAT Aquatic/Watershed Group.

Tom Spies, Pacific Northwest Research Station forester and member of the FEMAT Terrestrial Ecology Group.

Fred Swanson, Pacific Northwest Research Station geologist. As a member of FEMAT he worked in the Aquatic/Watershed and Adaptive Management Groups and facilitated interaction with the Willamette National Forest.