106 



With the widespread loss of lowland habitats, salmon and other species have 

 become increasingly isolated in less-disturbed headwater areas. Many if not most of 

 these are on federally-owned lands. Today the management of lands in these steep, 

 headwater basins disproportionately affects not only the sensitive aquatic species that 

 find refuge there, but also water quality and habitat conditions in downstream areas. 

 An overwhelming portion of the thousands of miles of riverine habitat in the Pacific 

 Northwest lies downstream of federal lands, and the fate of these habitats depends 

 directly or indirectly on the protection and management of those federal forests 

 (Frissell 1991). 



Salmon Habitat and Federal Land Management 



Available scientific information strongly indicates that due to the a legacy of 

 degraded freshwater habitat and depleted populations on private lands and developed 

 public lands at lower elevations (e.g., Sedell and Everest 1990; other references in 

 Frissell 1991), relatively undeveloped drainage basins and rivers on federal lands are 

 critical in sustaining native salmon and other sensitive and declining aquatic species 

 (Frissell 1 991 , and references cited therein; Oregon Chapter of the American Fisheries 

 Society 1989). 



Unfortunately, federal land management plans developed over the past 1 5 years 

 target most of the last few relatively undeveloped watersheds for road construction 

 and logging, with inadequate protection for stream channels, riparian forests and 

 floodplains, and unstable or erosion-prone slopes. In most cases, roadless areas 

 remain relatively undeveloped today exactly because they are steep and dominated by 

 highly sensitive soils. Based on past experience, even with new forest plan standards 

 and guidelines, proposed development and the soil loss it promotes is highly likely to 

 cause severe degradation of habitat and water quality and to further jeopardize to the 

 viability of fish populations both within arnj downstream of roadless areas and many 

 other undeveloped lands (Frissell 1 991 , and citations therein). On such sensitive lands 

 that serve as critical refugia for regionally depleted salmon and other species, there is 

 no guarantee that even the more progressive logging methods proposed under the 

 "New Perspectives" program can reduce logging-related damage to acceptable levels 

 (Frissell et al. 1992). 



Two critical factors compound the effects of deforestation and forest 

 disturbance caused by logging, and also complicate their anatysis~1) cumulative 

 effects of past and new activities, and 2) the long time lag between slope disturbance 

 and full expression of impacts to fish. Unfortunately these factors have been often 

 overlooked or underestimated in the design of studies to evaluate effects of logging 

 on aquatic resources, and in the planning of logging and road development. The first 

 factor is that aquatic ecosystems have inherited the long-term, persistent effects of 

 past practices, which due to very long recovery periods, cause ongoing or anticipated 



