177 



products industry', the Administration was found to have violated the Federal Advisory 

 Committee Act (FACA) in preparing the plan. 



When the plan was announced in July 1993, Secretaries Babbitt and Espy committed to 

 providing 2 billion board feet of timber that year and over time ramping down to the 1 billion 

 board feet per year called for in the plan. The following year the Administration told Congress 

 that it would ramp up the timber sale program, meeting the 1 billion board foot annual target by 

 the end of Fiscal Year 1997. The fact is that during the past two years, however, very little 

 timber has been sold due to the incredible bureaucratic gridlock imposed by the President's 

 Northwest Forest Flan, even though the injunction has been lifted. 



Overview of the President's Northwest Forest Plan 



In April, 1994, the Clinton Administration formally adopted their plan to resolve the debate over 



how to manage federal forests in the Pacific Northwest. The Administration's draft plan which 



was published in July, 1993, received over 100,000 public comments. In December, 1994, one 



federal court judge ruled that the President's Northwest Forest Plan was legal. 



The Plan prescribes management of 24 million acres of some of the world's most productive 



forests, with less than 3 million acres or 12 percent being available for any regulated timber 



harvesting. Twenty-one million acres or 88 percent, is preserved in wilderness, old-growth 



reserves, riparian areas, administrative withdrawals and experimental areas. See Exhibit #1 . If 



the plan were true ecosystem management, it would manage the entire landscape with the goal of 



maintaining and improving forest health, ecosystem diversity and economic stability. 



The Plan dramatically reduces the federal timber supply by 78 percent from historic sustained 

 levels. See Exhibit #2. It is also a major reduction fi-om new Forest Management Plans prepared 

 in the late 1 980's as directed by the National Forest Management Act (NFMA). The federal 

 timber program has historically been 40 percent of the region's wood supply, directly employing 

 100,000 people at family-wage jobs. Forest product manufacturers spend millions of dollars in 

 local communities on services, supplies and taxes. Without federal timber sales, entire towns fall 

 prey to closure as their single source of employment and tax revenue vanishes. It was this 



