The Northwest Forest Plan celebrated its twentieth anniversary this month. 600 researchers, conservationists, and policy-makers drafted the Northwest Forest Plan, which was formally instated in 1994. The plan’s mission is to protect both economic interests and endangered species in the northwest region’s old growth forests. The known ranges of many endangered species that rely on old growth forests, like the spotted owl mentioned in an earlier post, are governed by the Bureau of Land Management under the Northwest Forest Plan’s mission.

The plan became necessary after decades of unregulated, unsustainable logging in the region that includes valuable and difficult to replace old growth forest that pushed many important keystone species to the brink of extinction. The plan designates 30% of the old growth forests (roughly 7.4 million acres) as Late Succession Reserves (LSRs), which protects forests older than 80 years in age, and includes slightly younger stands that will develop into old growth. Of these 7.4 million acres, only about 40% actually exhibit late-successional growth status.

The Northwest Forest Plan also designates a second kind of preservation, the Riparian Reserve (RR). This designation, which cover approximated 10% of federal land in this region, aims to protect specifically land that borders important lakes, rivers, marshes, wetlands and streams to preserve clean water and important transitional habitats for endangered species like the spotted owl. Unfortunately, these sensitive ecosystems have been largely clear-cut and cross-sectioned by logging roads that make restoration difficult and degrade the ecosystem integrity.

While both of these types of reserves preserve aim to preserve the integrity of old-growth forests, logging is permitted in all of these designated preserves under the guise of improving the forest for future growth.

A third land designation is the “matrix” which is 4 million acres of land for multiple uses, including timber harvest. One out of the four million acres are old-growth forests that are vulnerable to logging. The forest is managed and logged on a 60-100 year cycle intended to mirror the cycle of naturally disturbances to the ecosystem. However, researchers propose that this cycle is too short, and that logging more than once every 200-500 years is detrimental to soil health, depletes the ecosystem of nutrients, homogenizes forest structure, and establishes fire-prone areas.

30% of Oregon’s remaining old growth forest (estimated to be only 10% of the state’s preserved land) is designated to “Matrix” and is therefore vulnerable to logging.

http://www.oregonwild.org/oregon_forests/old_growth_protection/westside-forests/northwest_forest_plan/NWFP_OregonMap.pdf

http://www.oregonwild.org/oregon_forests/old_growth_protection/westside-forests/northwest_forest_plan

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/forests/