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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/fored1.shtml

Who is watching plants and animals in forests?

Tuesday, August 10, 1999

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

It's becoming increasingly difficult to have confidence that federal agencies are taking adequate precautions to
safeguard vulnerable plants and animals before engaging in land trades or selling timber for harvest.

First, U.S. District Court Judge William Dwyer ruled that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management had failed to look carefully enough for protected plants and animals before taking bids from timber
companies. So he put nine timber sales on hold.

Now, one of the largest public-private land swaps in the state's history is going sour because neither the Forest
Service nor U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service performed more than a cursory inventory for protected species.

Sonny O'Neal, supervisor of the Wenatchee National Forest, is a prime coordinator of the land swap with Plum
Creek Timber. He even urged that the check for protected species be "minimized to the extent possible" to speed
up closure of the deal.

Plum Creek itself discovered what the Forest Service missed: several marbled murrelet nests. The company
looked for the species because the federal agencies have all but abdicated their responsibilities to private business.

The murrelets are protected under the Endangered Species Act. So the discovery understandably cooled Plum
Creek's thirst to acquire the land where the birds live. The upshot is that taxpayers likely will spend another $8
million to sweeten the deal. The land swap was meant to leave wildlife habitat along the I-90 corridor, which isn't a
bad idea.

But there is one bad idea at work here: Land swaps do not require the agencies to scour the woods for protected
species. That's because the swaps are not technically defined as a "ground-disturbing activity."

Since the only reason Plum Creek wants to swap land is so it can harvest trees, it's time to reclassify land swaps as
"ground-disturbing" events, which they most assuredly are.

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