Jim Colla

It is important to recognize trends that may result in unintended negative effects that could undermine the success the forest practices acts have had in protecting and restoring watersheds. Some of these trends are barely recognizable in Idaho or Montana, but are apparent in Oregon and Washington. By examining these trends, all states can learn from the collective experience.

TRENDS

1. Rulemaking is increasing to mirror situations in neighboring states in response to riparian protection concerns. Experience from Washington tells us that an increased rate of rulemaking and regulation will direct limited agency resources away from on-the-ground implementation and technology transfer toward more process-driven efforts. This can result in erosion of landowner understanding, support and ability to implement protection requirements. Concerns about riparian and watershed protection standards continue to be raised without giving adequate time to monitor the effectiveness of the current rules.

2. Rules are becoming more lengthy and complex. In contrast to Washington, both Oregon and Idaho are notification states. That is, the landowner or operator notifies the agency of the intent to conduct forest practices and a permit or prior approval is not required. (In some cases in Oregon, when water or other special resource sites are within 100-300 feet of an operation, a written plan is required.) The operator is then required to follow all applicable rules. To implement the rules correctly, the person applying them must be able to understand not only what is required, but also why that requirement exists. Simplicity and directness of language can help ensure understanding to those that implement the rules.

3. Management issues are growing more complex. As we move toward more holistic or complex resource management issues, the facts become less certain and the regulated community becomes less convinced that they are doing anything meaningful.

4. Unanticipated conflicts arise. New conflicts not anticipated by the drafters of the FPA framework are occurring on non-federal lands due to federal ESA listings and other federal actions under the Clean Water Act.

5. Conflict Management. While conflict resolution has been in place for forestlands, regulation of other land uses (agriculture, grazing and development) remains problematic. This makes equity a serious issue.

Because of these trends, acceptance of new regulations by landowners has become more variable. It is clear that increased forestry regulations will meet increased resistance among the regulated public, but the degree of resistance will become increasingly difficult to anticipate. Without seeking ways to provide positive incentives to make changes, the consequences of additional regulations thought to produce a positive effect will actually produce a negative, unintended effect. Below are examples of negative effects that are occurring in Northwest forests.

1. Federal Road Use Permits. One of the objectives of the state FPAs is to reduce road sediment related risks to salmonids and water quality on water quality limited streams. Federal policies related to road access under the motivation of protecting endangered species fails to recognize this and is adversely affecting the very thing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is charged with protecting. Principal among these policies is the choice by the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to view that road use access permits needed by non-federal forest landowners through Forest Service or BLM rights-of-way require consultation and "conditioning" under the federal ESA. As a result of federal policies, landowners are choosing to leave poorly located roads or build duplicate road systems.

2. Harvest Rates. Regulations, either real or imagined, change harvesting practices. Family forests exhibit increased harvest during "up" markets, and overall harvest rates on these lands appear to be unsustainable, at least in north Idaho. With the decrease in federal harvests, mills have sought to replace that volume from private sources, resulting in higher stumpage prices in some areas. Despite extensive cooperative efforts to educate landowners on the long-term value of forest stewardship and sustainable practices, many harvest practices result in high-graded stands. These landowners are more likely to do riparian harvesting to the maximum extent allowable under the FPA to pre-empt anticipated more restrictive regulations. Landowners frequently state that one factor in their decision to harvest is fear of increased future regulations.

3. Public Participation Processes. Where land use activities have the potential to affect public resources, the public is given ample opportunity to become involved in the planning and decision making process. This is a relatively recent development in the forest practices arena, particularly as applied on private lands. This public involvement owes its origins to various regulations at both the state and federal level designed to more actively involve the grassroots public in determining what problems forest practices may cause and help develop solutions to solve those problems.

These efforts have been handicapped to some degree by a lack of data or by different interpretations of the same data needed to describe what may be causing a problem. It becomes even more difficult to develop solutions, usually by consensus, to address the problems. A fragile consensus is usually reached, but commitment to see the process through ebbs over time as patience is lost amid the need to see solid results. Another process or regulatory change is then put in place, trumping the old, to solve the same water quality related problems.

The failure to recognize that water quality related problems were not created over a few years and cannot be solved in a few years seems to have been lost. Many of these processes were never given a chance to work and be monitored to determine effectiveness. In the meantime, many of the grassroots participants have become disillusioned and no longer participate, leaving attendance to government regulators and other interests paid to be in attendance. Because of past experience, the designers of future endeavors will have a difficult time getting the public back to the table.

4. Land Use Conversion. One of the key objectives of forest practices programs is to maintain forestland in forest uses. It has long been a concern that land use conversion can be an unintended impact of increased regulation on forestland. In the Northwest, this issue is complicated since there are not comparable levels of protection on other land uses. The differences between land use trends in Oregon and Washington may be very indicative of the different regulatory approaches in each state. Between 1979 and 1989, western Washington lost 414,000 acres of forestland from the primary forest zone, contrasted with western Oregon, which during the same time lost just 32,000 acres of forestland.

Much of Oregon's relatively low loss of forestland can be attributed to Oregon's land use program. It's not hard to picture what the future could bring to Idaho considering the economic incentive to convert, lack of a comprehensive land use plan and fear of increased forest regulation.

Jim Colla is program director, Idaho Forest Practices Act, Idaho Department of Lands, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Comments can be directed to him at jcolla@cda.idl.state.id.us.

This article appeared in the Northwest Woodlands Magazine, Spring 2001- Published quarterly by the World Forestry Center as a benefit of membership in the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, Washington Farm Forestry Association, Idaho Forest Owners Association and Montana Forest Owners Association.