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Photo by Jim Craven Spencer Lennard, left, and Jay Lininger look over the aftermath of a 1986 clearcut near Williams, which they cite as an example of why cutting should stop on federal lands. If zero-cut were to take effect, Oregon's timber industry would be the biggest loser. No-saw zones? Groups, like Sierra Club, continue zero-cut push By Beth Quinn WILLIAMS -- Knee-deep in a slash, Spencer Lennard points out the failings of this 1980s timber sale on Mungers Creek. As habitat, the handful of small, standing trees fails to provide shelter for creatures dependent on old-growth forests. As a water source, the runoff from the steep slope muddies a stream vital to endangered fish. As a recreation site, the tangle of brush and slash promises pitfalls instead of pleasure. And as a business, the logging cost federal land managers more money than it earned. "The big problem is always trying to get wildland to produce revenues," says the wildlife chairman of Oregon's Sierra Club. For Lennard and the other 500,000 members of the national Sierra Club, the solution is zero-cut -- ending commercial timber production on all federal lands. To help get there, the movement will open a Washington, D.C., office this year. "Functioning habitat is worth far more to the average American than a few logging jobs," says George Hutchinson of Ashland, forest lands coordinator for Sierra statewide. "To subsidize the logging industry with almost $1 billion a year to come in and mow down these forests is ludicrous." A MOVEMENT IS BORN A decade ago, with the Pacific Northwest's national forests producing large timber harvests for industrial users, zero-cut was a radical idea that local conservationists viewed as an impossible dream. After all, federal timber was the golden goose that provided thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in county revenue. Yet even as the war over the continent's ancient forests heated up out West, other battles were brewing in the East. After almost a century of regrowth, the trees in national forests in 29 states east of the Rocky Mountains were ready for harvest. But when the hardwood trees began to fall -- black cherry in Pennsylvania's Allegheny forest and hickory in Missouri's Mark Twain forest -- many local residents were outraged. "At least here people have an assumption that they're getting something out of it," says Lennard. "You go back East, there's so few jobs related to the industry and such an emphasis on recreation." After 100 years of unfettered recreation, many Eastern outdoorsmen equated their local national forests with national parks. And polls in Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and North Carolina found that by majorities of 65 percent and more, residents opposed logging in their local national forest. And so the zero-cut movement was born. FROM IMPOSSIBLE TO LONG SHOT The zero-cut movement isn't news to forester Blair Moody of Medford's U.S. Forest Industries. "It's been something that's been in the background, going on for a quite a while now," he says. The campaign began quietly with regional environmental groups -- in 1994 the Oregon National Resources Council signed on. The movement became more vocal and visible in 1996 when zero-cut Sierra Club members forced a nationwide vote on the issue and won by a 2-to-1 ratio. "It is serious," says Jim Geisinger, president of the Northwest Forestry Association. "You have to take it seriously when national environmental groups like the Sierra Club are adopting it as their mantra." Zero-cut legislation was introduced in Congress 18 months ago by Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, and Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who say their National Forest Protection and Restoration Act makes economic and environmental sense. The bill, which mandates formation of a national heritage restoration corps to rehabilitate forests damaged by logging, has 36 co-sponsors, including nine from Western states. Movement members have the goal of passage by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. "It will be a few years probably. We have to build a lot of momentum," Lennard says. OREGON'S PRICETAG In dollars and cents, Oregon is the nation's biggest loser if zero-cut becomes the law of the land. In 1998, national forests turned over timber-based receipts of $229 million to the states, including $86 million -- 38 percent of the total -- to Oregon. Jackson County picked up a check for $3.9 million and Josephine County earned $1.9 million. Both counties also received payments from the Bureau of Land Management -- $10.5 million in Jackson County and $8 million in Josephine County. A 1993 law guarantees similar payments to timber-dependent counties in the territory of the northern spotted owl through 2003. And the Forest Service plans to introduce legislation to permanently stabilize county funding and break the link to logging earnings. Zero-cut would also eliminate jobs in the timber industry. In October, the Oregon Employment Division estimated that 5,150 people worked in the wood products industry in Josephine and Jackson County. Zero-cut advocates say displaced timber workers would have priority for jobs with the forest restoration corps and could receive up to $25,000 for retraining. "If we redirected the billion a year that we're giving to the timber industry and put half into worker retraining and half to scientific forest management, we'd be in great shape," says the Sierra Club's Hutchinson. Public and private timber managers in Southern Oregon say no matter what happens with zero-cut, years of thinning will be required to prevent catastrophic wildfires in the region's overstocked second-growth forests. Zero-cut advocates say restoring those forests will provide jobs for decades and eliminate the boom-and-bust employment cycle of the timber industry. "Scientific-based restoration forestry actually provides local communities with more stable jobs," says Jay Lininger, forest-watch coordinator for the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. WHERE'S THE WOOD? With timber harvests on public lands already reduced, zero-cut activists say national forests account for only 4 percent of America's wood production these days. But timber industry officials counter that those forests contain 50 percent of the soft wood and soft timber inventory in the nation. "If we go lock up the zero-cut on public timberlands and our corresponding population is not decreasing, where are we going to get the wood from?" asks U.S. Forest Industries' Moody. "We'll just export that demand to Third World countries." That's already happening and has caused widespread deforestation in poor nations lacking environmental protection. "We're importing 40 percent of what we use from other countries while we sit on this huge inventory of timber," says Geisinger. "To just turn our backs on it and lock it up and let it rot and burn doesn't seem very realistic to me." ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE A decade ago, a maverick Portland forester recommended requiring market-based decision-making on national forests, ending logging subsidies and charging fair-market prices for both timber and recreation. "If public land managers are allowed to charge a full range of user fees and are given incentives to not lose money, then recreation will turn out to be the dominant source of their income in most national forests," says Randal O'Toole, author of "Reforming the Forest Service." But he doubts needed forest restoration can happen without timber sales. "Congress won't give the Forest Service a blank check to do nothing of political value," O'Toole says. "Some timber sales may be needed not to satisfy U.S. wood demands but to accomplish ecosystem restoration." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA