By Barry Espenson

A proposed federal land management plan for roughly 63 million acres in
Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Washington is intended to leave a lighter
footprint both on the land and on the resource-based economies within
that territory.

The Interior Columbia Basin Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact
Statement released for public review last week brings focus to a
“preferred alternative” during a 90-day public comment period.

“Of the three alternatives presented, Alternative S2 was identified as
the preferred alternative because it provides the best strategy for
protecting and restoring fish and wildlife habitats, improving the
health of forests and rangelands, and providing a more predictable level
of goods and services from public lands,” said Martha Hahn, Idaho state
director for the BLM and chairman of the Interior Columbia Basin
Ecosystem Management Project’s Executive Steering Committee.

The EIS summary says the preferred alternative also has the most
potential for avoiding future Endangered Species Act listings for
plants, wildlife and fish species.

The preferred alternative “uses basinwide information on resource and
social economic conditions to guide and prioritize restoration
activities where there is a potential to have the greatest benefit,”
according to Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project
information. It is described as a means of developing and implementing a
coordinated, scientifically sound, broad-scale, ecosystem-based
management strategy for the interior Columbia Basin project area.

It also “institutes an analysis process whereby broad-scale information
is considered at finer scales through subbasin review and ecosystem
analysis at the watershed scale.”

The overall objective of the project and its preferred alternative is to
help the agencies “achieve our stewardship objectives and provide a
commodity that’s useable in our business world,” according to Andy
Brunelle of ICBEMP’s Boise office. It would provide a standardized means
of determining if proposed activities are consistent with the management
strategy’s overall aquatic and terrestrial habitat objectives.

The draft EIS summary document estimated that, in the first 10 years of
implementation, timber harvest volume would increase by 22 percent over
current levels. The size and quality of those logs would decline,
however, because of a focus on activities needed to restore forest
health, such as commercial thinning. Large increases — seven-fold in
the case of the preferred alternative — are projected in the use of
prescribed fire and fuels management to reduce wildfire threats, in many
cases in diseased stands.

“Clearly the direction here is to provide the activities to sustain some
of the older forest conditions,” Brunelle said.

The result would likely be “smaller diameter and less desirable species
from a lumber standpoint,” Brunelle said. The EIS estimates that direct
employment associated with the federal lands would increase by 3,900
jobs under the preferred alternative.

The EIS anticipates that the preferred alternative would reduce grazing
on the federal lands by about 10 percent in animal unit months during
the first decade of implementation. Along with that would come a loss of
an estimated 100 jobs.

The EIS summary document promises no miracle cure for salmon recovery.
Though chinook and steelhead habitat capacity would improve
substantially under any of the alternatives considered, population
status would show minor or no improvement, the summary says.

“Rehabilitation of depressed populations above several dams cannot be
accomplished via federal habitat improvement alone but will require
improvements in migration corridor survival and efforts to address
causes of mortality in other life stages,” according to the summary.

“However securing and restoring federal freshwater habitat may be
critical to the short-term persistence of many anadromous populations.”

Partners in the development of this strategy include the National Marine
Fisheries Service, Environmental Protection Agency, and the U. S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.

In July of 1993, President Clinton directed the Forest Service to
develop a scientifically sound and ecosystem-based strategy for eastside
forests. In response, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) initiated the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project
(ICBEMP) with the goal of creating a long-term, comprehensive strategy
for managing the public lands in the Basin. The project released two
draft environmental impact statements (EISs) for public comment in May
1997 and received over 83,000 public comments during the 335-day comment
period.

“We have responded to the public’s concerns and comments in the
Supplemental Draft EIS,” Hahn said. The supplemental draft EIS
supplements the Eastside and Upper Columbia River Basin Draft EISs
released in June, 1997.

Public comments received on the supplemental draft EIS will be
considered in the development of a final EIS and Record of Decision,
which would amend 62 land use plans for the 32 national forests and BLM
administrative units within the project area. The Final EIS will also
replace Forest Service and BLM interim strategies designed to ensure
protection of anadromous and inland fish habitat and old forests while
the project’s long-term strategies were being developed.

The cost of the project through fiscal year 1999 totaled $45 million
with $3.5 million budgeted by the Forest Service and $1.7 million by the
Bureau in 2000.

The two agencies have a total budget of $550 million to manage lands in
the project area with about $135 million of that already earmarked for
on-the-ground restoration activities, according to ICBEMP information.

Future funding levels, as determined by Congress, would affect the pace
at which proposed management strategies would be implemented. The
activities projected under the preferred alternative would require
funding increases of $67 million above current levels.

Much of the information compiled in the draft supplemental EIS is being
used in the short-term as a federal agency caucus assembles its final
“All H’s” conception recovery plan for ESA-listed Columbia Basin fish
and wildlife, according to Elizabeth Gaar of the NMFS. That final paper,
which is due in May, will attempt to identify actions necessary across
the 4 H’s — habitat, hydrosystem , hatchery production and harvest —
that are needed to recover listed species and potentially provide
harvestable population levels.

Federal land management activities and habitat restoration are “a big
part of the All H’s approach,” said Gaar, a senior policy adviser for
habitat and protected resources. The final EIS won’t be completed in
time to meet the All H’s schedule but much of the data and analysis done
by the Forest Service and Bureau will be helpful, she said.

“We need to have some specific and clear assumptions” about basin
habitat quality and quantity and how those measures can be improved.

She described the EIS as a “programmatic document” detailing management
direction.

“It’s primarily a process for analysis and decision making at a finer
scale,” Garr said.

The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s Jim Weber said that
the Forest Service-Bureau of Land Management document supports a
long-held tribal assertion –improved habitat will help but can not be
relied on alone to achieve recovery standards, much less meet federal
treaty obligations.

If salmon migrant mortality is not addressed, federal recovery efforts
are not going to satisfy federal treaty promises to provide fish with
harvestable fish populations, Weber said.

The 90-day public comment period on the supplemental draft EIS ends July
6, 2000. During the comment period, public meetings will be held
throughout the project area:
April 18 – Salmon, Idaho; Salmon Valley Center, 200 Main Street, and
Walla Walla, Wash., Best Western Walla Walla Suites, 7 East Oak Street;
April 19 – Missoula, Mont., Boone and Crocket Building, Old Milwaukee
Depot, 250 Station Drive;
April 20 – Kalispell, Mont., Cavanaughs Best Western Outlaw Inn, 1701
U.S. Highway 93 South;
April 24 – John Day, Ore., Forest Supervisors Office, 431 Patterson
Bridge Road, and Libby, Mont., Libby City Hall, 952 East Spruce Street
April 25 – Lakeview, Ore., BLM/Forest Service Interagency Office, 1300
South G Street, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Couer D’Alene Inn and
Conference Center, West 414 & Appleway;
April 26 – Boise, Idaho; location to be announced;
May 1 – Okanogan, Wash., Agriplex, 175 Rodeo Trail Road;
May 2 – Colville, Wash., Colville Community College, 985 South Elm
Street;
May 3 – Bend, Ore., Shilo Inn, North Highway 97, OB Riley Road
May 4 – Pocatello, Idaho; Cavanaughs Pocatello Hotel, 1555 Pocatello
Creek Road.

Written comments on the Supplemental Draft EIS will be accepted by mail
at Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, P.O. Box 420,
Boise, Idaho 83701-0420 or electronically at GOTOBUTTON BM_1_
www.icbemp.gov. For additional information and photos, a Supplemental
Draft EIS Information Packet is posted at www.icbemp.gov.