Two years ago, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber boasted that his state could do a better job of managing coho salmon than the Endangered Species Act. The Oregon Plan, he said, was an innovative approach to endangered species management on state and private land - a collaborative, mostly voluntary approach that could replace top-down federal regulations.
promise of local solutions brought the timber industry to the
table, and the governor hoped its cooperation would help to protect
fish habitat on private land, where the Endangered Species Act is
often difficult to enforce.
Even the National
Marine Fisheries Service, the agency responsible for managing
endangered marine species, went along with the $30 million plan,
deciding not to include most Oregon populations of coho when it
listed the California and Washington populations last
But critics said the Oregon Plan alone was
not enough to protect the fish, and took the Fisheries Service to
court. In June, the federal court agreed, and this Aug. 3 the
agency listed the coho as threatened in Oregon.
By accepting Oregon's promises of future
protection as a substitute for immediate regulation, said the
court, the Fisheries Service had violated the Endangered Species
Act (HCN, 8/3/98).
Many activists hope the
federal listing will kick-start a stalled recovery process. "Things
were moving incredibly slowly," says Mary Scurlock of the Pacific
Rivers Council, an environmental group involved in the Oregon Plan
process. "Early on, there was this pie-in-the-sky idea that (the
state and the Fisheries Service) would hold hands and develop
proposals together. That fell apart pretty quickly."
During the Oregon Plan negotiations, the state
and the Fisheries Service butted heads over a controversial
revision of the state's Forest Practices Act. Rob Jones of the
Fisheries Service says that other major issues not resolved by the
Oregon Plan will now be tackled by the federal recovery plan,
including regulation of commercial fishing, agricultural practices,
and urban development.
"We need every available
tool in the toolbox," says Ken Rait of the Oregon Natural Resources
Council. His group, in cooperation with the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen's Associations, led the lawsuit against the
Fisheries Service. "The Oregon Plan is a step in the right
direction, but we need the Endangered Species Act as a safety net,"
Some observers wonder if the timber
industry, which was lured on board with the chance to escape
another listing, is now ready to jump ship and take along its huge
tracts of privately owned land. It's a possibility that has many
observers watching the Oregon process closely, especially since the
plan is now being imitated in other states.
now, it looks as though everyone is willing to keep talking. In a
press conference Aug. 3, flanked by an environmentalist, a private
landowner and a timber industry representative, the governor said
the monitoring and recovery efforts begun by the plan will
A timber tax providing about half of
the plan's funding is set to be canceled after the listing, but the
Oregon Forest Industries Council says it wants the tax to stay in
"Anytime you can develop solutions locally
instead of swallowing federal solutions, you're better off in the
long run," says spokesman Tim Wigley. "Of course, we wish there
hadn't been a listing, but we've put so much time into it that it
would be a shame to back out now."
(the timber industry) a chance to put their money where their mouth
is," says Rait. "It would have been ludicrous if the Oregon Plan
went away just because the law of the American people prevailed
Some say the timber industry is
pinning its hopes on successful appeals by the Fisheries Service
and the state, while other observers think an anti-clearcutting
measure on the ballot this fall has the industry scrambling to
polish its public image.
"The timber industry
does not want to alienate the public," says Jim Myron of Oregon
Trout, an environmental group that supported the Oregon Plan after
initial opposition. "It's the clear-cutting measure that's keeping
industry at the table."
In the end, says Jones,
the political battle may make little difference to the fish, whose
numbers continue to fall. "There's only one standard for species
recovery," he says. "It's not like the coho need one thing if
they're listed and one thing if they're not. Giving them a title of
threatened and endangered doesn't change how many are left."
* Michelle Nijhuis, HCN
Continuing coverage of community-based
conservation efforts is supported by a grant from the Ford
You can contact
* The National Marine Fisheries Service at
* The Governor's Natural Resources
* The Oregon Natural
Resources Council, 503/283-6343.