Wednesday, March 26, 2003
FOR QUOTES OR QUESTIONS, CONTACT:
Clyde Hanson, Conservation Chair, 218-387-9081
Joshua Davis, Forestry Organizer 612-659-9124
New regional forest plans give timber, paper a ‘free pass’
Forest Resources Council avoids goals for accountability, mitigation
Roseville, MN — The Minnesota Forest Resources Council voted today not to hold the timber industry accountable for environmental damage caused by increases in logging in the state. The Governor-appointed council adopted forest plans for northern Minnesota that further delay long promised changes in logging and reforestation.
The Forest Resources Council set up stakeholder committees to mitigate ecological damage from the tripling of logging volume in the state since 1975. After nearly ten years of study and collaboration, Council staff were directed to report back in five years on how the forest composition and growth stages have changed. According to Clyde Hanson, Conservation Chair of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter, it was a “free pass for the timber industry.”
"The timber industry sold this collaborative process as a way to insure forest protections are practical," said Hanson, "But they promised the Legislature that they would meet the goals of preventing further damage and restoring past damage. Now they've succeeded in making the ecological goals voluntary too. That wasn't the deal. When the public wasn't looking, they have gained complete flexibility to go nowhere in restoring Minnesota's forest habitat."
Today’s vote adopted mixed recommendations from two regional committees, which ended in chaos this winter after the industry group Minnesota Forest Industries voted against setting any quantifiable goals to preserve wildlife habitat while maintaining logging. Without concrete goals for what the forest will look like in 20 years, it will be impossible to meet the expectations of the state's "Sustainable Forest Resources Act".
The Council is a stakeholder group that includes government foresters, conservationists, wildlife managers, timber buyers, tourism interests, and private forest landowners. It was set up by the Legislature to define sustainable forestry and set goals for moving the region's forest closer to nature's design over the next hundred years, in a compromise that avoided a forest practices law that would have directed specific changes or set aside forest preserves.
Many stakeholder groups still on the Council had endorsed the recommendations of the implementation roundtable on the Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Timber and Forest Management that was codified in the Sustainable Forest Resources Act. The Roundtable report promised, "landscape plans make management directions predictable, minimizing adverse cumulative impacts, and fostering creative management (page 11, November 1994)".