NCCSP

Conservation Policy Initiative

THE AQUATIC CONSERVATION STRATEGY OF THE NORTHWEST FOREST PLAN

THE AQUATIC CONSERVATION STRATEGY DEFINED

The Aquatic Conservation Strategy (ACS) is a science-based plan that outlines protective measures for ensuring that healthy aquatic habitat is maintained in the rivers and streams that flow through the 24.5 million acres governed by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

The ACS includes six critical management components: 

• Riparian Reserves are protected areas along rivers and streams, and around wetlands, where most timber, road, grazing, recreation, minerals, and fire/fuels management is prohibited under the strategy. 
• Key Watersheds were designated to protect at-risk salmon and steelhead, bull trout, and resident fish as well as high quality water - and encompass 164 watersheds in the region. 
• Watershed Analysis was established as a systematic procedure to characterize the aquatic, riparian, and terrestrial features within a watershed with the expectation that information gathered during watershed analysis would provide site-specific details needed to tailor restoration and management activities.
• Watershed Restoration was expected to be a significant element of federal land management under the Northwest Forest Plan, with emphasis given to efforts to ameliorate road-related runoff and sediment production, restore riparian vegetation and in-stream habitat complexity.
• The ACS also identifies nine objectives, and specifies that Forest Service and BLM-administered lands within the range of the northern spotted owl will be managed to meet these ACS objectives.  This requirement has proven to be a very effective conservation policy that integrates concern for aquatic habitat integrity into planning and decision-making about land management activities occurring outside the immediate riparian zone. This more holistic watershed-wide perspective has dramatically improved aquatic habitat and species conservation efforts on federally managed lands since the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented.
• The final important component of the Northwest Forest Plan is the imposition of a number of standards and guidelines  governing how riparian reserves and key watersheds are to be managed - this management direction specifies rules and limits governing actions, as well as establishes principles delimiting the environmental conditions to be achieved and maintained.

THE CONTROVERSY AND OUR RESPONSE

In March 2004, in response to a settlement agreement reached in response to a 2002 demand from the timber industry, the Bush Administration overhauled the Aquatic Conservation Strategy and fundamentally weakened its protective measures by:

• abolishing the requirement that logging and other management activities must be designed to meet ACS objectives
• eliminating the requirement that logging outside of riparian reserves consider the impacts on watershed condition
• removing mechanisms to identify and curtail destruction of salmon habitat from the cumulative effects of multiple timber sales and activities that degrade water quality

In May 2004 a legal challenge designed to reinstate the Aquatic Conservation Strategy was filed by Earthjustice on behalf of a number of plaintiff organizations, including the National Center.

On March 30, 2007, Judge Martinez ruled that the administration's rollback of the protections in the Aquatic Conservation Strategy violated the law, specifically finding that:

• The Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement issued by the Department of Agriculture (on behalf of the USDA Forest Service) and the Department of Interior (on behalf of the Bureau of Land Management) is arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to the National Environmental Policy Act and in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, and
• The biological opinions issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service are arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to the Endangered Species Act.

As part of the decision, the court set aside the faulty environmental analysis, the inadequate biological opinion, and the administration's compromising amendment of the Aquatic Conservation Strategy.  As detailed in a May 2007 Guidance Memorandum, this means that logging and all other activities on federal lands must conform to the protective standards of the original aquatic conservation strategy - and therefore must meet or promote attainment of watershed objectives designed to ensure healthy rivers and streams.

Uncertainty over the impacts of this court-ordered reinstatement of aquatic protections was resolved in November 2007 when the government dismissed its appeal.  As a result, the rulings issued by Judge Martinez and Magistrate Theiler stand, and the Bush administration's effort to weaken the ACS has been formally and finally set aside.

THE ACS EVALUATED

With all the legal and political wrangling over implementation of the original ACS, it is worth evaluating whether the policy is "worth it."  A special section in the April 2006 peer-reviewed journal, Conservation Biology, edited by staff with the National Center, included ten articles exploring the effects of the Northwest Forest Plan relative to social and ecological mandates during the ten years since its adoption. 

A paper reviewing the Aquatic Conservation Strategy included in that special section documented that:

• "the ACS met its expectation that watershed condition should begin to improve in the first decade of the NWFP"
• "the ACS and the NWFP appear to have prevented further degradation of watersheds that would have been likely under previous forest plans"
• "the science emerging since the NWFP was developed supports the framework and components of the ACS" 

The National Center will use this scientific evaluation in its continuing efforts to ensure that the ACS is implemented fully by both the Forest Service and the BLM.

Photo by Kevin Schafer.