The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was designed to quell the decades-long ‘timber wars’ between loggers and environments. The plan placed 24 million acres of federal forests in Oregon, Washington, and northern California under a single management paradigm that was supposed to protect spotted owls and promote ecological, social, and economic stability for the next 100 years.

However, 30 years later it has failed to recover owl populations. Wildfires scorch northwest forests, destroying old-growth and owl habitat. And many historically timber-dependent communities continue to struggle.

The intent and scale of the plan were revolutionary. “It showed a light on the fact that clearcutting old growth on public lands in the 90s and 80s was not sustainable and we needed to transition,” said Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade group representing the timber industry.

It was also the first time a government executed land management on an ecosystems level. “[The plan] was way ahead of its time when it came to innovation, and it did a lot with not a lot of tools,” said Susan Jane Brown, chief legal counsel of Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

Joseph and Brown are co-chairs of the Northwest Forest Plan advisory committee that spearheaded the recommendations for upcoming amendments. They hail from opposite sides of the aisle: Brown, the environmentalists, Joseph, the industry, but they agree that the plan needs to change.

So where did things go wrong? You can’t discuss the Northwest Forest Plan without the northern spotted owl. The spotted owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 and it became the poster child for species threatened by logging old growth. Every acre in the plan was designed to fall within spotted owl habitat.

“[The Northwest Forest Plan] was essentially developed to save the spotted owl,” said Lindsay Warness, western regional manager of the Forest Resources Association, another industry trade group.

However, the spotted owl is still in decline. Despite prohibiting harvest on significant swaths of the owl’s territory, populations have plummeted by 65 percent since the plan was enacted. In some areas of Washington, that number is closer to 90 percent. Some of the decline is attributed to the barred owl, a larger, more aggressive species that is displacing the spotted owl. Increasing wildfires, insects, and tree disease are also to blame. It’s estimated that Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day fires burned over 560 square miles of suitable nesting and roosting habitat for the species.

Forestry industry advocates are not happy about sacrificing timber land when logging is no longer the owl’s primary threat. Over the past 30 years, timber harvests on federal land have fallen 80 percent while wildfires have burned four times as many trees.

“It’s offensive to us that all this land has been put aside to save the spotted owl, and it’s still declining,” said Nick Smith, director of public affairs for the American Forest Resource Council.

The fraction of forest that is available for harvest has failed to provide a reliable timber supply. The original Northwest Forest Plan stipulated 1 billion board feet of timber a year to support rural communities. Today, less than one-tenth of that is being produced. Following mill closures and job losses in the late 90s, some timber towns successfully shifted to other revenue streams, like tourism. Yet communities like Skamania County that lack the infrastructure to diversify have been devastated.

Eighty percent of Skamania County lies within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. For centuries, timber was the lifeblood of the community. When the Northwest Forest Plan was established, that blood supply was cut off. Since 1996, the average annual harvest from the Gifford Pinchot has been less than one-third of promised quantities. Skamania has lost six of its seven mills and 85 percent of its timber jobs.

“We have struggled to figure out how to survive,” said Ann Lueders, superintendent of Emergency Medical Response and Rescue in Skamania.

Timber towns weren’t the only communities neglected by the plan. Native tribes weren’t just left behind; they were left out. Joseph estimated that the federal government failed to consult more than 80 tribes when developing the plan. This oversight has been detrimental because Northwest forests were heavily impacted by Native American management.

“Indigenous people were out in the forest every day, so they could tell how vegetation was drying out or changing, and what techniques to apply when,” said Andrew Gray, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service.

One technique tribes employed was cultural burning. Native peoples across the country periodically set fires to the landscape to prevent larger fires and promote plant species that served their cultural practices. “Through an accumulation of history and practice, [tribes] could readily decide, ‘This is the week we need to apply fire to this stand,’ ” said Gray.

When white settlers seized the land, they prohibited cultural burns and opted to suppress fire. A century later, fire exclusion had turned Northwest forests into a matchbox: overly dense and ripe for wildfire. The NWFP failed to heed Indigenous wisdom and implement management strategies that would compensate for the damage.

The plan segmented forests into three main categories: matrix lands, late successional reserves (LSRs), and riparian reserves. The key word here is reserves. Nineteen of the 24 million acres of NWFP territory fall under the reserve category, which means they were set aside from active management to cultivate old-growth.

Joseph opposes that entire premise. “I fundamentally reject the view that human beings are not a part of the forest and should stay out of them,” said Joseph. “We are a part of these forests, and that means responsibly managing them.”

When the Forest Service established reserves, they included the forest stands that had become dense and homogenous from fire exclusion. Now, the hands-off management approach has made those stands into a breeding ground for wildfire. As of December 2023, catastrophic wildfires had destroyed more old-growth and mature forests than were added since the Northwest Forest Plan was enacted.

“We should never have put static lines on a dynamic ecosystem,” said Joseph. “That system isn’t nimble enough to allow us to get in there and do work to protect our forest.”

And what of the other 5 million acres that aren’t in reserves? Most of it is matrix land where timber harvest – among other management activities – occurs.

Another 6 percent was dubbed adaptive management area (AMA) and set aside for scientists and foresters to test new management techniques. AMAs were an exciting innovation, but dwindling budgets caused agencies to pull the plug on the monitoring and management programs in the early 2000s. “I would really love for the AMAs to work,” Brown said, “but that ship has sailed.”

Now, most AMA forests are lumped-in with matrix. Neither environmentalists nor the forest sector approves of how matrix lands are managed. Industry representatives are concerned that matrix lands aren’t yielding the timber supply promised. For environmental groups, the controversy lies in the fact that old-growth in the matrix can still be logged. According to Joseph, policymakers believed leaving some old-growth up for grabs would facilitate the transition into a new era of sustainable logging. “The idea was, ‘Let’s throw some old-growth into the matrix and we’ll slowly cut it until it’s gone,’ ” said Joseph.

That’s not exactly what’s happened. Instead, the decision prompted more fighting and litigation. “The public wouldn’t stand for it, and the Forest Service got tired of getting sued real quickly,” said Brown. So, the agency simply stopped approving old-growth timber sales on matrix land. In response, mills have been re-tooled over the years to process smaller logs.

“I have not seen a federal timber sale allow the harvest of a tree over 30 inches since I started at WKO,” said Garret Stump, president of High Cascade, a branch of lumber producer WKO in Carson, Washington.

“The timber owners I know are no longer interested in logging old growth,” said Brown. “They’re interested in a sustainable supply of raw product.”

The NWFP succeeded in stopping the old-growth harvest that sparked the timber wars. But environmentalists, industry, tribes and other stakeholders largely agree the plan is falling short in meeting today’s challenges. Now they are presenting their own recommendations for a plan that’s more responsive to climate change, wildfire, and other stressors that are putting the future of Northwest forests at risk. Despite their profound differences over forest management, will the committee find consensus on a path forward for the next 30 years of the Northwest Forest Plan?

(Sydney Gleason, a native of Seattle, is a student at Boston College. This past summer she served as an environmental journalism intern for Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities.)