05/14/05 Update: The Umpqua Land Exchange Project (ULEP) has been postponed indefinitely by the BLM after years of controversy surrounding virtually everything about it. A brief history is included below, after the following resource menu.

 

What was the ULEP and how did it meet its demise?

In 1995, Aaron Jones, owner of Seneca Timber Company, proposed that the checkerboard ownership of the main-stem Umpqua River (675,000 acres from Sutherlin to Reedsport) be consolidated for ease of management. Currently, about every other section of land is owned by either BLM or private industry. To facilitate a land exchange, Aaron Jones started the Umpqua Land Exchange Project (ULEP).

Five years later, in 2000, The Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges was formed to conduct ULEP's activities and to recieve a $4.3 milion federal grant. The board of the Foundation included Jones himself; Doug Robertson, Douglas Co. Commissioner and Chair of O&C Counties; Dennis Dykstra; Jim Brown, Oregon State Forester; and Bruce Taylor, Defenders of Wildlife. The Foundation was granted $4.3 million, taken from our precious Land and Water Conservation Fund, to do what they could with the computer model, and to write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and an HCP. The disbursement of the money was used in conjunction with BLM. The Foundation immediately asked for $2.8 million (over half) to be appropriated to fix the computer problems. BLM was forbidden to spend more than 15% of the $4.3 million to administer the overhead costs for the project.

We (the taxpayers) paid over $6,050,000 to orchestrate the exchange, including developing a computer program. The Computer Model knew what would happen to wildlife and logging if some of the (mostly cutover) private lands were traded for federal lands (with more mature forests, including old-growth). The Computer Model was programmed to show land exchanges that would maintain or increase logging levels. Six million of our tax dollars went to a timber industry support group to make a Computer Model that was beyond our abilities to fully understand. If a computer said that we could increase logging and increase protection for wildlife, how could we argue with that? Perhaps we could have had it peer-reviewed, or maybe we could have used it to evaluate our own land exchanges. NO, we couldn't have. The Foundation decided that the Computer Model was under their control and the public couldn't use or evaluate it. It was peer-reviewed a couple of years prior and received a poor review. Since then, The Foundation had been fiddling with it, and they decided NOT to have another peer review on the changes. Promise after promise of public use and inspection of the Computer Model were broken.

In October of 2000, The Foundation convinced congress to let them write an EIS for BLM to evaluate potential land exchanges. The deadline for this EIS was December of 2002, but the foundation did not meet it.

June 28, 2001, we received a letter from the BLM which promised that during public scoping "the most significant variables to the model will be presented to the public for their suggestions." But public participation in this process was a sham. For instance, The Foundation and the BLM formed a "Partnership". This allowed them to meet secretly behind closed doors during 2000-2001, developing the methods to trade away public forests for private land clearcuts and re-writing the BLM's Resource Management Plan. The Federal Advisory Committe Act (FACA), restricing special interest groups, didn't apply, nor the Freedom of Information Act because the BLM and The Foundation took precautions to put nothing in writing-- virtually no meeting notes or emails. We could have asked questions, but it was useless because neither the BLM nor The Foundation considered the public a priority. They took two months to respond after a lot of pressure. Follow-up questions were simply ignored. The Foundation had promised to keep us up to date with their web page, but this was just another broken promise. Their web page was deplorable. For instance, during public scoping time, they only detailed an event that happened 6 months prior (an "emergency purchase") that had no relevance anymore. If you read this, you would be confused. Just like the confusing Computer Model. Maybe if we were confused enough, we wouldn't say anything.

In addition to the missed deadline in 2002, The Foundation failed to meet a congressional deadline involving the land swaps in June 2003. This was due in part to private timber companies losing intersest in the project, including Roseburg Forest Products, the largest landowner in the project's area. The Foundation finally submitted a draft for their EIS, but not until March 2004.

In June 2004, The BLM suspended the project indefinitely. This does not mean it has failed, or will never surface again. Likely it will.

The Land:

1) The Smith River watershed is a "checkerboard" land ownership in one of the most critical watersheds for the Northern Spotted Owl, Coho, and Cutthroat Trout. Virtually the only old-growth left standing is on BLM land (Roseburg and Coos-Bay BLM). It is also a popular recreation destination for the urban centers of Eugene, Roseburg and Coos-Bay.

2) Smith River is designated a Key Watershed under the Northwest Forest Plan -- a top priority for restoration. In any land exchange, the spaghetti plate of logging roads on private lands will be considered an "asset," raising the monetary value of private land to afford industry with more public old-growth in the exchange. When these "assets" transfer into BLM ownership, they immediately become a liability under the Northwest Forest Plan. The Northwest Forest Plan identifies road decommissioning as the top restoration priority in a Key Watershed. Where will the money come from to fix this?

3) The Northwest Forest Plan designates Smith River as one of the most critical Late Successional Reserves (LSR) for the Northern Spotted Owl. The Critical Habitat Unit (CHU) has been identified by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as an extremely critical connection corridor for Owls to connect to the Cascade Mountains to the east, and the Klamath mountains to the south. In the new bill, Congress ordered that only the "net impacts of the Plan" be considered, which could mean the important connections outside the area will not be a factor considered in the environmental effects.

Article Excerpted from The Register-Guard

April 24, 2005

Land swap unravels: Failed bid for public-private trades cost taxpayers $6 million

By Diane Dietz
The Register-Guard

Eugene businessman Aaron Jones is an undisputed genius at lumber milling. Over the past half-century, he invented dozens of methods for cutting logs into boards, built the world's most efficient sawmill and made himself a multimillionaire.

But when he turned his mind to public policy, the results were a major disappointment.

His highly touted Umpqua Land Exchange Project is winding down next month after a decade of effort and with little to show - except the expense of $6 million in federal taxpayer money.

And a chorus of "I told you so's" from environmental groups.

These critics said Jones' idea of creating an experimental computer system to plan swaps of forestland between private companies and the federal government in western Douglas County was misguided from the start.

"It really seemed like a boondoggle to us," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the nonprofit Western Land Exchange Project watchdog group in Seattle. The government "gave them $6 million to design their model and run their model. This is taxpayer money, and it's just gone down the tubes."

In the early 1990s, Jones proposed a computer model that eventually would map a 1,000-square-mile swath in the Umpqua River basin containing public and private forest.

At that time, judges and federal regulators were adopting logging restrictions to protect endangered species.

Jones recently had bought 165,000 acres of timberland in southern Lane and northern Douglas counties, and he was frustrated by the onward rush of environmental restrictions.

His original idea was to transfer environmentally sensitive private lands into public ownership - and, in return, the federal government would give timber companies less-sensitive land that they could log at will.

The computer was supposed to analyze the study area, acre by acre, after which the swaps could be made. As part of the project, Jones proposed swapping about 26,000 acres of his own Umpqua forestland to the federal government.

But a full decade after Jones launched the effort, no land has changed hands, and other private timber owners appear to have lost interest.

The private Jones-led foundation that Congress awarded the bulk of the $6 million in grants has spent virtually all the money.

Finally, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management decided last June to pull the plug on the project and to try to recover some of the public money. The final accounting is due next month.

Federal lawmakers - including some who initially helped Jones get the money - are loath to talk about the enterprise.

Four times, Congress passed bills that included money for Jones' idea, yet few lawmakers are demanding to know: What did the project accomplish?

Former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., who originally put the funding into a Senate bill so Jones and his allies could avoid messy and time-consuming public hearings, insists that he remembers nothing of the project.

Staffers for Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who was among those voting to give Jones the money, refer all questions about the project to other members of the Oregon congressional delegation.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield, is reluctant to speculate about what benefit the public got from the expenditure.

"That's a really good question," he said. "Since I'm not the one who authorized, inserted or otherwise decided to spend the $6 million, and it was done over my objections, I couldn't tell you."

DeFazio said he could never picture how the exchanges would work. Jones has insisted that his computer program would show a way to boost logging while increasing the land set aside for ecological protection - which appear to be mutually exclusive goals.

"It just never seemed to me as something that was particularly viable," DeFazio said, "and obviously since nothing has happened, it wasn't."

Capital clout

Jones declined to be interviewed for this article; instead, Dale Riddle, in-house attorney for Jones' Seneca Sawmill Co., spoke with the newspaper.

Jones started his project in 1993 by rallying his peers in the timber industry, who thought the swaps were worth a try, Riddle said.

The Umpqua basin seemed a good spot to try swaps because the forestland is divided into a checkerboard pattern, with timber companies and the federal government owning every other square-mile section.

The BLM is in charge of most of the federal land.

Jones was seeking to free up federal timber for logging at a time when environmental lawsuits had all but shut down harvests on most federal forests west of the Cascades summit to protect the northern spotted owl.

With timber companies on board, Jones turned his attention to the body politic.

He toured Oregon, promoting his land-swap idea as the answer to the Northwest timber wars. And he began seeking federal funds to hire scientists and other personnel for the computer and mapping work.

He hired former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt and then later Marc Kelley, Sen. Gordon Smith's campaign manager, to make his case in Washington, D.C.

Kelley coaxed small appropriations for the project out of Congress in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Then, in 2000, he went for the big bucks - $4.3 million.

For that, he sought a senator to tag a rider onto a regular appropriations bill. A rider is a commonly used last-minute addition created outside the normal budget channels and without the normal hearings.

The shortcut was necessary, Kelley recalled. "There was no way that we were going to be able to pass a piece of legislation through Congress. The process of what it would take to get that done would have made it impossible to do in one session," he said.

Kelley laid the groundwork with then-Sen. Gorton, who was sympathetic.

Forest products companies were the Washington senator's largest contributors from 1995 to 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.

Gorton was then girding for battle against Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell, a fight he would lose that fall. Jones helped Gorton during that election with a pair of $1,000 contributions.

"(Gorton) was involved from day one," Kelley said. "Riders are not the preferred way of doing business, so if you're going to ask for one, and you're going to go to somebody and ask for their help - you'd better go to them the minute you think about it."

The bill passed in fall 2000 with the $4.3 million rider for land swaps within the Umpqua basin.

The legislation required execution of the swaps within about 2 1/2 years, and it ordered the BLM to help.

People working with Jones recall that on the day the bill passed, he figured he had the problem licked and that land swaps were only a year or two away.

"Aaron Jones and everybody (thought so)," said Bruce Taylor, an environmentalist with the Defenders of Wildlife, who Jones named to a board he convened to oversee the project. "The original expectation was that there would be an elegant solution that would involve exchanges of hundreds of thousands of acres," he said.

"Trust us?"

Jones knew that to have credibility, his initiative must rest on the impartiality of science. But he retained such tight control over the project that many outsiders were never convinced of its objectivity.

In the 1990s, Jones had used $2 million of his own money to hire as many as 20 scientists to develop and review the computer model that would be used for the swaps.

In 2000, he created the private, nonprofit Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges to receive the $4.3 million federal grant.

The funding was to pay for creating a swap plan, evaluating its environmental effects and ex- ecuting exchanges.

The foundation board consisted of Jones; the Oregon state forester; a representative from the nonprofit World Forestry Center; and Taylor from Defenders of Wildlife.

"If it's Aaron Jones, people are going to assume, `OK, this is just a timber grab,' '' said Riddle, Jones' attorney. ``To be successful, we had to get beyond that and bring the responsible environmental community in and say, `Let's work together on it.' ''

Yet Jones already had made decisions that undermined that effort.

Complex computer models are difficult for ordinary people to judge, so the scientists who operate decision support systems - such as the Umpqua model - typically earn their credibility by submitting them for blind review to scientific journals, said Thomas Spies, a Corvallis researcher who runs a land modeling effort out of the U.S. Forest Services' Pacific Northwest Research Station.

Jones and his partners chose another route to vet their project: They appointed a scientist to assemble a seven-member review committee - which is very different from a blind review.

The review was rigorous, said Rob Gill, a scientist who later became the Umpqua swap project manager. "They put us through a wringer for a solid week," he said.

Independence is important in all aspects of science, but especially in making models, Spies said. His modeling project called the Coastal Landscape Analysis and Modeling Study, for instance, eschews private donations.

"We didn't want it to appear like we were working for any particular group," he said. "We wanted some semblance of objectivity to what we were doing. There's so much sensitivity: Who's funding it? Who's working for it?"

Jones took no such steps to distance himself from the foundation's work. He remained on the foundation board even though he stood to profit from exchanges because he owned land in the study area. His in-house attorney served as the board's treasurer. Marc Kelley, who had worked as Jones' lobbyist, served as the foundation's first executive director.

To critics, those were warning signs.

"What are they going to say: Trust us?" said Francis Eatherington, conservation director for the nonprofit environmental watchdog group Umpqua Watershed Inc., which opposed the Jones project.

Further, scientists boost their credibility by making their methods public. Jones and his allies refused to do that.

The foundation kept some of the databases secret and refused to let outsiders examine how the computer code made its myriad decisions.

That led environmental groups to assume the computer program would be rigged to find swaps that would be advantageous to the timber industry alone.

Gill said the charge of secrecy is unfair. The foundation made hundreds of public presentations on the project, he said, and project scientists published a handbook that detailed their decisions.

Some of the data belonged to timber companies and was proprietary, Gill added. If the foundation made the code public, environmentalists might tweak it, generate contradictory answers and use them in "sabotaging" the project, he said.

Overriding the computer

In early 2003, when it came time to plan exchanges based on the computer model, more problems emerged.

Twenty-eight landowners - including Jones - offered to swap some of their lands for federal forest tracts. Jones offered to swap about 26,000 acres.

But many of the lands that these private owners were offering were not in areas where the computer model had identified any need for improving ecological health, according to federal documents obtained from the BLM by The Register-Guard in a Freedom of Information Act request. In other words, the computer had not recommended the swaps.

Yet the foundation staff overrode the computer model and penciled these swaps into a scenario detailed in a draft environmental impact statement, the federal records show. Gill said the foundation didn't want those swap offers to be ignored.

BLM officials, in internal reports to the director, said that if the agency was going to look at individual swaps not anticipated by the model, the agency could have done that under its existing rules.

At a meeting on Feb. 25, 2003, bureau line staff rebelled against the foundation's plans, according to internal meeting minutes.

They questioned whether the proposed swaps met the basic premise of the project, as adopted by Congress: to identify swaps that would improve the ecology while helping the timber supply.

The foundation appealed to the BLM's state director, Elaine Brong, to try to get the project back on track.

"Obviously, when the state director gives some direction, the line officers will stop arguing and do something," said Gill, the foundation's final director.

Meanwhile, the foundation was losing key private-side par- ticipants.

Some timber companies were concluding that the exchanges weren't going to work for them.

The rub with Roseburg Forest Products, for instance, was that the company now had its own old growth log supply and didn't need big, old federal trees - or the grief associated with cutting them, said Ray Jones, the Roseburg-based company's resource manager.

That hurt, because Roseburg Forest Products was by far the largest single private landowner in the land exchange's 1,000-square-mile study area.

"Death by delay"

By then, the project had missed congressionally set deadlines, and tensions between the foundation and the BLM were high.

In an exchange of letters, the sides accused each other of foot-dragging.

The foundation faulted the BLM for taking six months to sign an initial working agreement. The BLM faulted the foundation for failing to line up private landowners ready to make swaps.

The conflict was perhaps inevitable, given that Congress had set up an unusual situation, putting the foundation in command of the project's purse strings. Congress also bypassed BLM scientists and gave the foundation the job of writing the environmental impact statement.

Foundation board member Taylor said the BLM took an eternity to respond to questions.

It was "death by delay," said Gill, the foundation's director.

The agency was "absolutely not" dragging its heels, responded Mike Mottice, the BLM's deputy state director for resources. Protecting the public interest is job one, and the BLM still has not had time to determine whether the swaps would serve the public interest, he said.

"Any proposal that's based on a model would suggest the model itself would undergo tremendous scrutiny. Our obligation - to ensure the public interest is served - required us to take a very careful and deliberate approach," he said.

The project ended in a puff of paperwork.

In June 2004, the bureau sent the foundation a letter saying it was suspending the project indefinitely.

The letter cited as a reason an unrelated lawsuit - brought, in part, by the timber industry - which required that the BLM produce more logs for sawmills.

However, Jones' attorney, Riddle, had penned the settlement to that lawsuit, and he said he doesn't see why the settlement should halt the exchange project.

Riddle said the Umpqua exchange project could have been folded into the agency's new logging plans, which are due out in 2008.

The foundation in December closed its Portland office. The board will meet April 29 to decide what to do with its assets. Of the public's $6 million, less than $100,000 is left.

What did the public get for this expense?

Riddle said Jones had planned to give the computer program to high schools for students to practice laying out land. But the foundation has yet to make specific plans.

Mottice, the BLM's resource director, is unsure whether the agency can use the foundation's computer model in future land use work.

"Ultimately, what I'm after is the very best model we can find that does the very best job we can," Mottice said.

SWAP TIME

Here's how the Umpqua Land Exchange Project unfolded:

1953: Aaron Jones goes into saw milling with - as he sees it - the federal government as his partner and the promise of a perpetual supply of logs off of public lands.

1989: Jones launches a four-year effort to buy timberland, eventually acquiring 165,000 acres.

1991: In response to environmental lawsuits, federal Judge William Dwyer blocks timber sales on federal lands in Pacific Northwest to protect the threatened northern spotted owl.

April 1993: President Bill Clinton convenes a summit in Portland to protect species and allow for resumption of some logging on federal land.

Jones conceives of an alternative: land swaps that would turn some big tracts of federal timberland over to private hands.

July 1993: Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan proposed.

December 1994: Jones stumps for his own land swap idea in Oregon and Washington, D.C. Judge Dwyer approves the Northwest Forest Plan, which broadly prevents logging in federal Pacific Northwest forests.

1996: Jones' project is launched: A 160-square-mile pilot land swap study in Umpqua basin begins. Congress appropriates $200,000 and authorizes

$2 million for the study.

1997: Congress appropriates $750,000 for the study.

1998: A Jones science team begins study of the computerized land-swap model. Congress appropriates $800,000 for the study.

2000: Jones establishes the Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges to conduct the project.

Congress appropriates

$4.3 million for the foundation

to plan and carry out land swaps.

2001: The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the foundation sign a cooperation agreement.

2001: The foundation holds hearings to create an environmental impact statement.

December 2002: The foundation misses an initial congressional deadline for finishing the environmental statement.

June 2003: The foundation misses a congressional deadline for accomplishing swaps.

March 2004: The foundation finishes a draft environmental statement for the 1,000-square-mile study area and submits it

to the BLM for review.

June 2004:The BLM suspends swap project indefinitely.

May 2005: Deadline for foundation to submit final accounting to BLM. Officials expect less than $100,000 of the $6 million federal allocation to be returned to federal government.

Copyright 2005 The Register-Guard

Q-1. "Page 6 #C1 mentions a Federal Land Management Plan Amendment. Shouldn't the general public be involved in discussions of a Plan Amendment at the same time as The Foundation? ...."

A-1. ....Any substantial changes in federal land ownership constitute changes in land use allocations which should be addressed in resource management plan amendments, under both BLM guidance and the Northwest Forest Plan. We will begin the public scoping process this coming July, during which the Foundation and BLM will begin the development of the plan amendments and related environmental analyses.


Q-2. "Page 4 states that ‘The Foundation Agrees to... Spend the agreement funds... For preparation of draft and final EIS...’ Since The Foundation lists Aaron Jones of Seneca Timber Corporation on the board, how does the contract comply with NEPA 1506.5(c), where the contractor must not have any conflict of interest. Please clarify how The Foundation or its subcontractor can legally prepare the EIS?"

A-2. The Assistance Agreement incorporates by reference 43 CFR 12.942, which discusses award and administration of contracts by the Foundation under the Agreement. [Note: -- this CFR is interpreted to say that The Foundation can have conflicts of interest, but any contractor The Foundation hires cannot have a conflict.]


Q-3. "Page 5 gives BLM ‘nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide limited license to use the Multi-Resource Land Allocation Model (the Model)...’ Does this mean that we, the general public, also have a right to use the Computer Model to run our own land exchange scenarios, or to evaluate it for effectiveness? When can we do this? (Hopefully before, or at least during the public scoping/comment period)."

A-3. We expect that, as part of the upcoming scoping process and development of alternatives for the draft EIS, the most significant variables to the model will be presented to the public for their suggestions. [Note: this means the answer to my question is: there is NO public access to the computer model. I've requested the "most significant variables," as we are now in the scoping process.] We further expect that during scoping, the public will provide us with their ideas regarding those private lands that should be acquired by the United States, and those federal lands that could be traded and which should be retained in federal ownership. This information then could be processed by the model. We are currently exploring with the Foundation how we can make the model available publicly.


Q-4. "Objective D, Benefits (page 2) states that one benefit may be to ‘allow increased timber production under the standards and guidelines of the Northwest Forest Plan.’ From what benchmark do you measure ‘increased timber production’? Increased from what? Would that be the PSQ, or would that be the actual timber production in a certain year, or average of years? The BLM is late in producing their ‘third-year review,’ where PSQ will be re-evaluated. If the benchmark uses PSQ, will the computer be re-programmed after the third year evaluation?"

A-4. Timber harvest volume will be compared among the alternatives evaluated in the EIS, including the existing situation under the no-action alternative. Because the geographic area of ULEP covers parts of three BLM Districts and one national forest, the Probable Sale Quantity under the no-action alternative will be a unique estimate, but preliminary discussions among field office specialists indicate that we can develop a good benchmark for comparison.
[Note: I've requested a clarification on this answer. It appears to say that the PSQ, as defined in the 1995 Northwest Forest Plan, will be used as the No-Action benchmark for an Increased-Timber-Production assessment. Since current sales are low, this could mean a large increase in timber production.]


Q-5. "If one exchange objective is to transfer sensitive lands (for wildlife, soils, etc) to BLM for increased protection... How could BLM lands ever have increased protection AND increased timber harvest?"

A-5. We expect to evaluate how each alternative could satisfy each of several planning criteria, and, given that the landscape of the lower Umpqua basin is not homogeneous, it would not be surprising that outcomes of alternatives are a matter of slight degree. It is entirely possible that an alternative could result in increased protection and increased harvest when examined across the variable landscape.


Q-6. "Isn't the Oregon Forest Practices Act the best state logging regulations in the country? Doesn't it already give an adequate level of protection to sensitive soils and wildlife? Why do we need more protection under federal laws?"

A-6. The Oregon Forest Practices Act was signed into law in 1971. At the time, the State of Oregon was one of the first states to set forth rigorous standards for reforestation, harvesting, road construction, and other forest-related activities. One of the Oregon Forest Practices Act’s main objectives is to encourage those forest practices that provide sound forest resource management and maintain the growth and harvest of Oregon's forests. In turn, this requires the state to consider both economically efficient forest practices and ecological needs.

While in 1971 the Oregon Forest Practices Act was considered by many to be a forward- thinking law, it is now only once piece of a larger puzzle. The controversy over the northern spotted owl, logging, and the old-growth federal forests of the Pacific Northwest has continued since the passage of the Oregon Forest Practices Act, and by 1992, there were over a dozen lawsuits and three court injunctions involving the northern spotted owl, marbled murrelet and future timber harvesting in old-growth. The Northwest Forest Plan, signed in 1994, was declared sufficient by the courts to settle the then ongoing lawsuits and the Northwest Forest Plan was implemented. However, new lawsuits over the harvest of old-growth timber and the impacts of timber harvest on fish have significantly impacted the region's ability to implement the Northwest Forest Plan.

It is clear that the Oregon Forest Practices Act and the provisions and charter contained within the Northwest Forest Plan are different and exist on different scales. In addition, at the heart of management of the lower Umpqua basin is a diverse set of ownerships, landscapes, laws, regulations, policies, and interests. Using the environmental impact statement process, the BLM (in cooperation with the Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges) will be examining the current land ownership patterns and working to determine whether opportunities exist to improve on these patterns in a way that complements the tenets of both the Oregon Forest Practices Act and the Northwest Forest Plan.

The U.S. Congress envisioned that the Umpqua Land Exchange Project would encourage voluntary exchanges to be proposed that would improve habitat for important species and at the same time maintain the supply of timber consistent with the Northwest Forest Plan. Certainly, the Oregon Forest Practices Act plays a major role in this equation, and it will also help to answer whether or not the Umpqua Land Exchange Project can readjust land ownership in a way that meets the needs of the State, the Federal agencies, and the citizens of Oregon.

[Note: Whew -- that was a long-winded answer. I THINK the short answer to my question was, 'NO, the OFPA is not adequate to protect soils wildlife.']

That's it for the questions and answers. They did have another two pages explaining that questions are not treated as a FOIA, and so a timely response was not legally required, thus the two-month turn around time.

Stay tuned.

Francis
Umpqua Watersheds

copied from
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.4578.ENR:
and choose "full Display". Bold Text and Hyperlink seen below has been added.

H.R. 4578. Became Public Law No: 106-291 on 10/11/2000

SEC. 349. (a) In furtherance of the purposes of the Umpqua Land Exchange Project (ULEP) and previous Congressional appropriations therefor, there is hereby appropriated the sum of $4,300,000 to be derived from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Such amount shall be available to the Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges ('Foundation') working in conjunction with the Secretary of the Interior, and with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management as the lead Federal agency, to complete a Final Land Ownership Adjustment Plan ('Plan') for the area ('Basin'), comprising approximately 675,000 acres, as generally depicted on a map entitled 'Coast Range-Umpqua River Basin,' dated August 2000. No more than 15 percent of this appropriation shall be used by the agency for defraying administrative overhead.

(b) In preparing the Plan, the Secretary shall identify, no later than March 31, 2001, those lands or interests in land with willing sellers which merit emergency purchase by the United States due to critical environmental values or possibility of imminent development. For lands or interests in land so identified, the Secretary and the Foundation shall arrange with landowners to complete appraisals and purchase clearances required by law so that the Secretary may thereafter consummate purchases as soon as funds therefor are appropriated by the Congress.

(c) Pursuant to the funding and direction of subsection (a), the Secretary shall, in cooperation with the Foundation, no later than December 31, 2002, complete the Plan utilizing the Multi-Resource Land Allocation Model ('Model') developed for the ULEP. The Plan shall identify: (1) non-Federal Lands or interests in land in the Basin which, with the concurrence of willing non-Federal landowners, are recommended for acquisition or exchange by the United States; (2) Federal lands or interests in land in the Basin recommended for disposal into non-Federal ownership in exchange for the acquired lands of equal value; and (3) specific land exchanges or purchases to implement the Plan. In addition, no later than December 31, 2002, the Secretary, in cooperation with the Foundation, shall complete a draft Habitat Conservation Plan ('HCP') covering the lands to be disposed of by the United States and consistent with the Plan, a comprehensive Final Environmental Impact Statement covering the Plan, and a comprehensive Biological Opinion analyzing the net impacts of the Plan at Plan scale over time in 5 year increments, taking into consideration all expected benefits to be achieved by the Plan and HCP, and any consistency determinations or amendments to any applicable Federal land management plans. The HCP shall cover all species analyzed in the Model (including species under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Commerce).

(d) No later than March 31, 2002, the Secretary and the Foundation shall submit to the Committee on Resources of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the United States Senate, and the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations, a joint report summarizing the Plan and the land exchanges or purchases identified to implement the Plan, and outlining: (1) any Fiscal Year 2003 funding needed for land purchases; (2) any recommendations for actions to expedite or facilitate the specific land exchanges or purchases identified to implement the Plan, or the HCP; and (3) an action Plan for making the Model publicly available for additional land exchanges or other purposes upon completion of the exchanges.

(e) No later than June 15, 2003: (1) the Secretary with the Foundation and the financial participation and commitment of willing private landowners shall complete appraisals and other land purchase or exchange clearances required by law, including those pertaining to cultural and historic resources and hazardous materials; and (2) the Secretary shall consummate with willing non-Federal landowners the specific land exchanges previously identified in subsection (c) to implement the Plan, and together with the Secretary of Commerce, shall issue the HCP.

end

[Federal Register: July 9, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 131)] [Notices]
[Page 35807-35808]

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Bureau of Land Management

Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement

1. Description of the proposed planning action:

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposes to work with the Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchanges (Foundation) to develop a land ownership adjustment plan (plan) and environmental impact statement for approximately 675,000 acres in the Coast Range area of the Umpqua River Basin in western Oregon. The plan will identify the following: non-federal lands or interests in land within the planning area (with concurrence of willing non-federal landowners) that are recommended for acquisition through exchange by the United States; federal lands or interests in land within the planning area that are recommended for disposal in exchange for acquired lands of equal value; and specific land exchanges.

This effort is intended to consolidate land ownership to reduce costs of administration and achieve management efficiency. In addition, this consolidation should improve federal and non-federal land management and planning, enhance protection and restoration of listed species' habitats, wetlands, riparian areas, and other environmentally sensitive areas, and improve public access and recreational use, while allowing for sustainable timber production. Although the selected alternative will be consistent with the intent of the Northwest Forest Plan, some of the current allocations or management direction may be modified. The selected alternative will amend the BLM's Coos Bay, Eugene, and Roseburg districts' Resource Management Plans, and the Siuslaw National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan, unless the no-action alternative is adopted.

2. Identification of the geographic area:

The planning area covers approximately 675,000 acres in the Coast Range portion of the lower Umpqua River Basin in western Oregon. The area is primarily (98 percent) within Douglas County, Oregon (approximately 3,000 acres are in Coos County and 12,400 acres in Lane County). Approximately 225,000 acres are BLM-administered lands, 59,000 acres are National Forest lands, 34,300 acres are state lands, 8,300 acres are county or city, and 348,400 acres are privately owned.

3. General types of issues anticipated: In general, the issues anticipated include the following: improved efficiency of land and resource management; management of vegetation communities; minimizing effects on listed and proposed species and their habitats; watershed protection and function; timber sustainability on federal lands; timber supply to small businesses; revenues to state and local governments; consideration of continued public access and recreation; and protection of wetlands, riparian reserves, water quality, and cultural and historic resources.
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5. Kind and extent of public participation: This project will be conducted with an open, public process. Public meetings/open houses will be held in July, during the comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, and at other times based on need. In addition, meetings will be initiated with city, county, state, and tribal governments, other federal agencies, the Southwest Oregon and Oregon Coast Provincial Advisory committees, and with other groups or agencies upon request. A website for the project, found at http:// www.or.blm.gov/umpqua, will include flyers, mailers, and other documents, project updates, contacts, time lines, background, and other pertinent information. The BLM project manager, Patrick Geehan, and the Foundation managers, Marc Kelley and Robert Gill, will be available to discuss public concerns and suggestions. Access to designers of the Multi-Resource Land Allocation Model (Model) and EIS interdisciplinary team members will be through the project managers. Comments concerning the scope of the analysis should be received in writing by August 8, 2001. Anonymous comments will be accepted and analyzed; however, the author(s) will not be ensured protest rights during the protest period. Written comments concerning this proposal may be sent to ULEP, c/o BLM, P.O. Box 2965, Portland, OR 97208. Comments may also be sent via e-mail to ULEP@or.blm.gov.
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7. Name, title, address, and telephone number of BLM official: For further information contact either the BLM project manager or the Foundation operations manager. The BLM project manager for the Umpqua Land Exchange Project is Patrick Geehan, BLM, P.O. Box 2965, Portland, OR 97208, phone 503-952-6445. The Foundation Project Coordinator is Robert Gill, Foundation for Voluntary Land Exchange, 4033 SW Canyon Road, Portland, OR 97221, phone 503-274-2855.

8. Location and availability of documents relevant to the planning process: Final published documents relevant to the planning process will be available at the BLM Oregon State Office in Portland, Oregon, at the address stated above. These documents will also be available in PDF format on the project website: http://www.or.blm.gov/umpqua.
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Dated: June 28, 2001
Patrick H. Geehan,
Project Manager.
[FR Doc. 01-17128 Filed 7-6-01; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4310-33-P