'Darth Vader' vs. Native Fish:

"All the plans in the valley have been made under the assumption that the land would be in timber management," comments conservation activist Ben Long. "Plum Creek leads everyone down the primrose path. We have no zoning here. Anyone can buy a [640-acre] section and chop it up. Suddenly in the best bull trout habitat anywhere we have septic tanks, dogs, golf courses and kids running around on ATVs."

I asked Swan Valley forester Mark Vander Meer to grade Plum Creek as a land steward. "About as bad as you can get," he said. But when I pressed him he admitted that other companies were just as bad. "Plum Creek is entirely untrustworthy," he continued. "They'll tell you whatever you want to hear. They kept saying, 'Why would we sell timberlands; we're in the business of growing timber.' I've seen some great Plum Creek cuts, but most are disasters." When I asked him to describe the last one he saw he said: "It was just a few days ago, right on the Swan River in a grizzly bear linkage zone. They had taken out all the big trees (Engleman spruce), and left a lot of smaller ones. They all blew down; it was a mess. This place never should have been touched. Spruce forests are way too fragile for this."

Keith Hammer who chairs the Swan View Coalition - a 19-year-old group of loggers, former Forest Service employees, mill owners, sportsmen, environmentalists and other invested citizens -- had this to say: "Plum Creek land is hacked. Before they sell they're coming back in and cutting the streamside zones. If you fly over it, it makes your heart drop. We have issues with the state and feds, but they pale in comparison to Plum Creek. What's frustrating is that this was public land given to the Northern Pacific Railroad [by the Lincoln administration as an inducement to lay transcontinental tracks]; then it went to Burlington Northern, then Plum Creek. All those years Plum Creek was slicking it off and paying virtually no taxes. And now it's still trying to hold the public hostage and make it bid the highest to get its land back. That's really discouraging and disgusting."

Interestingly enough, the only real defense of Plum Creek came from environmental educator Melanie Parker of Northwest Connections. She confirmed some of what Hicks said about the company trying to do better. "In the 1990's they left buffer zones," she said. "But now that they're divesting themselves of timberland they've regressed. They're going into units where they'd left trees five or six years ago and taking them out right before they put the land up for sale. We made a big stink about it, and they seem to be listening."

Even plum creek's harshest critics commend it for seeking and signing the native fish HCP. HCPs - a carrot approach - were amended into the Endangered Species Act in 1982 because the law was proving ineffective on private land where the common response to the discovery of a listed species, especially in the West, was "shoot, shovel and shut up." Enforcement -- the stick approach -- didn't work because the feds lacked the stomach and the courts lacked the inclination. What's more, the taking of anything by habitat destruction is difficult to prove. In fact, in the entire history of the act, no one has ever proven in a court of law the take of fish by land-management practices. As former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt declared when he signed Plum Creek's native fish HCP on November 29, 2000, "It was all-out war. There weren't any models for where we were going."

HCPs frighten the environmental community because they're risky. But shared risk is the whole idea. There are all kinds of ways of setting up these "creative partnerships," as Congress called them, but each offers no-surprise regulatory assurance in exchange for habitat conservation and/or restoration. From 1982 to 1992 only 14 HCPs were written. Babbitt, who embraced the concept, changed that. Between 1992 and the time he left office close to 400 had been written or were in the works. Environmental groups cursed and sued him for "giving away the store," and maybe he did on a few occasions. But with his bold, intelligent use of HCPs Bruce Babbitt single-handedly saved the Endangered Species Act and doubtless some listed species along with it. Still, giving away the store is a real danger, especially with the current administration, which is even more enamored of HCPs than the last.

So, have the feds handed the store to Plum Creek? When I put the question to Fish and Wildlife Service's Ted Koch, who presided over the gestation of the company's HCP, he didn't surprise me by saying no. I had heard environmental groups condemn him and his colleagues for including in the plan things Plum Creek had already done, such as Best Management Practices (BMPs) - painless, voluntary measures for skidding logs, building roads, disposing of slash, etc. - that were hatched by the state at the urging of the timber industry to prevent a Montana forest practices act. But Koch, whose work I have known and admired, said this: "If they're doing something voluntarily, great. We want to write that into the contract so they can't stop." One of the provisions Koch likes best is adaptive management. If the feds think the plan isn't working, they can (at least on paper) come in after five years and make Plum Creek do something more or different. "And if we don't think it's good enough, we can suspend or revoke the permit," he added, admitting that this could get the government sued. "Plum Creek got beat up by the timber industry for that provision because the whole point of HCPs is no surprises. Rather than being locked in stone we acknowledge all the uncertainties and we agree that we're going to dance together for the next 30 years. We could hope for nothing better on private lands than this plan."

The one thing that worried Koch was that his agency would issue the plan and "walk away." But the service has hired two biologists who do nothing but check Plum Creek compliance. Overseeing them and the HCP is Tim Bodurtha. He points to "three levels of monitoring" by his agency, by third-party consultants and by Plum Creek. I asked him what the plan makes Plum Creek do that it didn't have to do before.

"It provides more tree retention in bull trout spawning and rearing areas," he replied. "It provides better canopy coverage, no-equipment zones and interface caution areas - buffers on buffers."

In addition to regular BMPs the HCP includes what Plum Creek calls "enhanced BMPs," a concept that amuses Montana Trout Unlimited director Bruce Farling, who makes this point: "Even the king of industry spin, Plum Creek, the company whose self-described 'environmental principles' were polished not by scientists but instead in a Missoula ad agency, indirectly admits BMPs aren't adequate. When the US Fish and Wildlife Service gave Plum Creek a permit to - in legal lexicon - harass, harm and kill native fish such as bull trout, in exchange for certain fish-protection commitments, the company promised to provide 'enhanced' BMPs. Enhanced? How can you enhance something that's already supposed to be the best?"