'Darth Vader' vs. Native Fish:

"Plum Creek came to us in 1997," says Koch. "Since then no other company has taken advantage of an HCP. That's how unconcerned the timber industry is about being shut down by enforcement or litigation. I told Mary Scurlock [of Pacific Rivers Council] that if she wants to motivate people to do better for fish conservation, make them feel pain -- sue them for unauthorized take."

Scurlock says she's "working on it." Her outfit and four others are suing the Oregon Department of Forestry for allowing take of threatened coastal cohos on private land via road-caused landslides. Meanwhile, Pacific Rivers Council and Trout Unlimited have vowed to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service for Plum Creek's HCP. They hope to establish better standards for native-fish HCPs and win better conservation for the 17 species involved in this one. Scurlock points out that, while Koch may have gotten the best deal possible, that's not the standard: "They have to have a plan that does not significantly impair survival and recovery in the wild."

Few people are more qualified to say whether there will be significant impairment than Dr. Chris Frissell, also of Pacific Rivers Council, who has extensively researched effects of logging on bull trout in the Swan Valley. "The HCP locks in and rubber stamps the status quo on private lands," he told me. "And it's a virtually universal opinion among professional biologists that the states' current rules for forest practices on private lands are inadequate. I'll grant that there are a couple of improvements, the main one being protection of channel migration zones -- where segments of low-gradient, alluvial, valley-bottom streams meander over time. In the past these streams got protection only to the edge of the current channel with a buffer.

"Now the whole zone where the channel might migrate has to be protected, and there's a buffer added to that. In the Swan there are big uncut blocks in bull trout habitat, really important watersheds. Plum Creek has fairly heavy-handed plans for going in there. The HCP does not protect these sensitive, steep, headwater lands. Here's my response to Ted Koch that no other timber company is worried about being sued: The Fish and Wildlife Service has now set the standard virtually right at current practices as required by the state. So there's no incentive for anyone to spend a bunch of money and get hardly anything more for it."

TU's Farling describes the HCP as "bogus, marginally worthless and full of pretend conservation, meaningless commitments and a monitoring process rigged so that Plum Creek controls things." No sooner had Pacific Rivers Council and TU announced their impending action, than Plum Creek sued them. Pacific Rivers Council called it a SLAPP suit (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation). But Plum Creek's Jirsa sounded credible enough when he explained that what his company was really after was a quick determination and a change of venue: "We don't want legal action hanging over our head on something this important. We've spent a lot of money training our foresters, changing our leases with cattle owners. And we're making some significant commitments, giving up 20 to 25 percent more trees in some of those areas. If there's something wrong with the HCP, we want to know now. We filed in Boise Court. It's probably not as busy as some of the other federal courts." (It's definitely more sympathetic to Big Timber.) In any case, debate about Plum Creek's motives became moot March 31 when the case was thrown out of court. "The fact that Plum Creek has initiated this litigation in the face of such efforts [by plaintiffs to proceed without litigation] runs contrary to the interests of justice," wrote Judge Edward Lodge.

Ken McDonald, special projects bureau chief for the Montana Dept. of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, struck me as an especially objective source. "The HCP has some real positive components," he remarks. "The main one is road reclamation. New roads have to be up to standards and old ones closed or fixed. If nothing else, that's a huge benefit right there. The down side is that the state agencies haven't been involved at all. Montana, where almost all the HCP applies, has the best expertise and most people on the ground. Also, there's a very complex trigger for adaptive management. You have to prove a statistically valid impact. If you claim increased temperature, you have to do years of valid monitoring, then prove it was due to that land activity, then prove it was affecting fish."

Now Montana is working on an HCP for its forested trust lands, and setting high HCP standards is a big priority because no one who cares about fish and wildlife trusts the state's militantly anti-environmental governor, Judy Martz.

Critics say that one of Plum Creek's main motives for signing the HCP is that it makes the company eligible for millions in federal grant money. The easement Plum Creek sold in the Fisher and Thomson drainages, for example, was made possible in large measure by federal grants. I say good; using the profit motive to protect wild land is the beauty of HCPs.

I wish I could report who is right and who is wrong about the HCP, but I can't because I don't know. I suspect the reason I don't know is that everyone is some of both. What I do know is this: In Montana, at least, Plum Creek is almost never in violation of forestry statutes. It takes the last stick it can cut, but it obeys the law. If Montanans don't like what it's doing (and they shouldn't), they need to change the law. Scolding a timber company for legally ruining fish and wildlife habitat is like scolding your dog for rolling in compost. You can do it, but it won't get you anywhere because that's the nature of the beast.

You can call Plum Creek rapacious, heartless, devious; you can even call it an attacking clone. But you can't call it "Darth Vader." There was only one of him; there are lots of Plum Creeks. And, finally, I know that no matter what people think about this HCP and no matter how they can or can't improve or void it, it's a start.