For decades, the public forests of the Pacific Northwest were subject to widespread clearcutting of its old-growth trees as part of a federal policy promoting industrial logging. That era came to end in the early 1990s, due to court injunctions enforcing environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act, a response to diminishing old-growth dependent species like the northern spotted owl. Fulfilling a campaign promise to resolve the contentious issue by protecting both wildlife habitat and a logging industry important to local communities, President Clinton and his administration conducted a remarkable 1993 symposium on the economics and science of preserving rapidly disappearing habitat for ESA-listed species like the northern spotted owl and several salmonids. The result was the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NFP), widely recognized as the largest commitment to ecosystem management worldwide. Somewhat surprisingly, the NFP is still in effect over a quarter-century later, despite determined efforts to eviscerate it by the logging industry and its political allies.
