Timberland Manager Drafts ‘All-Species’ Plan Toby Murray’s Proposal Offers Refuge To Threatened Endangered Species Act

While the Republican-led Congress circles the Endangered Species Act for the attack, tree farm operator Toby Murray is offering it refuge - again.

Murray, scion of a Tacoma timberland family and manager of Murray Pacific Corp., signed the Northwest’s first private spottedowl conservation plan in 1993.

Now he has gone further. Working with federal officials, he has drafted an “allspecies” plan designed to virtually guarantee for the next 100 years that Murray Pacific can log its rugged 53,527-acre Mineral Tree Farm here, even if a species goes into decline.

The plan sets precedents for the timber industry and the nation. It highlights the Clinton administration’s “no surprises” policy to give landowners more certainty amid volatile conflicts over various species. And it suggests the Endangered Species Act can be people-friendly, which the Clinton administration is desperate to show.

“This proves the act works for business as well as fish and wildlife,” says Curt Smitch, federal coordinator of habitat conservation in Oregon and Washington.

Nationally, the plan is on the leading edge of a move toward multiple-species habitat planning on private land.

In the most celebrated plan to date, developer Fieldstone Corp. agreed on June 7 to set aside coastal land for the California gnatcatcher and 63 other brush-land species in return for clearance to build 2,200 homes near San Diego.

Murray’s plan is the first to cover all species and the first multispecies plan for a tree farm, where rotating harvests present more complexities than building projects.

After a period of resistance, many industry giants appear to be embracing such plans. Weyerhaeuser Co. followed Murray Pacific in drafting a spotted-owl conservation plan. Dozens of other timber companies are writing or considering plans covering 5 million acres, federal officials say, and almost all are for multiple species.

Toby Murray’s willingness to lead this parade has won him admiration and gratitude all the way to the White House. The 42-year-old general manager of Murray Pacific has swapped family histories with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, met twice with Vice President Al Gore and schmoozed a slew of sub-Cabinet officials. Katie McGinty, director of the White House Environmental Policy Office, calls him “an inspiration.”

So enthralled is the White House with Murray’s plan that Gore or President Clinton personally may sign and highlight it during the Northwest regional economic summit next week.

For Murray, this hasn’t come cheaply nor without controversy.

The company figures the plan will cost about $2 million a year in lost timber revenues. Already, Murray says, his company has spent about $1.5 million writing the plan.

Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., the Endangered Species Act’s leading Senate critic, praises Murray’s plan but deplores what he calls its “tremendous financial expense.” He proposes amending the act to balance species preservation against its cost and social impacts.

Timber executives ask Murray why he is giving so much away. Environmental groups, meanwhile, are leery of giving any business a hundred-year guarantee.

Murray says assurance that he can operate is worth the cost. “Give me a set of rules that are consistent. Bad, consistent rules are better than good, inconsistent ones.”

Murray’s plan sets aside at least 10 percent of the tree farm for fish, wildlife and watershed protection - several times more than state law requires. While geared to certain species, its main goal is to preserve a smorgasbord of habitats to support a variety of plants and animals.

The plan calls for leaving broader swaths of uncut forest near streams, where trees protect water quality and provide habitat for the widest array of species. The plan forbids logging within corridors averaging 100 feet wide on each side of fish-bearing streams. State rules safeguard only a minority of trees within stream buffers as narrow as 25 feet.

The plan also would leave more and larger trees standing within harvested areas than state law requires, clumping some around wetlands, caves, rocky talus slopes and other features needed by such rare species as the larch mountain salamander and the Townsend’s big-eared bat.

Federal officials view the plan as a model for federal-private cooperation. But some people are incredulous that Murray has agreed to these restrictions while the Endangered Species Act faces attack in Congress and review before the U.S. Supreme Court. Each could strip the law of its authority over private land.

Why did Murray do it? The answer is wedged between a rock of necessity and the hard place of Murray’s personal commitment, as others put it, to “do the right thing.”

Murray Pacific found spotted owls in two stands on its tree farm after the bird had won federal protection. The discovery put offlimits almost half the timber that Murray Pacific was planning to cut in the next few years.

Then as now, federal officials told landowners to avoid cutting more than 40 percent of mature timber within a 1.8-mile radius of confirmed owl nests or risk a fine and jail term.

Habitat conservation planning offered a way out. Under the Endangered Species Act, a federal agency can allow a landowner to destroy habitat needed by a spotted owl or other protected species if he or she writes an approved plan to maintain other habitat needed by the species.

The timber industry had dismissed such planning in Washington state as too expensive, time-consuming and uncertain. Many companies preferred to fight logging restrictions. But Toby Murray, seeing little prospect of lasting relief, broke ranks.

The way Murray saw it, he had little choice. “It was either do a habitat conservation plan or forget about half this timber,” he recalls.