1946
The Forest Service creates the Shelton Sustained Yield Unit, giving the Simpson Timber Company in Shelton, Washington, a 99-year monopoly on timber from the Shelton District of the Olympic National Forest.
1957
Congress signs the first of two 50-year contracts with Alaska pulp mills, guaranteeing them heavily subsidized timber from Alaska's Tongass National Forest.
1964
Congress passes the Wilderness Act, creating a national wilderness preservation system and conferring permanent protection on 9.1 million acres of national forest land.
1967
Brock Evans becomes Northwest regional representative of the Sierra Club and meets with a group of conservationists committed to saving an Oregon old-growth valley named French Pete.
1968
Wildlife biology student Eric Forsman begins studying the northern spotted owl.
1969
Congress passes the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring federal agencies to inform the public of the environmental impact of major federal projects.
1970
Earth Day ushers in the modern environmental movement. Oregon State University initiates a research project to study the characteristics of old-growth Douglas-fir forests.
1973
Congress passes the Endangered Species Act, committing the federal government to prevent the extinction of native plants and animals and their habitat.
1974
The Oregon Wilderness Coalition is born in Eugene, Oregon.
1976
Congress passes the National Forest Management Act, which requires the Forest Service to prepare management plans for each national forest and to conduct wilderness suitability inventories of all roadless national forest lands.
The Beuter Report, prepared by forestry professors at Oregon State University, predicts that private companies will experience a gap in timber supplies beginning in the 1990s unless cutting is accelerated on public lands.
1978
Congress passes the Endangered American Wilderness Act, conferring permanent protection on French Pete.
Timber sales on national forests in Oregon and Washington reach an all-time high of 5.344 billion board feet.
1979
A seminal conference on old-growth forests is held at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
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The state of California sues the Forest Service to prevent the development of 47 roadless areas the agency has excluded from its wilderness recommendations.
1980
Mount St. Helens erupts.
Ronald Reagan is elected president, ushering in 12 years of conservative Republican control of federal land management.
Biologist Eric Forsman begins conducting radio telemetry studies on northern spotted owls and discovers their range is much larger than he had realized.
1981
John Crowell, Reagan's assistant agriculture secretary, says he believes the cut on national forests can be doubled without adverse environmental effects.
1982
The Northwest timber industry is flattened by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
Congress creates the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Area.
1983
Earth First! activists blockade Bald Mountain Road to halt penetration of the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area in the Siskiyou National Forest.
In a lawsuit brought by the Oregon Wilderness Coalition (now the Oregon Natural Resources Council), a federal judge blocks entry into roadless national forest land in Oregon for logging until Congress makes final determinations about which areas will be protected as wilderness.
Supervisors of major timber-producing national forests in the Northwest meet with Forest Service Chief Max Peterson to warn him that the cut will have to drop drastically under new forest management plans.
1984
Congress passes Oregon, Washington, and California wilderness bills, setting aside millions of roadless acres, most of it high-elevation forests, rocks, and ice. Millions more acres are released from consideration and opened to "multiple-use management."
Environmentalists appeal the Forest Service's first regional guide for the northern spotted owl.
Senator Mark Hatfield and Representative Les AuCoin of Oregon push through the Timber Contract Modification Act, which lets timber companies get out of high-priced timber contracts and keeps some marginally profitable mills in business for several more years.
1985
Congress passes the first in a series of appropriation bill "riders," overriding a federal injunction in a lawsuit brought by the National Wildlife Federation over logging on unstable slopes in the Oregon Coast Range.
1986
Loggers for Willamette Industries cut down Millenium Grove,believed to contain the oldest Douglas-fir stands in Oregon. 1987 The
Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund opens an office in Seattle and begins a litigation campaign to protect old-growth forests.
1988
George Bush, campaigning to succeed Ronald Reagan, promises he will be "the environmental president."
A federal judge rules that a decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service not to initiate a study of the status of the northern spotted owl is "arbitrary and capricious."
1989
U.S. District Judge William Dwyer blocks most national forest timber sales in western Oregon and western Washington until the Forest Service adopts a scientifically credible plan for protecting the owl.
Scientists from throughout the Northwest meet in Portland under tight security for the first-ever old-growth forest wildlife symposium.
The Fish and Wildlife Service proposes listing of the northern spotted owl as a threatened species.
Yellow Ribbon rallies erupt in timber towns throughout the Northwest.
The Oregon congressional delegation holds a timber summit in Salem and follows up with passage of a measure releasing more than 1 billion board feet of timber from the Dwyer injunction.
The Wilderness Society opens an office in Portland.
1990
The Interagency Scientific Committee, headed by Forest Service wildlife biologist Jack Ward Thomas, releases its strategy for conservation of the spotted owl.
The owl is listed as a threatened species throughout its range due to destruction of its habitat. Tension mounts at hearings across the Northwest.
California forest activists stage Redwood Summer, a series of protest actions to draw attention to the imminent logging of the last old-growth redwoods on private land.
1991
Interior Secretary Manual Lujan announces that he will convene the "God Squad" to determine whether the economic costs of protecting the owl are too high.
The American Fisheries Society releases a report declaring that 214 Pacific salmon runs are in decline, due in part to logging and road-building in sensitive watersheds.
A panel of scientists known as the Gang of Four develops a range of proposals for legislation to protect owls, salmon, and other old-growth species.
1992
The God Squad hearings turn into an expensive debacle. Lujan rejects an owl recovery plan written by his own handpicked team.
Satellite images gathered by NASA show that forest fragmentation is far more severe in the Mount Hood National Forest than in the Brazilian tropical rainforest.
George Bush blows it at the Rio Earth Summit.
Bill Clinton selects Al Gore as his running mate.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists the marbled murrelet as a threatened species.
Clinton is elected; he promises to hold a forest summit within the first 100 days of his administration.
1993
Clinton convenes the Northwest Forest Conference and promises to produce a balanced plan for the management of the old-growth forest ecosystem within 60 days.
A team of scientists develops Option 9. The compromise plan reduces logging and increases protection for sensitive watersheds, but also allows about one-third of the remaining old growth to be cut and sanctions salvage logging and thinning even in old-growth reserves.
Forest activists petition for protection of all remaining old growth east of the Cascades.
Jack Ward Thomas becomes chief of the Forest Service. 1994 The Clinton administration launches an ecosystem planning process for forests of the Interior Northwest.
Fires sweep through eastern Washington and Idaho. Pressure builds for a massive salvage logging program to restore "forest health."
Republicans win control of Congress.
1995
Republicans unleash the Contract with America and a broad assault on the nation's environmental laws.
President Clinton first vetoes and then signs a budget bill containing a "salvage rider" that exempts virtually any timber sale on federal land from environmental laws.
Demonstrations protesting the "logging without laws" rider erupt throughout the West.
1996
The Sierra Club membership votes by a 2-to-1 ratio to oppose commercial logging on federal land.
As ancient forests fall, new recruits join the campaign to stop the destruction.
prev: Renewal 1995-96
