EDITORIAL: Don't let eastside forest deal go south

The Oregonian editorial board urges elected leaders and public to galvanize behind forest compromise.

A crucial forest policy agreement deserves a congressional push from every direction

There is nothing as rare in Oregon's public forests as real compromise on timber policy, and when a breakthrough agreement appears everyone has an obligation to protect it, nurture it and help it survive.

That's worth remembering as Sen. Ron Wyden, the timber industry and conservation groups search for more and stronger support for their rare agreement to speed up thinning of overstocked eastside forests while protecting the last of the region's old-growth forests.

It's a crucial agreement that means healthier forests, survival for the dwindling number of eastside lumber mills and hundreds of jobs for struggling rural Oregon communities. Given the stakes here, and given how long Oregon and the rest of the West have waited for just this kind of compromise, there's no excuse for the yawning, shrugging and nitpicking that has marked some of the response to Wyden's bill.

If you remember, last December timber executives and environmentalists stood shoulder to shoulder in Washington, D.C., to announce that months of negotiations had culminated in an agreement to protect old-growth while promoting large-scale forest thinning. It was a remarkable sight, with Andy Kerr, once the most hated environmentalist in timber country, standing with John Shelk, the mill owner who fought the hardest to keep the industry alive east of the Cascades.

The agreement signed by interest groups as disparate as Oregon Wild, the American Forest Resource Council and Defenders of Wildlife would double and then triple forest health projects across more than 8 million acres of fireprone public forests in central and eastern Oregon. It would prohibit the logging of large, older trees off limits and halt the creation of new forest roads.

There ought to be a sense of urgency to push, push, push the bill through Congress and into law. And yet, in its written testimony in advance of a Senate hearing last week, the Forest Service offered tepid, mixed support for the bill. Meanwhile, key Oregon leaders in Congress, including Reps. Peter DeFazio and Greg Walden, who represent much of the state's timber country, have been slow to offer strong public support for the agreement.

The plain fact is that the eastside forest bill, which seeks $50 million to accelerate thinning projects, requires the full-throated support of the entire Oregon delegation. It also needs more than half-hearted backing from the Forest Service. The agency's reflexive response is to defend what it is already doing on the region's public forests. Yes, there's some thinning activity, but it's spotty and not even close to the large scale needed to respond to the enormous forest health challenges.

Moreover, Oregon has seen the number of working sawmills in eastern Oregon drop from nearly 25 just 15 years ago to fewer than 10 today. Most of those surviving mills are just barely holding on in communities with unemployment approaching 20 percent. There's not enough private forest logging and activity on public lands to keep them operating. If nothing is done to boost thinning activity on public forests, those last few mills will go under. And if they go, so goes the wood products infrastructure that Oregon needs to thin more acres and restore the health of eastside forests.

The longtime combatants in Oregon's timber wars understood that with dying mills, runaway unemployment and forests ripe for catastrophic fire, it was time to stop fighting. They hashed out their deep differences and agreed on a plan to save both forests and the timber industry. Now Oregon members of Congress and the Forest Service must join them to make it happen.