Federal plan tries to balance economy, environment for western Oregon forests

Along with new slate of timber sales, Interior Department announces initiative to increase interagency cooperation.

Logging would increase slightly on some federal forests in western Oregon in the short term under a plan announced today.

But none of that cutting will take place in stands of old growth, the Bureau of Land Management said.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, along with top agency officials and members of Congress, released a the details of where logging will occur in 2010 on about 2.5 million acres of BLM-managed land.

The secretary also announced a new effort to chart a long-term course for the forests, which are valued for their clean water and wildlife habitat as well as the timber they supply to mills in economically depressed parts of the state.

"Both Secretary Salazar and I recognize that the magnitude of the challenge before us to achieve this balance is immense," said BLM Director Bob Abbey.

In June, Secretary Salazar withdrew a Bush-era plan for the forests, saying it was legally and scientifically unsound.

That put the forests back under the guidelines of a Clinton-era plan, called the Northwest Forest Plan. That plan failed to satisfy some in the timber industry, leading to a lawsuit that prompted the Bush plan.

With their announcement today, federal officials tried to assure mills that there would be a predictable supply of wood in the coming year.

“It is possible to move forward and have an environmentally responsible logging industry in southwestern Oregon," said Tom Strickland, Interior's assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

The BLM identified 62 sales in consultation with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for next year totaling about 230 million board feet of timber, up from the recent annual average of about 200 million board feet, though not all of that was actually logged.

The sales tend toward thinning small trees and steer clear of controversial things like logging in old growth, which is defined in this case as forests with trees more than 180 years old and with a complex stand structure.

Old growth logging was still allowed in some cases under the Clinton plan. The BLM's plan for 2010 marks a step away from that.

"Many of the sales under the Northwest Forest Plan were controversial as well, so part of today's announcement is to try to get us away from those controversial areas in the short term," said Michael Campbell, spokesman for the BLM in Portland.

The group Oregon Wild noted that some of the 62 sales involve clear-cuts and could harm salmon streams.

"Increased coordination between the BLM and the USFWS is a good start, but bottom line is that the BLM must begin to place as much value on wild salmon, clean water, and old-growth forests as they do on logging volume," said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild.

And the announcement doesn't mean old growth will be off limits to logging in the future.

Salazar directed a team of BLM, U.S. Fish & Wildlife and other federal agency personnel to report back by March with recommendations for long-term management of western Oregon's forests.

That could result in anything from small tweaks to the Clinton plan to a wholesale rewrite of forest management guidelines requiring legislation from Congress.

Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, both Oregon Democrats, praised Salazar's announcement.

"Forestry policy has been gridlocked in controversy for decades, and it seems like you are taking a significant step today towards ending that gridlocked," Wyden said.