Report Recommends New Logging Plan For Oregon Forests

A long-awaited federal report is finally out, on how to cut more trees in southern Oregon without hurting the environment. The recommendations from the Western Oregon Task Force will be officially released Thursday. Rob Manning got a preview.

The task force was created amid the ashes of the Western Oregon Plan Revision, or "WOPR". That plan was crafted under the Bush Administration to comply with a 70 year-old law that prioritizes logging on Bureau of Land Management forests in southern Oregon.

The Obama Administration dropped the WOPR a year ago, because officials believed it violated the Endangered Species Act.

The task force report begins by saying that the current practice of avoiding controversy, and focusing on low-profile thinning projects "cannot continue indefinitely."

That said, the report's short-term recommendations focus on avoiding court battles, by not logging near streams, or in places where the BLM would have to search for rare species.

Longer-term, the report calls for a handful of new committees and task forces to study and review some of the same issues that the BLM worked on for half a decade.

Ann Forest-Burns: "It's absolutely an insult to the BLM people who work in western Oregon."

Ann Forest-Burns is the vice president of American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry lobbying group.

Ann Forest-Burns: "There's excellent science hidden away in those plans. And what these people now say is 'we need to appoint an interagency science team to review'."

Environmental groups share some of Forest-Burns' disappointment.

Sean Stevens with Oregon Wild also questions the value of studying the conflict over old-growth yet again.

Sean Stevens: "And just like the Bush Administration before it under the WOPR planning with the BLM, this plan from the Obama Administration seems to be saying ‘we just need to think harder and somehow we'll find a way to make old-growth logging OK.' That's not going to happen."

Stevens says he did appreciate the continued focus on forest thinning projects.

© 2010 OPB