Wyden forestry bill comes under fire

Conservationists vow to work with Senator Wyden to improve bill's provisions for old-growth forests.

The arrows started flying at Josh Kardon before he'd even hung up the target.
Kardon, chief of staff for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), was at the annual meeting of the American Forest Resource Council yesterday to introduce a new draft of Wyden's forestry bill.

The bill and Kardon got a rough reception from the mill owners and other timber industry representatives gathered in a conference hall at Skamania Lodge.

"The second draft looks a lot like the first draft," said Paul Beck of the Herbert Lumber Company of Riddle.

The bill would prohibit cutting of old growth trees while trying to focus land management agency energy and money on forest restoration projects industry and environmentalists can agree on.

Wyden got little traction last year with his first draft, and he has been talking to all sides in the meantime in an attempt to build support.

But before Kardon was done speaking at the dais, council president Tom Partin was handing out a press release slamming the draft bill.

"A bill designed to protect old growth forests and improve federal health on federal lands in Oregon would likely lead to the opposite result," it said.

Minutes later the environmental group Oregon Wild e-mailed out a press release of its own.

"New Wyden forest plan falls short," the title read.

Kardon countered that Wyden has been working hard to find a federal forest strategy that could cut through the long-running battles over old growth to both improve forest health and keep rural mills running.

"What the environmentalists have been doing and what you guys have been doing, it's killing our state," Kardon said after a series of sharp questions from the audience. "And we've got to get out of these same old habits."

"Senator Wyden knows full well the odds are stacked against him," he said.

-- Matthew Preusch, mattpreusch@news.oregonian.com