Wyden old growth bill unveiled at timber meeting

Bill falls short of full protections for old-growth forests.

Sen. Ron Wyden's vision for stopping the bitter battles over logging on national forests in Oregon would ban the harvest of old growth trees and give the U.S. Forest Service incentives to focus on thinning instead of traditional timber production.

The Oregon Democrat's chief of staff, Josh Kardon, showed off the latest draft of the legislation - in the works the past year - at the American Forest Resource Council annual meeting in Stevenson, Wash.

"We can argue about the fate of old growth for another decade and get nowhere, or we can take old growth off the table and more than double the harvest from Oregon forests for decades," Kardon said in his speech to the timber industry group.

The bill comes as the timber industry faces tough times. The collapse of the housing bubble has left it with few markets for lumber, forcing down the value of private timberlands. Despite the Bush administration's promise to boost timber production from national forests, there was no significant increase over the past eight years.

Meanwhile, as lawsuits have stalled logging that pays for thinning projects by cutting big trees, many conservation groups have recognized that fire danger is not being addressed.

"We do not have time to waste, dickering over 2,000-acre projects for two to three years, while 14 million acres of forest land endanger our citizens and thousands are in need of family wage jobs," Kardon said in his speech.

Both conservation groups and the timber industry praised Wyden for trying to find resolution for a difficult problem, but objected to specifics.

"Forests can't be managed based on the age of individual trees," Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, said in a statement. "Simple solutions just don't work when you are trying to manage for forest health and type diversity across the landscape."

Oregon Wild objected that the bill would not save enough old growth, because the age limits were too low, and would sidestep scientific review.

"We got into this mess in part because the Bush administration tried to short-circuit scientific review," said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild. "The solution is to plan good projects that don't harm endangered species, water quality or old growth forests."

The bill is likely to be introduced late this spring, Kardon said.

Recognizing old growth as the single most contentious issue on Oregon forests, the bill would set age limits for cutting trees - 120 years old in the wetter forests west of the Cascades, 150 years for the drier forests east of the Cascades, and 160 years for the so-called O&C Lands that provide significant revenues for timber counties.

It would also appropriate $50 million for forest thinning projects and put projects up to 25,000 acres on a fast-track environmental analysis process.

To qualify, they would have to be designed by a local group of collaborators, stay out of roadless areas, have no clearcuts, and not include salvage logging - harvesting dead trees after wildfire. If the local group can't come to an agreement after a year, the Forest Service can go on without them.

The bill was written with advice from two leading old growth forest experts, Prof. Norman Johnson of Oregon State University and Prof. Jerry Franklin of the University of Washington.

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