Timber-state senators submit own version of forest plan

A proposal would increase money to prevent wildfires and create a research center in Prineville

WASHINGTON -- Timber-state senators filed a written version of their forest-health compromise Wednesday, setting the stage for a showdown with House Republicans who favor stronger language and sparking debate about new protections for old-growth stands.

Among other things, the senators, including Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, agreed to spend $760 million a year on fuel-reduction projects, up from $420 million.

The goal of the legislation is ambitious. The senators want to reverse effects of a century of aggressive fire suppression, which has left many forests overgrown and susceptible to catastrophic fires, particularly in dry, inland areas of the West.

Some terms have proved to be controversial because they would limit administrative and judicial review of federal projects designed to reduce the risk of wildfire through selective logging, prescribed burns and other means.

Wyden said the senators tried to strike a balance that would allow federal land managers to speed fuel-reduction projects while preserving citizen rights in court. He also said additional funding would reduce the incentive to cut large, marketable trees.

"Perhaps most importantly, our work over the last week rejects the notion that we can protect communities from catastrophic fires solely by relying on commercial sales to fund that important work," Wyden said in a statement.

Deal in writing The legislation filed Wednesday committed to writing a deal that Wyden, Craig and eight other senators agreed to in principle last week. The senators said they would offer it as an amendment to a bill passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee in July. Floor action is likely to come after Oct. 13, when Congress returns from a weeklong recess.

The Senate compromise builds on President Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative and a similar bill the House passed in May. Both would speed agency review and limit judges' ability to block fuel-reduction projects on as much as 20 million acres of federal forest.

Even as the senators touted the merits of their proposal, environmental advocates criticized Wyden for bargaining with an administration and Republican allies in Congress they regard as hostile.

Provisions covering old growth are particularly troubling, said Jay Ward, conservation director of the Oregon Natural Resources Council. The bill appears to create a loophole allowing logging if an old-growth stand is infested or damaged by a storm, he said.

"It gives people the impression that old growth will be saved, and that's not going to happen under this bill," Ward said.

Jerry Franklin, a forestry professor at the University of Washington who has studied the bill, agreed that the old-growth section would do little if anything to protect stands subject to logging under the Northwest Forest Plan.

Professor sees improvement However, the bill is an improvement from the current rules, he said. It gives agencies guidance that was lacking as they prepare to treat older stands of pine and other conifers in the interior Northwest that are at highest risk of catastrophic fires.

"Any bill that you put through, there is going to always be potential for abuse because that's just the nature of the beast, "Franklin said. "It's going to be up to us citizens to see that the agencies do the right thing by the language."

The compromise is expected to gain at least 60 votes, enough to thwart a potential filibuster, thanks to support from Wyden and other Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

Senate Democrats are awaiting a formal commitment from the White House before they vote in favor because the compromise would trigger a conference where House Republicans could press for the stronger terms in their version of the bill.

The two chambers are most likely to disagree over a provision that limits judges' ability to block fuel-reduction projects.

The House version would require judges to give deference to agency recommendations. The Senate struck that language, leaving only an instruction that judges weigh benefits of a project against consequences of inaction.

Chris West, a vice president with the American Forest Resource Council, said timber industry leaders were studying the Senate compromise but were "very concerned" by the extent to which it weakened the House bill.

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Various portions of my family own property within a few miles (in one case a few hundred yards) of the eastern edge of the recent B&B fire in Oregon.

That place has needed thinning for years -- which is something that the pre-Forest Plan logging (before 1976) used to provide. The ferocity of this fire was therefore no surprise AT ALL, and I count us very lucky to still have trees and buildings.

The USFS and various groups have just completed a long, intense process of defining a thinning plan for the Deschutes National Forest. Woulda worked, too -- except that the bozos mentioned here are trying to block it.

Wyden is a tool of the bozos. But even he is being moved incrementally toward something reasonable.

I'm just suspicious of Weasle Wyden.

Me too -- I don't trust him at all, in fact.

I can't understand why the people of Oregon keep him in office.

Because the people in Portland, Salem, and Eugene tend to have a misty-eyed and uninformed idea of what a healthy forest is all about.

But they do know what an ugly clear-cut looks like, and I even tend to agree with them that such logging practices are probably not the best, environmentally speaking.

Their memories probably don't extend back to the pre-1976 logging practices, and they probably don't have the long-term memories of what the forests used to be like (park-like, east of the Cascades) -- if they've even been there at all.

They almost certainly don't understand that the "pristine" forest that was burned in the B&B fire had been steadily logged for decades prior to 1976.

So they're just emotional about it, and they're lefties, and so Wide-one keeps getting elected.

It's the costs that bring me to boiling.

Not only millions to fight the fires, nor the millions in property damage, which are bad enough.
But also, the millions in lost timber.
Timber that will never be recovered, will take decades to replace, and that will never contribute to a healthy economy.

I am all for conservation in all it's forms, be it ducks, deer, or other wildlife, and woodlands and marshes as well.
But conservation needs to be tempered with management, to avoid waste, contribute to the economy, and pay for the actual costs of conservation itself.

In the case of timber, we are talking about a "renewable" resource, which can be managed like any other cash crop, and still provide for wildlife, and contribute to the ecological balance.

And what's with the "research" center?
A little Pork for the Senator from Oregon?

And what's with the "research" center? A little Pork for the Senator from Oregon?

Actually, I think a research center would probably have a net positive effect. They've been groping toward it in OR for a while now, with various experimental plots in the vicinity of the Metolius River.

The underlying hope, of course, is that such a center would result in sane forest policy. For example, such a center might have been able to argue against the insane activists who persuaded (via lawsuits) the USFS not clear bug-killed timber -- and thereby made the B&B fire inevitable and huge.

The B&B fire area, BTW, was a good example of "renewable." As I noted above, the area had been steadily logged for decades. There's an amazing number of old logging roads criss-crossing the area and -- lo and behold -- there were plenty of big trees available for burning.

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