Oregon conservationists are crying foul over a 56-page amendment Rep. Kurt Schrader tried to add last week to the farm bill.

The amendment was an attempt to revive a plan to restore timber harvests that has been lambasted by environmental groups and resisted by House leaders. The plan, which a trio of Oregon lawmakers pitched earlier this year in draft legislation, would transfer management of roughly 1.5 million acres of the so-called O&C lands to a state-appointed timber trust while transferring nearly the same amount of lands from the Bureau of Land Management to the Forest Service.

Schrader, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year in a timber industry-dominated area in Oregon, said at last week's House Agriculture Committee markup that the amendment was a way to save forests from threats while boosting timber revenues for cash-strapped counties.

"We're a timber-producing area. We're not going to get Google or Intel to move into these areas, no matter what folks say," Schrader said. "It's the only avenue back I see right now, this trust concept."

House Agriculture Committee members, however, voted to table the amendment on the grounds that they did not have jurisdiction over the issue.

Oregon Wild, which opposed the draft legislation earlier this year, blasted the amendment as a "stealth" policy rider to the farm bill and said it would open up acres to clearcutting.

"The good news for Oregon's environment is that Schrader's logging gambit was rejected by the House Agriculture Committee as being not germane to the farm bill," Oregon Wild Conservation Director Steve Pedery wrote late last week. "The bad news is that an Oregon-elected official like Rep. Kurt Schrader thought it was acceptable to try and sneak such a monumental piece of logging legislation through Congress with no public process or hearings."

The proposed plan has been controversial since the draft legislation by Oregon Reps. Schrader, Peter DeFazio (D) and Greg Walden (R) was circulated earlier this year.

The trio of lawmakers proposed the plan as a way to boost timber revenues for counties struggling to cope with the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools Program (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

Congress recently extended the program for a year as part of its transportation reauthorization bill, but it bought counties only a small amount of time until payments again come to an end.

Essentially, half of the O&C lands would be transferred to the Forest Service, where timber harvests would still be allowed but old-growth logging would be prohibited under a yet-to-be determined standard. Half the land would be managed by a trust controlled by a board of trustees chosen by the governor, while the rest would be managed as old growth by the Forest Service, Schrader said at the markup.

The Oregon and California Trust, as the newly created trust would be known, would sustainably manage at least half of the timber stands on a 100- to 120-year rotation. The proposal would boost logging, requiring "annual maximum sustained revenues in perpetuity."

Unlike the original draft legislation, Schrader's proposal eliminates certain protections for wilderness and wild and scenic rivers.

Oregon conservation groups have criticized the proposal, saying it would open up lands to clearcutting and harm habitat for species like the threatened northern spotted owl.

In a letter written to Oregon Wild in May, DeFazio disputed the claims of the conservation group, saying the proposal would in fact be the first-ever legislative protection of old growth in western Oregon. The Northwest Forest Plan, which was passed in 1994 to save old-growth-dependent species including owls, sea birds and salmon but slashed timber harvests as a result, has failed, he argued.

House leaders have thus far resisted the proposal. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) has introduced his own proposal to significantly increase timber harvests on federal forests, but the Oregon proposal was left out during a committee markup earlier this Congress.

The Oregon lawmakers had been hoping to link their proposal to the Hastings bill, but that legislation has stalled on the House floor.

The attempt to add it into the farm bill makes no sense, Pedery wrote.

"Legislation attempting to ram-rod clear-cut logging on BLM lands has no legal or logical relationship to the farm bill, which is supposed to fund things like crop insurance and child nutrition programs," he wrote. "That Rep. Schrader overlooked this basic fact is deeply troubling."

The Agriculture Committee voted to table the amendment after Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) raised a point of order, saying that the amendment would essentially subject the farm bill to the jurisdiction of the Committee of Natural Resources, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management.

Schrader attempted to appeal the Agriculture Committee's ruling to table the amendment. He argued that the Agriculture Committee would take control of the pilot program under his amendment because the land would be transferred to the Forest Service.

"We're supposed to be in charge of the Forest Service and how it manages public lands," he said.

Despite the jurisdictional issues, the proposal did receive support from committee members.

"I like the gentleman's approach. We need more of that," Goodlatte prefaced his objection.

Reporter Phil Taylor contributed.