A bipartisan plan to restore timber harvests in western Oregon has run into snags both from environmental groups and House leaders.

The draft legislation by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio (D), Kurt Schrader (D) and Greg Walden (R) aims to strike a balance between conservation of old-growth trees and the need to revive logging revenues in cash-strapped counties reeling from the loss of timber jobs in recent decades.

But in their quest to satisfy both constituencies, the lawmakers face opposition from conservationists who warn the proposal would degrade crucial forest habitats and imperil species such as the northern spotted owl.

The bill is also resisted by House leaders who view it as an earmark to Oregon counties, Schrader said. And the measure's proposal to create nearly 100,000 acres of new wilderness and establish new protections for old-growth trees could further hinder its passage in a Republican-led House.

Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, whose white paper on forest management more than five years ago became the inspiration for the forest proposal, said he would not criticize the lawmakers for trying. "I can't gainsay their effort," he said.

But Stahl said the draft unveiled late last week is a far cry from his plan, which would have split 2.4 million acres of Oregon and California Grant Lands, known as O&C lands, into two equal trusts, one for timber and one for conservation.

"My original proposal was closer to something that could be a win-win solution," he said. "In order for win-win solutions to work, each side needs to be confident that the piece they're getting is guaranteed. That confidence is lacking on the environment side."

The impasse threatens to derail a rare bipartisan accord in an otherwise gridlocked Congress. And it comes at a time when counties in Oregon and across the West are reeling from the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools program, which for the last decade provided hundreds of millions of dollars annually to compensate counties for declining timber revenues.

Under the Northwest Forest Plan passed in 1994, timber harvests on O&C lands were slashed more than 80 percent below 1980s levels.

Oregon counties -- which were guaranteed a 50-50 split of timber revenues under a 1937 law that mandates sustainable logging -- stand to lose the most if timber harvests, or the SRS program, are not revived.

"The counties, while all this wrangling is going on, are falling off the cliff," Doug Robertson, commissioner of Douglas County, Ore., said earlier this month. "Something's gotta happen."

What the bill does

The bill would designate roughly 1.5 million acres as "O&C Trust lands," which would remain under federal ownership but be managed by a board of trustees appointed by the Oregon governor.

The lands, which would generally consist of previously managed timber stands younger than 80 years and not older than 125 years, would be managed for sustainable, dispersed timber production with legal certainty for the forest industry, the lawmakers said.

Timber projects would comply with Oregon law, the federal Clean Water Act and parts of the Endangered Species Act, but they would be exempt the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires public disclosure of impacts.

Unlike a similar bill by House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to boost logging across the West, the Oregon proposal sets no minimum timber quota but rather requires "annual maximum sustained revenues in perpetuity" through "sustained yield" harvests.

And while the trustees must make eight annual $10 million payments to the U.S. Treasury, they have the leeway to halt timber projects if the price of logs plummets.

"It means the trustees must exercise their financial prudence and sell timber only when the market is good," Stahl said.

At least half of the harvestable acres must be logged on a 100- to 120-year rotation and distributed in a manner that "will contribute to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem values."

Legal challenges to the board's decisions would be largely limited to the 18 O&C counties themselves. Others could file lawsuits but only for claims that could be brought against a private landowner for the same action.

DeFazio said the bill would provide counties with a dependable source of income at a time when federal payments under the SRS have recently expired and prospects for a reauthorization look dim.

"Given the serious fiscal crisis our forested communities face, we believe a new approach is necessary to create jobs, help stabilize Oregon's rural communities and better manage our forests," he said last week.

All the rest of the O&C lands would be transferred from the Bureau of Land Management to the Forest Service, where timber harvests would still be allowed as long as they do not cut old-growth trees. The Agriculture secretary would appoint a five-member scientific review panel to establish a definition of "old growth."

In addition, the proposal would designate 150 miles of wild and scenic rivers and 90,000 acres of wilderness.

Clearcut concerns

But the plan has run into strong opposition from environmentalists who claim the bill would lead to rampant clearcutting and threaten "late successional old-growth" trees that provide nesting, roosting and foraging habitat for the federally threatened northern spotted owl.

Moreover, critics fear the 1.5-million-acre timber trust would be managed essentially as private lands with little public oversight.

"Requirements for spotted owls on private forest land are paltry," said Doug Heiken, conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild.

Private landowners are required to avoid "take," which is interpreted to mean protection of a 70-acre core area around known nests, Heiken said. But the spotted owls -- which were listed in part due to concerns about habitat loss from timber cutting -- use territories as large as 2,000 acres in order to find food and successfully raise nestlings, Heiken said.

Moreover, for decades federal agencies have focused on smaller-scale restoration work in the O&C lands that includes tree thinnings that create job, logs and ecological benefits, said Sean Stevens, spokesman for Oregon Wild. That plan will take a century or more to fully implement, he said.

"After less than 20 years of trying to manage our forests sustainably, the DeFazio bill abandons sound science and careful stewardship and returns to political mismanagement of our forests," Stevens said.

Timber harvests on the trust lands would need to increase nearly fivefold in order to make up for lost payments under SRS, the group has argued.

Stahl said there are also few assurances that the forests that would be transferred to the Forest Service would be protected from harmful logging. In addition, the plan would transfer hundreds of thousands more acres to the timber trust than what he originally proposed.

But Tom Partin, president of the Oregon-based American Forest Resource Council, said that while aspects of the bill are difficult for his industry to embrace, it would provide far more certainty than the status quo.

He said BLM in past years has failed to reach its own harvest goals, which were already several times smaller than historic harvests.

"It is clearly a serious bipartisan attempt to end the forest wars that have crippled rural Oregon for nearly two decades," Partin said.

While many argue the housing market is mostly to blame for reduced timber sales, Partin said the wood products industry has adapted by finding export markets not only in China and Japan, but also Italy and Australia.

"If the Forest Service and BLM don't clutter a sale up by having high slash, roading or logging costs, then the price that our members can pay for stumpage is pretty darn competitive," he said.

In Oregon, he said, 60 percent of forested lands are owned by the federal government, but 12 percent of timber harvests come from those lands.

Political hurdles

Stahl said the bill would need to be substantially revised in order for any environmental groups to get on board.

"Peter and Kurt had to make so many concessions to get Walden on board that the bill bears almost no relationship to what they started out with," he said. "Even then, it still proved unacceptable to Hastings."

And while Hastings' bill raised early concerns from House leadership over whether it was an earmark -- it would appropriate nearly $1 billion while counties transition from the SRS program to timber plans -- those concerns did not stop the bill from passing the committee last week on a mostly party-line vote (E&E Daily, Feb. 17).

Stahl noted that it is common courtesy in the House for members to embrace a proposal if it is supported by the lawmakers who represent the district. "That policy has been thrown down the river," he said.

Hastings has not spoken publicly about the Oregon proposal, but Rep. Schrader said he believes the chairman could embrace the plan.

"Doc and other committee members seem very interested in this being part of the bill," Schrader said last week, adding that he is hopeful it can be included in the chairman's bill as a manager's amendment on the floor.

But he noted the resistance some in the House, and perhaps the Senate, will have to new conservation mandates. "Doc is genetically predisposed to not want wilderness," Schrader said. "He makes no bones about that."

Schrader said many members are also unfamiliar with the history of the O&C lands, which were given to a railroad company in the 19th century to promote the Oregon and California Railroad between Portland and San Francisco, but were "revested" by the federal government in 1916 after the company violated the terms of the grant.

Even if the Oregon measure is attached to the Hastings bill, the package has very little chance of passing the Senate, where Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) opposes the mandates in the Hastings plan.

Proponents of the O&C plan hope the bill can eventually be attached to a bipartisan proposal to extend Secure Rural Schools.

Neither Wyden nor Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has weighed in on the DeFazio, Schrader and Walden plan.

Merkley held a conference call with environmentalists last weekend to discuss the O&C plan, but the purpose was mainly "information gathering," according to one source.

Meanwhile, the Portland Oregonian in an editorial published this week urged stakeholders to give the O&C proposal a fair shake.

"You're going to hear strong attacks on the bill. But watch and listen closely to the conservation and industry leaders who have traditionally looked for solutions to the stalemate on federal forests," the paper's editorial board wrote. "Many of them see potential and promise in the DeFazio bill. So do we."

Click here to read the DeFazio bill.