In Oregon's Siuslaw National Forest, loggers have thinned 2,500 acres of trees, supplying more than 30 million board feet to local mills and generating $2 million to help restore endangered fish and wildlife habitat.

In Arizona, more than 52,000 acres on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest has been treated over the past eight years to reduce the risk of severe wildfire and supply wood pellets for homes across the country.

By packaging timber harvests with broader forest restoration goals, each project garnered support from an unlikely alliance of loggers and conservationists, helping it avoid a federal courtroom.

Each was made possible by a popular program known as stewardship contracting that is set to expire in 2013 if Congress doesn't act.

The program, first authorized on a pilot scale in 1999 and approved nationwide for a decade beginning in 2003, allows the Forest Service to use receipts from timber contracts to help pay for restoration activities such as tree planting, pre-commercial thinning, trail maintenance, stream restoration and recreation projects.

Now, the Forest Service is asking Congress to extend the program permanently, arguing it has allowed the agency to complete more work using less taxpayer dollars.

"Without a question, it's demonstrating it's a tool that not only gets work done, puts more people to work, but it also will go a long way to address some of the controversy we've seen in the past toward our restoration work," said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell.

The agency awarded just over 200 stewardship contracts in 2011, and such projects have accounted for about 10 percent of the agency's timber receipts.

While several lawmakers have indicated support for extending the program, Tidwell said he is concerned that waiting too long could strain industry's willingness to invest in the program, as well as the agency's ability to plan future projects.

"Whenever you have an authority that could expire, some folks will not think it's worth their time to invest in how to use that, how to bid, for instance, on a stewardship contract, because they don't know if it's going to be in place," Tidwell said, adding that agency personnel are already beginning to plan projects for 2014.

"The sooner we can get that extended, or ideally make it permanent, it not only will help our purchasers, help our communities," he said, "but it also helps with our planning so we can be more efficient, more effective."

The House last year attempted to extend the program eight years as part of its fiscal 2012 budget, buoyed by the support of Republican Reps. Mike Simpson of Idaho and Jeff Flake of Arizona. But the extension costs money, according to the Congressional Budget Office, meaning it ran afoul of the chamber's "cut-go" rule (E&E Daily, July 22, 2011).

Since the revenues from timber sold through stewardship contracts remain within the agency's budget rather than going to the federal Treasury, lawmakers will have to find a way to pay for it. Cal Joyner, the agency's director for forest management, said extending the program would cost less than a million dollars annually, although the CBO has not issued an official score.

"If we can address it, we'll push it pretty hard," Simpson said this month. "I'd like to make it permanent."

Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) has sponsored stand-alone legislation (H.R. 2601) to permanently extend the program. In the Senate, stewardship contracting is the cornerstone of a bill by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to create new wilderness and mandate an increase in logging (Greenwire, Sept. 14, 2011).

But some have questioned the agency's focus on restoration, warning that it has lost sight of the need for traditional logging contracts that account for the vast majority of its harvests.

Stewardship contracting alone is not enough to sustain local economies in rural Alaska, where the Forest Service has failed to carry out timber projects set in motion by the George W. Bush administration, according to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

"In Ketchikan, they're calling it a restoration to poverty," she told Tidwell at a recent Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. "They are not optimistic that the approach that has been taken is one that will allow them to sustain."

Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon said the senator has not decided whether she would support an extension of the stewardship program and that he is doubtful it is going to come up this year in Congress, given the political climate.

In addition, some rural counties have resisted the shift to stewardship contracting, arguing that traditional timber sales, by law, offer them one-fourth of federal receipts. In recent years, the Secure Rural Schools program has offered counties a higher-revenue alternative than timber receipts, but the program expired last October and its future is uncertain.

Still, stewardship contracting has become a "driving force for innovation" in public lands management, according to a report from the Pinchot Institute for Conservation in Washington, D.C. The program has garnered increased support from Forest Service employees and conservation groups, many of which have helped raise matching funds to support agency goals, it says.

Contrasting with traditional timber sales, in which contracts are awarded to the highest bidder, stewardship contracts may be issued based on a range of factors that include prior performance of contractors and using local workforce, the report says. Contracts can last up to 10 years, providing added certainty for timber companies.

"Restoration is being accomplished in areas where there previously was not interest or support," the report concludes. "This appears to be building trust."

But the report warns that the program faces an array of challenges including reduced appropriations, a lagging forest products market and insufficient local infrastructure.

The 200-plus stewardship contracts in 2011 continue a several-year climb from the 35 projects it awarded in 2003.

In addition, the agency is planning to significantly increase the amount of board feet it harvests using stewardship contracts, from 481 million board feet in 2011 to 1.2 billion board feet over each of the next two years.

It also plans to increase levels of noxious weed removal, stream restoration, roads decommissioning, hazardous fuels removal and biomass made available for energy production.

Stewardship contracting remains a small portion of the agency's overall timber budget, accounting for roughly 15 percent of its overall harvests. The projects raised about 10 percent of the agency's timber receipts, meaning it was slightly lower value timber.

Joyner said overall costs are reduced by combining both timber sales and restoration activities under one contract, rather than individual plans. "Once you make a decision, it's a cost saver," he said.

Gordy Sanders, resource manager for Pyramid Mountain Lumber and co-chairman of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee, struck a similar note but warned that inaction by Congress could imperil the program's future.

He said he is unsure whether the Forest Service would even be able to advertise a stewardship project for the future if its authority has not been renewed.

"They need to know what contract tools they have available in their toolbox well in advance of some termination date," Sanders said.