Bush Plan Would Double Annual Cut In WA, OR, CA Forests

[hatrack]

A White House budget proposal released this week recommends more than doubling the annual timber harvested on public lands in Oregon, Washington and California — to 800 million board feet. The provision, which aims to restore timber-cutting targets set under the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, drew praise from timber industry representatives and the ire of an environmentalist.

"It's long overdue," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a Portland-based industry group. "The Clinton-Gore plan was put in place and has never been fully funded."

Tim Lillebo of the Oregon Natural Resources Council disagreed. He said fully funding the plan, implemented in 1994 as an attempt to protect endangered species by reducing harvest levels in old growth forests, would hurt the environment. "The reason we haven't reached a maximum timber cut right now is because we've found that if we're really going to look at the impact of logging, we probably need to back off the maximum," Lillebo said.

Logging on federal lands in Oregon and Washington has dropped since passage of the Northwest Forest Plan, according to numbers provided by the U.S. Forest Service. California numbers were not available. In 1995, the year after the plan was approved, 809 million board feet were logged in Oregon and Washington, according to Richard Haynes, program manager of the Pacific Northwest Research Center in Portland.

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http://www.lagrandeobserver.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=8759