December 6th, 2006

Salvage Logging Bill Dead For Year

WASHINGTON -- With just days remaining in the legislative session, two Republican senators say there is not enough time to take up a controversial bill to speed logging of burned forests and planting of new trees after storms and wildfires.

Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Mike Crapo of Idaho say they will try again next year to approve the logging bill, which many Democrats and environmentalists strongly oppose.

"Oregon should be allowed to manage its forests," Smith said in an e-mail. "There was little bipartisan support for a salvage bill in this Congress. Without broader bipartisan support in the next Congress, Oregon is going to be in a very tight bind."

Smith lamented the failure of the logging bill and a stalemate between the Bush administration and Congress over a program to continue payments to rural counties hurt by cutbacks in federal logging.

"Now we have an expired county payment safety net and are not even allowed to remove dead trees from our forests. This isn't going to work and shows a lack of understanding of the West," Smith said. "Allowing responsible forest management will decrease the impact of forest fires and generate funds for schools and roads. That is the goal I am working toward."

A spokeswoman for Crapo said that he was disappointed that time ran out on the logging bill but that Crapo remains supportive of the bill and will work for it in the next Congress.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is likely to chair the forestry subcommittee in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources panel next year, said he will look at the logging bill but is unlikely to support anything resembling the bill that passed the GOP-led House this spring.

Democrats are taking over the House and Senate in January in the wake of last month's elections.

"I think next year there will be an opportunity in my committee, and I expect to start looking seriously at prevention, which is what's really needed," Wyden said.

Rather than wait until fires have occurred, Wyden said, the Forest Service and other agencies that administer public land should do more to prevent wildfires, such as thinning overgrown forests.

"The choice in forestry policy is do more in the area of prevention . . . rather than wait until things get out of hand," he said.

The logging bill, approved by the House in May, would order that federal land hit by disasters larger than 1,000 acres be restored within months, rather than years. That would enable fire-killed timber to be sold before insects and rot set in, diminishing its commercial value, advocates say.

The bill's co-sponsors, Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Brian Baird, D-Wash., dubbed it the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act and called it a commonsense plan to help the environment and the economy.

But most House Democrats opposed the bill, arguing that cutting large old trees and planting new ones makes forests more vulnerable to new fires and less valuable as habitat for fish and wildlife. They said it is better to allow forests to come back on their own.

Randi Spivak, executive director of American Lands Alliance, an environmental group that opposed the logging bill, celebrated its demise.

"Our national forests and taxpayers' wallets are safe from the likes of the Walden logging bill in 2006," she said. "I am hopeful that the 110th Congress will pursue real solutions that protect communities from wildfire and restore our national forests, not rely on Neanderthal science and a divisive agenda."


©2006 The Oregonian