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Senate trims timber process By PAUL FATTIG A legislative rider attached to the annual Interior appropriations bill could chop a hole in the legal logjam blocking timber harvest on some federal forestlands in the Northwest. The amendment by Sens. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and Larry Craig, R-Idaho, in the $14.1 billion bill would pave the way for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to use existing studies and data to meet the survey requirement of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Last month, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer temporarily placed timber sales totaling 220 million board feet on hold after he found the two agencies had failed to adequately conduct such surveys for 77 rare species. The law now requires that the agencies conduct individual surveys for each sensitive species. Included in Dwyer's decision are timber sales in the BLM's Medford District and the Rogue River National Forest. The decision was the result of a 1998 lawsuit brought by 13 environmental groups, including Ashland-based Headwaters. The amendment survived an effort to toss it out Thursday by a 52-46 vote in the Senate, much to the dismay of Richard Hart, staff ecologist for Headwaters. "This flies in the face of the purpose of the Northwest Forest Plan," he said. "We have learned an immense amount of how the forest works as a result of the plan. That's the success of the plan." More thorough surveys would benefit those who manage the federal lands as well as the environment, he noted. "This information we're gathering has to go somewhere and be utilized," he said. "If you cut the program off at the neck, we're back to where we were." That sounds fine to David Hill, executive secretary of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "I would certainly support any source of relief from the current survey and manage requirements," he said. "Those requirements are proving to be unworkable." In addition to stopping some logging programs, they are halting other ground-disturbing activities, he said. "If this amendment is restricted to existing data, that would be an interim solution," he said. A long-term solution would be to survey and manage on the roughly 80 percent of federal lands where logging is not currently allowed, Hill suggested. "If those species in question are doing well on those lands, then you've got 80 percent of the land base protected," he said, noting that steps could be taken to protect the species if they aren't doing well on those lands. In Thursday's action, the Senate voted to reject an amendment by Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va., that would have deleted the Gorton-Craig amendment from the appropriations bill. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., voted for the Robb amendment while Gorton and Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., voted against it. "If you distill this down, this is about pitting a survey of fungus, snails and slugs against children and families who need streets and schools," Smith told his colleagues. More flexibility is needed in the survey and management requirements to allow logging while protecting the environment, he said. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA