Oregon Public Broadcasting

With just one year left in George W. Bush's term, his administration is making big changes in Oregon's forests. As Christy George reports in part one of her series, Forest Politics, the changes start with more logging.

Last summer, the federal Bureau of Land Management announced it wants to roll the clock back to 1993, before Bill Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan protected spotted owl habitat.

Estimates back then put the allowable cut at about 200 million board feet a year.

But loggers never got that much -- so to folks in the timber industry, like Chris West, the Northwest Forest Plan is a broken promise.

Chris West: "When the Clinton administration announced their plan, they had Secretary Babbitt, then Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, out here going around to all the constituencies saying you're going to ramp down to this new level. We want to protect communities and the economic vitality. That never happened."

Chris West's group, the American Forest Resource Council, wants to roll the clock all the way back to 1937 -- when Congress passed the Oregon & California Railroad Act.

The 1937 O&C Act made logging the BLM's number one goal.

And that makes the Northwest Forest Plan illegal, says Chris West.

Chris West: "The Northwest Forest Plan is just a plan. It's not a law. The law is the O&C act. Back in 1994, West's group sued, but the case languished until recently."

To settle the suit, the Bush administration said it would try to triple logging on BLM land. Its plan is called the Western Oregon Plan Revision -- W-O-P-R, which everyone shortens to WOPR.

The WOPR balances the legal mandate to log with the mandate to protect the environment, says Ed Shepard, the BLM's top man in Oregon.

Ed Shepard: "Even under our most aggressive -- our preferred alternative - it's 727 million board feet. The biological capability of these lands is 1.2 billion board feet, so we'll still be cutting considerably less than the max amount."

Ed Shepard says the agency will try to spare big tracts of spotted owl habitat from the chainsaws.

Ed Shepard: "Where we're managing in many areas for owls, we're managing for large blocs of continuous forest that will eventually be older forests."

But WOPR manager Dick Prather says it won't be easy.

Dick Prather:"A lot of places are less than a square mile, which is not very big when you’re talking hundreds of thousands of acres for owl habitat, so just from our land ownership pattern, it’s very hard to create large contiguous blocs of ownership and habitat."

The timber industry also sued the Forest Service, which also settled, and has quietly upped the cut in the forests it supervises -- trying to reach its share of that old Clinton 'promise.'

Tim Hermach: "Clinton never promised anybody anything."

Tim Hermach of the Native Forest Council sees an assault on forests that were already stressed to their limit back in 1994. For now, he says, the policy should be zero cut.

Tim Hermach: "Well, the blood supply in a human adult - we can donate a pint every two months, no problem. Nobody says it's good for us. But they took 2 1/2 quarts, and they're still claiming that what's remaining is a renewable resource. Of course, you're on a stretcher and you're hooked into the wall with plugs and tubes and wires and they're saying be reasonable and let us have some more."

Just like blood through a body, the Siuslaw River and its feeder streams flow through Lane County -- passing Forest Service, BLM and private land.

River guide William Blair sees mud and debris in the river -- logging runoff.

William Blair: "Here we have a very large fir. It looks to be about 100 and some feet long. So we look at it and we say okay, so why is that tree here and where did it come from? What force took that tree to this point?"

Next, along the old logging road comes a class-two rapids - created from the remnants of an old bridge.

Trees slant toward the water at an unnatural angle.

William Blair: "We wouldn't see this erosion here if this were natural."

Upstream, the bluffs are steep and the Siuslaw is surrounded by clear-cuts.

A small rivulet of water rushes down.

William Blair: "This place has been treated - radically treated. They've laid down some real heavy fertilizers and/or pesticides, by the looks of it."

Moving further inland, the river valley widens.

There are mature trees all around, and a crystal clear stream joins the river.

William Blair: "What I see is spawning habitat, particular areas where I know the salmon and steelhead will spawn. And you have a whole reach there, what they would call a spawning reach."

Tim Hermach says water in a forest cleans and filters impurities like blood in the body.

Tim Hermach: "The doctor told me that trying to protect your arteries while allowing the capillaries and the veins to be destroyed doesn't work. You're dead. That's what's happening out in our forests."

Half of Oregon's counties rely to some extent on timber dollars. Lane County was once the top timber county in America.

(Sound of voting): "All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed? Passed unanimous."

Lane County Commission President Faye Stewart says the WOPR could re-open mills and bring back jobs. He comes from a logging family.

Faye Stewart: "It would be welcome to see some of those return back and get these people back on their feet and improve their economic situation."

But Lane County Commissioner Pete Sorenson says starting it all up again isn't worth it.

Pete Sorenson: "You don't solve the county problems in terms of the money that the counties receive because if you liquidate the old growth, then what are you going to do? There are no more trees left."

He and commissioner Bill Dwyer want the feds to reimburse counties like Lane for all the federal land that's not taxable.

Bill Dwyer: "The federal government owns most of the land in the county - over half of it. So in lieu of us being able to collect taxes, whether we cut it or not, they have an obligation to pay their taxes. Okay, I have to pay taxes on my land whether I use it or I don't use it. The federal government ought to too."

Lane County commissioners recently had breakfast with their state legislators, to talk money.  Bill Dwyer is pessimistic.

Bill Dwyer: "The state'll find a way to screw the county in the end. (laughs)"

Commissioner Bobby Green agrees Lane County isn't likely to get help.

Bobby Green: "At some point in time, we need to chart our own destiny. The state can only do so much. The federal government can only do so much. So it's incumbent upon us here at the local level to try to resolve this. Of course, we need some support and assistance. But the long term view is that counties - we're pretty much on our own."

The public comment period on the BLM's WOPR plan ends January 11th.

The second installment of our series looks at changes in recreation in the national forests -- what will and won't be free.