Rep. Greg Walden

Oregon lawmakers, with unprecedented support from environmental and timber agencies, in the past two weeks have introduced three bills representing major changes in forest harvest.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers from Oregon, Washington, and South Dakota first introduced legislation in Congress that gives federal forest managers and scientists the tools they need to do necessary work on choked and beetle-infested forests to avoid catastrophic wildfire.

The same group then introduced a second bill that would expand biomass production.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, another bill, the product of eight months of negotiation between timber and environmental specialists was introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden which would dramatically increase logging in Northeast Oregon specifically.

The first bill, an expansion of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003, was introduced by Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), Brian Baird (D-Wash.), and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). The Healthy Forest Restoration Amendments Act of 2009 addresses forest health nationwide by expanding the original act, due to sunset, to give federal foresters and scientists the authority to use the proven-to-work tools in HFRA to address areas of the forests at highest risk of catastrophic wildfire. The bill got strong support from the Society of American Foresters, former Deputy Chief of the USFS Tom Thompson, Dr. Paul Adams of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, Dr. Elaine Oniel of the School of Forest Resources at the University of Washington, and many more experts.

The group of legislators then addressed the need to put rural workers back in the forest and provide them with quality jobs within their expertise by introducing a second bill, the Incentives to Increase Use of Renewable Biomass Act of 2009, which would encourage the renewable biomass energy industry by encouraging universities, public schools, hospitals, local governments, and Tribes at non-gaming facilities to use clean biomass energy, heating, or cooling systems.

The third piece of legislation, “The Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act,” introduced by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden on Wednesday, Dec. 16, requires the Forest Service to identify restoration projects within six national forests east of the Cascades that will immediately and significantly support local timber jobs in eastern Oregon. Wyden’s bill also received unprecedented support from environmentalists and timber executives alike including the American Forest Resource Council, Ochoco Lumber Company, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Oregon Wild, Defenders of Wildlife, Pacific Rivers Council, and the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy.

The Forest Service would be required to develop landscape scale projects of no less than 25,000 acres in each national forest each year over three years in collaboration with groups that include industry and conservation representatives and with an eastside scientific panel created by the legislation. Although the timber slated for harvest is 21 inches or less in diameter the emphasis will be on the harvest of sawtimber, according to Wyden’s office. That goal is perfectly reasonable in Wallowa County, according to Wallowa County Commissioner Mike Hayward, who pointed out that “The sawmills we had here were living on logs smaller than 21 inches.”

While the Forest Service is conducting this assessment of priority areas, administrative appeals – which are often used to block proposed timber sales – would be prohibited, and the Forest Service would be directed to treat a minimum number of acres during those three years. The first year would require at least 80,000 acres to be treated, the second year 100,000, and the final year 120,000.

The proposed Oregon Eastside Act applies to lands within Oregon not covered by the Northwest Forest Plan, including the Wallowa-Whitman. In all, the legislation will set new management priorities on six National Forests covering nearly 10 million acres of federal public land. Conservationists expect the new legislation to dramatically increase the pace of forest and watershed restoration in eastern Oregon.