We report this week on three pieces of legislation that could benefit timber men in our county – and by extension, everyone in the county. Our legislators, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, have co-sponsored bills that change the way forests are managed, promote the development of biomass industries and target Eastern Oregon forests for immediate, sensible harvest.

These bills are not yet law and have some serious hurdles to overcome – not the least of which is finding funding. The bills also contain some significant compromises that may alarm ideological purists.

But our legislators deserve recognition for facing up to the complications, sitting down with former enemies and hammering out legislation that recognizes the importance of the timber industry and the value of our rural way of life.

Bringing the warring factions together was an amazing achievement. As Wyden, who spearheaded the Oregon Eastside Forests Restoration, Old Growth Protection and Jobs Act, commented, “Oregonians rightly wondered if this day would ever come.”

It’s not surprising that environmentalists and conservationists began to see that forest harvest would in the best interest of fish, wildlife and forests. Decades of mismanagement, caused almost exclusively by continual lawsuits brought against the U.S. Forest Service to prevent harvest, created problems preservationists did not foresee – just as over-harvest had created problems foresters did not see in the years before environmental studies.

Everyone is sadder and wiser these days.

But what is surprising is that the result of these parties sitting down together is the recognition of a common goal: preservation.

That’s notable because when all of the views are combined, preservation is being redefined to include the preservation of our timber industry, our community and our values.

That road goes both ways. For any of these three bills to make it to this point, all of the parties had to be willing to see the other’s view and then compromise.

Those compromises will not sit well with idealists in any camp, and legislators don’t expect them to – but our legislators seem to be idealists in their hearts and realists in the world.

“The road ahead to enacting this bill may be difficult,” Wyden said in a recent press release, “but when longtime adversaries demonstrate that they can sit together and find common ground, there is hope for a better tomorrow for Oregon.”

We’re going to be hearing more about the compromises, discussing whether or not those compromises are worth making and watching to see if the entire Congress is able to see the value of these bills.

But no matter what happens in the coming months, let’s not lose sight of the biggest achievement already experienced as a result of these bills: hope.