Oregon State students develop new plan for forests

EUGENE, Ore. — There's nothing modest about this proposal an effort to breach the gridlock over logging on public lands in Western Oregon.

Oregon State University forestry students say they have come up with a plan that would increase logging, protect old growth, end clear-cutting, allow forests to naturally regenerate, diversify stands for the benefit of more species and even reimburse the counties where the forests are located for the ecological services such as carbon storage that the forests provide.

To satisfy all those competing interests is a tall order.

The students developed their ideas under the guidance of a couple of veterans of the Pacific Northwest's forest wars: Norman Johnson and Jerry Franklin.

For those new to the debate, Johnson, a professor of forest ecosystems and society at Oregon State University, and Franklin, a professor of ecosystem analysis at the University of Washington were among the "gang of four" who came up with the current management strategy known as the Northwest Forest Plan.

That plan pledged substantial logging plus compliance with environmental laws, but critics from both sides say it never lived up to those promises.

The plan adopted by the Clinton administration in the early '90s got some logging on public forests from Washington to California going again after it had been brought to a virtual standstill by lawsuits aimed at protecting at-risk species that rely on the biggest, oldest trees for their survival.

But the timber harvest under that plan never met projections, and subsequent lawsuits by environmental groups raising concerns about proposed clear-cutting, plus lawsuits from the timber industry over lagging harvests, have left federal agencies pursuing low-yield thinning projects because they are the least likely to be challenged.

The debate over what to do or not to do on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's 2.2 million acres of Western Oregon forests has been particularly difficult because federal law going back to 1937 promised a percentage of revenue to the 18 counties where the forests are located.

With logging seriously reduced on these lands, counties have had to rely on fill-in-the-gap funding from Congress to pay for services, but that money will run out by 2012.

A BLM plan written during the Bush administration that would have increased logging was promptly yanked by the Obama administration.