Wyden aims at major forest restoration
From our weekly issue dated June 25, 2008
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (Photo courtesy Senator Wyden)
Said to be striking a balance between the need to sustain forests, as well as bolster the economy, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) late last week proposed an expansive overhaul of federal forest practices throughout Oregon.
Wyden, chairman of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, estimates that his reforms would approximately double the timber harvest for Oregon that has been achieved annually since President Bush took office.
Wyden’s initiative, he said, would permanently end logging old-growth trees and discourage clear-cutting. At the same time, he added, it would place a new emphasis on greatly expedited, large-scale forest restoration efforts to improve forest health and create many thousands of new jobs.
“For the sake of our environment, economy, and our way of life, we must come together to pursue a concerted, new focus on sustainable forestry management that will create thousands of new jobs and restore the health of our forests,” Wyden said. “The only way to produce this kind of change is to put new ideas forward, seek common ground, and break away from the old politics that led us to this dysfunctional and dangerous situation.”
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Wyden claims that “decades of scientifically unsound forest management and fire suppression policies have put millions of acres of choked and plantation forests at an unacceptably high risk for uncharacteristically severe fires, disease, and insect infestation.”
Wyden’s proposal, the Oregon Forest Restoration & Old Growth Protection Act, would address what he is calling an emergency by:
*Requiring the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Oregon to redirect their management activities to address fire and insect risk, while protecting environmentally sensitive and significant land, and promote continuing, sustainable production of wood.
*Eliminating administrative appeals for forest management conducted under the new forestry directives.
*Allowing pilot restoration projects of up to 25,000 acres in each of Oregon’s national forests and BLM districts in at-risk areas without encountering years of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and administrative delay by issuing those projects a “Categorical Exclusion” from NEPA review.
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*Lands designated as “matrix” under the Northwest Forest Plan would be required explicitly to be managed for economic and ecological purposes.
Said Jerry Franklin, Professor of Ecosystem Science at University of Washington, “It is past the time to take the recurring quarrels over old-growth forests ‘off the table’ so that we can move forward with programs about which we have a social consensus -- such as restoring more ecologically functional and sustainable forest landscapes and providing a predictable flow of wood from federal land.
“This bill, with its strong scientific foundation, is an appropriate basis for the Congressional action needed to get things moving.”
Added Norm Johnson, professor of Forest Resources at Oregon State University at Corvallis, “It also would make available significant quantities of biomass and assist many rural communities by providing employment and community engagement in the restoration process.
“The forest restoration strategy contained in Sen. Wyden’s proposal, if fully implemented, can provide timber products and income during the next 20 years that would significantly increase current harvest levels on the national forests and slightly increase harvest levels on BLM O&C lands compared to recent history.”
Also commenting was Russell Hoeflich, Oregon director of The Nature Conservancy. He said, “For two decades, the failure of community leaders, environmental groups and industry to agree on the appropriate way to manage our forests has resulted in gridlock that has harmed forest health and the economies of resource-dependent rural communities.
“We commend Sen. Wyden’s efforts to break through this gridlock and restore health to Oregon’s forests and rural communities. We look forward to working with him to achieve this critical goal,” said Hoeflich.
Oregonians are invited to review Wyden’s proposal and to share their thoughts at www.wyden.senate.gov/forestproposal.
