Proposal to End Northwest Timber Battle Rejected

Both the timber industry and the Forest Service on Monday rejected a proposal offered by environmentalists aimed at ending the fight over logging in the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest.

The rejections came as lawmakers from the region sought to craft a legislative compromise to ensure an adequate short-term supply of logs to keep the region’s mills operating over the next 15 months and protect the old-growth forests that are prime habitat for the rare northern spotted owl.

The lawmakers had hoped to attach the compromise to the Interior Department appropriations bill when it was scheduled to go before a Senate appropriations subcommittee today, but the meeting has been put off until later in the week for unrelated reasons.

The lawmakers have made clear they will act whether or not the environmentalists and the industry agree.

Industry representatives said the environmentalists’ proposal would be “technically infeasible” because its restrictions on old-growth logging would make it impossible to meet the timber sales levels it envisions.

“This is a non-starter--an offer of terms of surrender,” Mark Rey, a vice president of the National Forest Products Assn., said at a news conference.

The environmentalists’ proposal would reduce the harvest over the next 15 months to a level 400 million board-feet below that of an earlier plan. Rey said the result would be the loss of 7,000 jobs, $171 million in payrolls and $162 million in government revenue.