Brown Pledges New Effort on Timber Protection Bills

Four days after playing a pivotal role in the defeat of timber bills backed by Gov. Pete Wilson, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown pledged Monday to lead a new effort to restructure the state’s forest protection laws.

Flanked by Sierra Club officials, Brown told a news conference that the downfall last Thursday of legislation supported by the governor had paved the way for the Legislature to seize the initiative and set its terms for a new round of negotiations to govern logging on private land.

“Timber reform absolutely is not dead,” Brown said to applause from the Sierra Club members.

But an unbowed Wilson immediately called his own news conference in Sacramento to announce that backers of his proposal were not ready to concede to Brown and would attempt in the next few weeks to revive the original legislation.

“Those who insist on having it all their own way must not be allowed to kill what is an environmentally sound and economically sensible compromise,” Wilson said.

Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata), one of the sponsors of the Wilson-backed plan, said his side would try to fold the unsuccessful four-bill package into one piece of legislation before attempting to pass it on the Assembly floor. Two of the four bills were defeated last Thursday when they failed to get the 41 votes needed for passage in the Assembly.

The legislation, negotiated by representatives of some environmental groups and timber companies, sets limits on the size of clear-cuts in most forests, provides protections for forest watersheds, establishes restrictions on other types of harvesting and restructures the Board of Forestry.

Brown and the Sierra Club maintain that these protections are insufficient to stop over-logging on California’s 7.1 million acres of private forest land.