U.S. Expected to Approve Timber Sales : Nature: The plan to be announced today would attempt to limit job losses in the Pacific Northwest. Environmentalists say it threatens the spotted owl.

Environmental groups expect the Bush Administration today to approve large timber sales that they say threaten the northern spotted owl and to slash its own plan for protecting the bird in other Northwest forests.

An Interior Department spokesman refused Wednesday to discuss the widely rumored actions. The Associated Press said Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) had confirmed one of the moves but an aide claimed later that he was merely commenting on rumors.

Sierra Club lobbyist Jim Blomquist said he learned some details from Administration sources, including a new plan by the Interior and Agriculture departments to restrict logging on about half of the approximately 8 million acres recommended for protection by government scientists.

The plan to be announced today by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. reportedly tries to limit timber job losses to about 15,000 in Washington, Oregon and California, down from the 33,000 projected in the scientists’ proposal.

The plan, required by the Endangered Species Act, is supposed to provide for the recovery of approximately 2,800 spotted owls that face extinction. Blomquist said the plan estimates that the number of owls would drop by half and eventually stabilize at about 1,400.

Blomquist disputed the estimate, asserting that the owls would be wiped out and that forest ecosystems that support valuable fish and wildlife would be ruined.

“In a sense, President Bush is saying to these ancient forests, ‘Drop dead,’ ” Blomquist said.

Officials of several environmental groups said they also expect a government committee headed by Lujan to override the Endangered Species Act and approve timber-cutting on 44 federally owned tracts covering 4,600 acres in western Oregon.

The sales would create an estimated 3,000 jobs but also would increase pressure on the spotted owl. It would be the first exemption to the 19-year-old act ever granted by the seven-member committee, which is dubbed the “God Squad” because of its power to affect the fate of species.

Lujan has said that he seeks a balance between protecting jobs and the environment. Blomquist charged that the expected job-saving moves are “really a political gesture to help Packwood,” who faces a tough primary election Tuesday.

Blomquist said the timber sales, even if approved by the government committee, are blocked for the time being by a court injunction. He predicted that Congress would not approve the revised owl-recovery plan that Lujan is expected to unveil.

Such a plan had to be drawn after the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the northern spotted owl a threatened species in June, 1990, citing excessive logging as a peril to its survival.

Blomquist said the latest plan calls for dropping recommended owl protection in California in the Coast Range surrounding U.S. 101 from Oregon to Sausalito, as well as in national forest lands between the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.

Also reportedly dropped from protection are parts of Oregon’s Coast Range and Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula and areas near Cascade National Park.