60% Cutback in Northwest Timber Harvest Is Sought

Government scientists will recommend that President Clinton reduce timber harvests in the Northwest’s ancient forests by at least 60% from what they were in the mid-1980s, Administration officials say.

None of the alternatives the scientists are devising would let loggers cut more than 2 billion board feet of wood a year from national forests in Oregon and Washington, said one official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

That is substantially below the 5 billion-plus board feet the industry harvested on those lands annually from 1983 through 1987--before the dispute over the northern spotted owl and protection of old-growth forests wound up in court.

A second government official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the group’s final recommendation for the maximum annual timber harvest may be as low as 1.5 billion board feet.

“I think 1.5 (billion) to 2 billion is a best-case scenario. I think 2 billion is the high-water mark,” said one member of Congress who asked not to be named. A board foot is one foot square by one inch thick. It takes about 10,000 board feet of lumber to build a typical single-family house.

The formal recommendation, expected in early June, represents a bitter disappointment for a logging industry that has argued the government cares more about the threatened owl than jobs.

“With ranges like that, we might as well turn the entire West Coast into a national park,” said Chris West, vice president of the industry’s Northwest Forestry Assn. in Portland, Ore.

It also presents Clinton with a new dose of political reality: Despite his pledge to find a compromise, strict compliance with environmental laws probably mandates putting thousands of people out of work.

Mark Rey, executive director of the industry’s American Forest and Paper Assn., said that dropping harvests as low as 2.5 billion board feet would cost the region tens of thousands of timber jobs. The industry claims it already has lost more than 30,000 jobs since the dispute began.