White House Panel Favors Loggers Over Spotted Owl : Environment: Memo proposes cutting as much timber as possible within legal limits. Some logging would be permitted in the bird’s reserves.

Senior Administration officials have recommended that President Clinton adopt a potentially explosive solution to the longstanding conflict over use of Pacific Northwest forests and protection of the northern spotted owl. The plan would maximize timber cutting within legal limits, permit some logging in owl reserves and be at least partially immune to court challenge.

That proposal, known as “Option 9,” is the preferred choice in a 47-page draft memo to Clinton from a special committee convened after the Administration’s forest policy conference in Portland, Ore., in early April. It is headed by Katie McGinty, White House director of environmental policy.

The memo says that the overriding goal is to cut as much timber as possible while still complying with the nation’s environmental laws. It calls for “front-loading” a 10-year harvest program with higher yields in early years to meet political demands of Northwest lawmakers, but it acknowledges that some scientists involved in the plan would oppose that policy.

If endorsed by the President, the plan would strain Clinton’s relationship with the environmental community. Labor and the timber industry would likely be more satisfied.

Clinton is scheduled to review the recommendations over the weekend and announce a decision early next week so that Congress can act on it.

In his campaign and during the April forest conference, Clinton raised expectations that after years of deadlock he might be able to end the Northwest’s feud over logging its national forests. Previous Republican administrations failed to find a way to satisfy the timber industry, its workers and environmentalists who have used lawsuits over the threatened owl and other jeopardized species to slow the pace of logging.

All nine of the options prepared for the committee by a team of scientists would result in timber cutting far below average levels during the past decade, when pro-industry government officials accelerated the region’s cut to as much as 5 billion board feet a year. No option can comply with environmental laws and produce more than 2 billion board feet every year, the committee memo states, and all the options would entail an estimated 6,000 to 9,000 job losses in the timber and wood products industries.

Option 9 was developed on a crash basis at the very end of the staff review, and only after the scientific team had finished the first eight. Environmentalists charge that it was ordered by the White House to satisfy Northwest politicians eager for higher timber harvests.

Marla Romash, a spokeswoman for McGinty and Vice President Al Gore, said no “specific instructions” were given to the scientific team. But Romash repeatedly emphasized the Administration’s concern for the region’s economy.

Option 9, the memo suggests, would yield an average timber harvest of 1.2 billion board feet over 10 years, but would provide 2 billion in the first year and 1.7 billion the second. The high harvests in the early years, the memo says, would help it gain political support in Congress, particularly from Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) and other Northwest lawmakers.