U.S. Proposes Cutting Timber Sales 10% More to Save Owls : Environment: Administration doubles estimates of job losses in the Northwest in a revision of compromise reached last summer. Plan goes to judge next month.

In a final report on its plan to protect the endangered spotted owl, the Clinton Administration on Wednesday proposed reducing sales of timber from the Northwest’s forests by a further 10% and almost doubled its estimates of jobs that will be lost as a result.

In a final environmental impact statement, the Administration said it will propose further limits on logging alongside stream banks on federal lands--a move cheered by environmentalists. But in a provision they oppose, the plan also would relax logging restrictions in California’s national forests by allowing more frequent timber harvests.

The plan--a slightly revised version of a compromise forged by President Clinton in July--will go to U.S. District Judge William Dwyer next month. Dwyer ruled in 1991 that because the government had not made adequate arrangements to protect the endangered owl, logging had to stop throughout the 8.6-million-acre range of federal lands west of the Cascade Range.

Details of the plan still could change before its final submission to Dwyer. But after that submission on April 1, the plan automatically will take effect and sales of new logging tracts in the economically troubled region can begin legally for the first time in three years. However, several environmental groups have warned that they may file new lawsuits that could bring the renewed sales to another abrupt halt.

Clinton Administration officials argued that the plan released Wednesday will stand up against challenges in court.

“The changes made really strengthen the plan,” said George T. Frampton Jr., assistant secretary of the Interior for fish, wildlife and parks. “It does not save all the old-growth forest, nor does it produce the kind of timber harvest level the President and secretary (of the Interior Bruce Babbitt) thought they’d get. But it’s right down the middle, scientifically credible, fair and legally sound. And it’s on the cutting edge of ecosystem management.”

Frampton added that he would “love to go into court personally and argue for it.”

The plan unveiled Wednesday is the final step in an Administration effort to arbitrate a seven-year war of wills between environmentalists and loggers in the Northwest. At stake have been the habitats of nearly 1,000 threatened species, as well as the jobs of thousands of timber industry workers.

In one of the politically sensitive changes reflected in the report, the Administration revised its estimates of direct job losses attributable to the plan to 11,000. In July, Clinton had said that about 6,000 loggers probably would join unemployment rolls because of proposed restrictions on logging. But he promised about $1.2 billion for retraining and economic stimulus programs.

Barry Polsky, spokesman in Washington for the American Forest and Paper Assn., said the revised plan “means fewer jobs and more economic hardship in that region. It’s going to take more money to make this plan work. And they didn’t have enough money to make the plan work to begin with.”

Frampton said the revised plan would strengthen protections not only for the spotted owl but for many other species whose survival has been jeopardized by aggressive logging. Although timber harvests on federal lands in the Northwest reached nearly 2 billion board feet per year throughout the 1980s, the Clinton Administration has proposed limiting logging in such areas to 1.1 billion board feet per year for the next 10 years.

The key change--added protection for riverbanks--would prohibit logging within 100 yards of small streams, rather than 50 yards, as had been proposed earlier. That provision, Frampton said, would reduce erosion and enhance the habitats of such threatened fish as trout and salmon. It also would place roughly 160 million board feet of timber off limits to loggers.

About 10,000 board feet are needed to build a typical single-family home.

“I’m pleased they are doing more to protect streams,” said Rep. Elizabeth Furse (D-Ore.). “We have to protect a $1-billion fishery.”

Many environmentalists cried foul at a change that would allow the sale of logging tracts in California national forests after as little as 110 years of regrowth. An earlier provision said that forests must grow back for at least 180 years before they could be subject to further harvesting. In the Shasta and Trinity national forests and Mendocino National Forest, harvesting could resume after 110 years of regrowth under the new plan. In the Klamath National Forest, the waiting period would be 140 years, and second harvests would have to wait 180 years in the Six Rivers National Forest.

With some of those expiration dates drawing near, the change would make roughly 60 million board feet of lumber available for harvest, and it was welcomed by the California Resources Agency.

“This is a very positive step forward because it will provide more timber jobs for California at a time when communities that rely on the forests for a living are suffering dire economic consequences from the harvest reductions,” said Douglas P. Wheeler, the state’s secretary for resources. “The timber harvest increase allowed in the plan is not great, but it’s an improvement over the draft,” he said.