Adjust forest plan.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Managing the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests is like walking a circus tightrope while holding a pole weighted on one end with economic interests and on the other with environmental and recreational interests. Lean too far either direction and the sawdust awaits.

A new analysis by the Oregon Department of Forestry concludes that the state's management strategy has a precarious economic tilt. The findings conclude that recent timber harvests are running about 30 percent higher than the forests can sustain if populations of salmon, elk, spotted owls and other species are to thrive.

Final results aren't due until this fall. But if the preliminary findings are correct the state must adjust its plan by reducing logging in state forests, even if it means reduced state revenues. The alternative - sustaining logging levels that diminish the Coast Range forests' value for future generations and that damage wildlife habitat and recreational assets - should not even be contemplated.

Yet there is likely to be intense lobbying by the timber industry, coastal counties and rural communities to stay the course with the current plan and perhaps even to boost logging levels. Additional pressure comes from the hard reality that harvest reductions will reduce by millions of dollars the annual timber revenues that flow to schools, counties and other programs. Reduced harvest levels could also cause layoffs and even mill closures in communities where economic recovery remains a distant rumor.

Both the timber industry and coastal counties supported the 2001 state forest management plan because of projected steady harvest levels of 280 million board feet per year. Some conservationists also supported the plan, which called for rotations in logging intended to produce a mix of forest ages and sizes for wildlife and recreation. The plan's adaptability and its provisions for regular reassessments and revisions proved critical assets that helped to draw support and reassure doubters.

Problems recently arose with the plan when foresters found significantly less timber than expected in many of the planned sales. The shortfall was due in part to an infestation called Swiss needle cast that unexpectedly slowed the growth of conifer plantations.

The new analysis suggests that the forests can sustain logging of between 149 million to 169 million board feet a year - a significant reduction from earlier projections. The original plan also called for clear-cutting 121,000 acres of infected Douglas fir in the Tillamook Forest over the next two decades with the aim of replacing them with mixed trees more resistant to infestation. But a new state report recommends reducing the clear-cuts by more than three quarters. It also says thinning could produce more revenues, while doing a superior job of producing more diverse forest habitats.

The new analysis provides an opportunity for the Department of Forestry to demonstrate that its management plan truly is adaptable to realities on the forest floor. Last year critics of the plan put a measure on the state ballot that would have placed half of the Tillamook and Clatsop forests off-limits to logging. The measure was decisively defeated in part because Oregonians believed there was no need to scrap a blueprint that was years in the making and that has flexibility necessary to keep the delicate balance between production and preservation.

Now, state forestry officials need to show that the voters' faith was well placed and to make certain that the state's forests are managed in a manner that ensures they will continue to provide timber, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation to all Oregonians in the decades and centuries to come.