Decision may halt new push for logging.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

A federal court decision has environmentalists hoping for the best and timber companies fearing the worst on the question of logging old growth on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascades summit.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Monday that the Bush administration acted improperly in spring 2004 when it said the U.S. Forest Service no longer had to survey for rare plants and animals before selling stands of timber in the region covered by the Northwest Forest Plan.

The case is still under way and it may be months before implications of the ruling are known - such as whether the Forest Service must revert to the old "survey-and-manage" rules to protect species.

"This could be a total lockdown of everything you've got,' said Robbie Robinson, whose Starfire Lumber Co. in Cottage Grove relies on big, old growth logs. `I'm not saying that's what's going to come out of it, but all this is possible.'

The survey-and-manage procedure was adopted as part of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. The plan was meant to settle conflict between environmentalists and timber companies by specifying which trees on federal lands can be cut, and which must be left to protect endangered species, such as the spotted owl. The plan had the effect of largely ending logging on federal forests west of the Cascades summit, because the vast majority of federal forest land was deemed vital to important wildlife.

The Bush administration sought to loosen the survey rules in order to increase the amount of logging. But Pechman ruled that the environmental impact statement that underpinned the Bush decision did not meet legal requirements.

The challenge to the Bush rules was brought by a coalition of Northwest environmental groups, including the Oregon Natural Resources Council. An attorney from the Eugene-based Western Environmental Law Center argued the case.

"The forests are so degraded from past logging that wildlife needs a little extra help until we can get the forest restored a little bit more," said Doug Heiken, the Western Oregon field representative for the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

The survey-and-manage system was aimed at protecting living things such as voles, that are the food of rare species, such as the spotted owl.

Robinson said the system went overboard protecting "crawly creatures," grasses and fungi, and made logging impossible.

"It was a moving target all the time. You could buy (a federal logging sale) that didn't have owls, didn't have marbled murrelet, didn't have this, didn't have that - and all of a sudden they'd find something else they wanted to protect," he said.

"It's like cutting your own grass. You may kill a worm when you're cutting your own grass. That's the reality of it," he said.

Environmentalists said they want to protect the interwoven fabric of forest life.

"There are hundreds of species that are essential to the health of old growth forests by cycling nutrients and cleaning our air and water, where the sum of their parts is greater than the whole," said a news release from the coalition of environmental groups.