Don't rush forest plan.

Byline: The Register-Guard

A compromise forest-thinning plan crafted by Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., Greg Walden, R-Ore., and others is a major improvement over President Bush's flawed Healthy Forests Initiative. But more work is needed to ensure that the legislation does more good than harm.

Members of the fragile coalition supporting the compromise warn against attempts to change the five-year plan, which goes before the House Resources Committee for a vote today. An aide to Rep. Scott McInnis, the Colorado Republican who chairs the committee's forests subcommittee, said last week that efforts to amend the bill would cause "this house of cards" to collapse.

So be it. After a summer in which more than 6 million acres went up in flames throughout the West, the pressure to approve legislation is intense. But Congress must not be rushed into approving a plan that lacks the balance necessary for long-term success.

The DeFazio-Walden plan represents a major departure from Bush's proposal. Both bills begin with the same premise: That years of fire suppression in federally managed forests have caused underbrush and small trees to build up, creating the tinder that last summer fueled flames on an unprecedented scale in Oregon and across the West.

The compromise bill is more narrowly targeted than the Bush plan, which would affect up to 190 million acres of forests. Its primary focus would be on a much smaller acreage of at-risk federal forests near homes, communities, watersheds and endangered species habitat.

It makes sense to concentrate federal resources on the most vulnerable areas, where forest lands are near urban development. The open-ended Bush plan is clearly motivated more by a desire to give the timber industry access to back-country forests than on protecting homes and communities.

Bush's proposal also would suspend laws that now require environmental reviews of logging and thinning projects and allow for citizen appeals. By contrast, the DeFazio-Walden plan would still allow for notice and comment, administrative appeals and judicial review, but under tighter deadlines. Instead of having to document several proposed courses of action, as currently required under the National Environmental Policy Act, federal agencies would have to document only a single alternative.

The Bush plan calls for logging companies to thin small trees and remove underbrush in exchange for the right to harvest valuable older trees. The result would be wholesale logging of older trees in national forests. The DeFazio-Walden bill would reduce the incentive for companies to cut big trees by providing up to $1 billion a year to underwrite thinning costs.

While the coalition is on the right track, its proposal needs sharpening in several areas. The compromise bill is disturbingly vague on what lands would be affected. The bill also would rely too heavily on Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman to limit logging of mature and old-growth forests. And provisions for streamlining the bureaucratic process need to ensure adequate public participation.

Restoring balance to national forests is a huge job that will take many years. The DeFazio-Walden bill is a good starting point, but more work is needed before it's ready for approval.