Timber talks rolled out.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

Years ago, the sound of chain saws on federally owned forests in Western Oregon was like the jangle of cash registers for county governments. The federal government gave a portion of its logging sales receipts to counties for use in road repairs, sheriff's patrols and other services.

Court-enforced restrictions on logging killed that flow of money.

But now - with numerous Western Oregon county governments in a cash crunch, and residents balking at paying more taxes - there's a growing push to step up logging on public forests.

The move could prompt debate - if not lawsuits - over how many federally owned trees should fall. But county officials say they're ready to have that discussion for the good of local government services.

In Lane County, there's uncertainty over whether Congress will continue its annual so-called timber payments - money that Congress anted up after federal logging slowed down. Without the payments, the county has said it will have to slash services and cut 250 jobs.

Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart mentions federal logging as at least a partial solution. "It's a sensitive issue," Stewart said. "What I'm really asking is, will the citizens allow us to slowly get back into using the forest as a resource to fund county government? Let us try to prove to you that the resource can be managed in an acceptable way."

Gil Riddell, of the Association of Oregon Counties, says that sentiment is common in other rural areas of Western Oregon.

"In the heavy federal timber counties down in the southwest, there is frustration about the inability to log," Riddell said. "They're seeing their people out of work and they're seeing the forest overstocked. They're seeing opportunity."

But any proposals for big increases in federal logging - and for counties to share in the cash - could face steep opposition from environmental groups and others who argue the forests need a very long breather after being hammered by heavy logging up to the late 1980s, when lawsuits began to silence the chain saws.

Federal agencies said legal settlements will require them to offer more timber up for sale in Western Oregon in coming years. But it's yet to be determined how big those harvests will be, whether they will be challenged and whether the counties will get cash for the logging within their borders.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is taking public comment on its plans to expand the harvest on 2.5 million BLM acres in Western Oregon. BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister said the agency could "double or triple" its annual sale of roughly 200 million board feet.

The U.S. Forest Service also plans eventually to cut an additional 200 million board feet of timber annually - a 33 percent increase - in keeping with the expectations of the federal Northwest Forest Plan, which covers Northern California and the western portions of Oregon and Washington, spokesman Tom Knappenberger said.

The federal government created the Northwest Forest Plan in the early 1990s largely to protect federal forests, but also to allow some logging. The federal government has struggled to comply with the environmental requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan and has never succeeded in logging as much as the plan proposed.

Chris West - vice president of the Portland-based American Forest Resource Council, a pro-timber group - said the long-standing debate over how much federal timber to cut will benefit from discussion of timber's relationship to county services.

But the public also will zero in on how many trees might be cut under any new plans.

Both the BLM and the forest service said the expanded harvests could include mature stands or old growth, and that could prompt legal battles with conservation groups such as Oregon Wild, formerly the Oregon Natural Resources Council.

"Any attempt to increase logging of old growth forest will be strongly opposed by the conservation community and the public at large," said Doug Heiken, of Oregon Wild.

Heiken said it's wrong to return to the practice of logging older trees because the forests are tapped out after years of unacceptably heavy logging. A few years of increased revenue aren't worth the toll on quality of life and other values tied to the forests, he said.

Anna Morrison, a former Lane County commissioner, sees things differently. She's been traversing Western Oregon to encourage local governments, chambers of commerce and other groups to speak up as the BLM reviews its forest management plans.

Morrison said she's working for pro-timber interests and the larger community that wants more forest revenue for such things as trails, forest recreation and county services.

Her group's literature blames "extreme" environmental groups for reduced timber harvests. In fact, environmental groups in the late 1980s won widespread reductions in federal logging by showing in court that the federal government was failing to comply with federal environmental laws that require the government to take into account the environmental impacts of its logging.

But Morrison said timber interests and environmental groups can agree to some expanded harvest on BLM lands.

The debate over logging vs. conservation could have big consequences for cash-poor county governments.

Lane and other timber counties are now heavily subsidized by annual timber payments from Congress, but it's uncertain whether that will continue.

Federal law requires counties to accept either the federal aid or a percentage from federal timber sales within their borders - but not both - and federal timber sales receipts are a pittance compared with the aid from Congress. The federal harvest in Oregon would generate only approximately 15 percent of the $250 million annually that the state gets in federal timber aid, said Riddell, of the counties association.

Since federal timber sales dropped in the early 1990s, Lane County has received $30 million to $40 million a year in timber aid from Congress.

As the state's federal lawmakers push for multiyear renewal of that aid, they'll also consider sending the counties money from timber sales to replace a drop in the aid, said Stewart, the Lane County commissioner.

Penny Dodge, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., couldn't confirm that DeFazio will try to include timber-sale revenue in any new aid package. DeFazio said he's working with U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on a proposal to increase thinning work in federal forests.

Stewart said the timber revenue could help counties weather a drop in federal aid. Given the strong opposition to higher taxes - Lane County voters last year and again this year killed an income tax proposal - he said he hopes the public will urge lawmakers to consider turning trees into county cash.

BLM LOGGING PLANS

The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing plans to log more trees in Western Oregon. For more information, visit www.blm.gov/or/plans/ wopr/index.php or call the BLM at [phone].