Legislation to Change the Northwest Forest Plan Coming Our Way?

Kevin Geraghty
Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Kevin Geraghty and Bonnie Phillips attended a December meeting to discuss the legislation, now in draft form, coming from Oregon Senator Ron Wyden and Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio. Their legislation would protect the remaining old growth forests but at the price of a much higher volume of thinning timber sales. There are many elements in each proposal that are good, and many that are not good at all. The longstanding debate among public lands leaders in Washington, Oregon and Northern California centers on whether we can help make the bills something we can support, or if we should just work to defeat the bills. A big issue in Washington is how do we approach our congressional delegation. Some think that they can make the bill much better, thus giving support. Others think that we should just ask them not to support or to stay neutral.

Bonnie has organized a mid-January meeting for forest activist leaders statewide to discuss this issue. If the decision is that we will be working on the bill, we’ll let you know in a full article in our next newsletter, so stay tuned. Frankly, this is a very complicated scientific and policy issue with no clear pathway to resolution. If legislation begins to move, the outcome could be very important for our forests.