Oregon legislators optimistic they can reach deal on timber harvests in western Oregon

Oregon legislators optimistic they can reach deal on timber harvests in western Oregon

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By Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian 
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on July 31, 2013 at 4:36 PM, updated July 31, 2013 at 10:19 PM

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A log truck navigates a road in Southern Oregon's Curry County, which has been hard-hit by a loss of timber revenue.Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

A sweeping federal forest bill that would hike timber harvests in western Oregon cleared its first major congressional hurdle on Wednesday.

The controversial bill has been eagerly sought by rural Oregon counties hard-hit economically by the decline of logging over the last two decades, but denounced by environmentalists as a return to the days of massive clear-cuts on federal lands.

The House Natural Resources Committee approved the bill, which also calls for major increases in logging on federal lands throughout the country. It incorporates separate legislation sought by three Oregon congressmen -- Democrats Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader and Republican Greg Walden -- to increase timber production on lands once owned by the now-defunct Oregon & California Railroad.

"Today was the first really big step in putting in place a long-term solution for the solvency and prosperity of the O&C counties in Oregon," said DeFazio, who this month became the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.

Walden, a member of the House Republican leadership, predicted that the House would take up the bill in September after a monthlong recess.

If the bill passes the House, it will set up negotiations with the Democratic Senate -- where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has vowed to develop his own O&C legislation.

Wyden said he too wants to provide some additional logging, but not at the expense of sweeping aside federal environmental laws.

Putting together a compromise that could pass both chambers and be signed into law is widely regarded as a tough task, but on Wednesday, Wyden and the Oregon House members sounded optimistic.

"Everyone feels the same sense of urgency about creating jobs in rural Oregon and provide O&C counties with a stable source of funding while protecting water, old growth and critical habitat," said Wyden spokesman Tom Towslee. "Sen. Wyden is confident that the details of how we get there can be worked out over time."

DeFazio said the Senate is unlikely to accept provisions in the overall House billthat would mandate higher logging levels in national forests. In fact, he said he didn't yet know whether he would support the bill in the House because of several "problematic provisions" that Democrats on the committee were unable to change.

But DeFazio said a compromise could be crafted around provisions in the House bill aimed at improving forest health and reducing their vulnerability to massive fires. He noted that Wyden and the House resources chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., met earlier this year to begin laying the groundwork for a compromise.

Watching nervously is the environmental community, which argues that harvest levels can only be increased modestly on the O&C lands without damaging the habitat.

"Oregonians should be outraged that the first thing Rep. DeFazio has done as ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee is to partner with one of the most anti-environmental legislators in Congress on a bill that represents the worst threat to the nation's public lands in a generation," said Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild, in a statement.

DeFazio countered that the O&C legislation includes important new environmental protections for the Molalla, Rogue and Chetco rivers as well as additional wilderness designations.

Under the House bill, about 1.6 million of the 2.8 million acres of the Oregon & California lands would be placed in a trust managed by the state for more intensive logging. Officials estimate the bill would increase harvests from less than 200 million board-feet annually to more than 500 million board-feet.

In addition, the House bill also would extend the now-expired federal program to provide federal payments to timber-dependent counties to support local services.

--Jeff Mapes

Killing barred owls will aid recovery of Oregon's spotted owls, federal wildlife officials believe

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Killing barred owls will aid recovery of Oregon's spotted owls, federal wildlife officials believe

When researchers killed barred owls in a northern California management experiment, threatened spotted owls returned to nesting sites. (California Academy of Sciences)

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By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian 
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on July 23, 2013 at 4:50 PM, updated July 23, 2013 at 8:20 PM

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Acknowledging it's a grim "last resort" experiment to save threatened northern spotted owls, federal wildlife officials plan to shoot or remove more than 3,600 barred owls from West Coast forests over the next four years.

Barred owls are larger, more aggressive and less picky about what they eat than their cousins, and have taken over much of the spotted owl's territory in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. By shooting barred owls or using non-lethal removal methods in four test areas, researchers hope to document whether spotted owls will recover.

But the wrenching decision to kill one species in order to benefit another has split biologists, conservationists and timber industry officials for the past three years. Some believe wildlife populations should not be artificially manipulated and that in the owls' case, natural selection is at work.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is in charge of the decision, found the issue so troubling that it hired an environmental ethicist to guide its discussions.

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Continuing coverage of the fate of spotted owls.

Robin Bown, a wildlife service biologist heading the project, said she doesn't expect full public support for killing barred owls to protect spotted owls.

"Some people will tell us it's OK to let them go extinct; we don't feel we can do that," she said. "We feel very strongly we have to deal with issues driving the northern spotted owl to extinction."

Spotted owls became the symbol of the timber industry's decline after they were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act more than 20 years ago. A 1990 report estimated logging had reduced the owl's favored old-growth habitat by up to 88 percent.

Severe logging restrictions on federal forests followed the owl's listing, and timber harvest numbers reflect the change. In 1988, Oregon loggers cut 4.9 billion board feet of timber on federal land. The 2009 federal harvest was 240 million board feet.

In recent years, however, wildlife biologists concluded that barred owls are a more immediate threat to spotted owls than habitat loss.

Barred owls are native to the East Coast and advanced slowly with settlers. They were reported in Montana by 1909, British Columbia by 1959 and in Washington and Oregon by the early 1970s.

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 Biologists believe the Northwest's barred owl now "completely overlaps" the spotted owls' range. The latter are declining at a rate of nearly 3 percent a year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

While spotted owls nest in old growth forests and prefer to eat flying squirrels, barred owls are more flexible. Old growth is their first choice of habitat, but they'll live in younger forests and even city parks. They eat a variety of rodents and small mammals.

In the wild, territorial barred owls harass or even kill spotted owls. A Washington timber company biologist once compared the competition to a "generalist" -- barred owls -- against a "specialist" -- spotted owls.

"And invariably the generalist will win," said Blake Murden, of Port Blakely Tree Farms in Tumwater, Wash.

In deciding to remove barred owls, Fish and Wildlife officials drew upon the work of Lowell Diller, a wildlife biologist with Green Diamond Resource Co. in the redwoods of Northern California.

Working under a federal permit, Diller and other researchers killed 73 barred owls on the private timber company's land from 2009 to 2012. In every case Diller knows of, spotted owls returned to historic nesting areas. In one case, a pair of spotted owls that hadn't been seen for more than two years reappeared 10 days after a pair of barred owls were shot.

Green Diamond owns forestland over about a 100 mile stretch from Eureka north to the Oregon border. Diller has monitored spotted owls in the company's forests for 23 years, and believes very few would be left if barred owls hadn't been removed.

He believes killing barred owls in the four experiment areas is worth a try.

"The alternative," he said, " is to give up on conservation of spotted owls."

The question to be answered, he said, is the long-term feasibility of reducing and controlling barred owls over the spotted owls' full range, from Northern California to British Columbia.

Letting spotted owls go extinct is "not a good alternative when you consider how much resources we've already committed" in recovery efforts, Diller said.

Wildlife officials have intervened with other species, such as removing or killing California sea lions that eat threatened salmon bunched up at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. They've killed cormorants and terns that feed on juvenile salmon and steelhead in the Columbia, and Oregon also offers a bounty on northern pike minnows, which eat young salmon.

Barred owl removal will take place in the Cle Elum area of Washington state, in the Coast Range/Veneta and Union/Myrtle areas of Oregon, and the Hoopa/Willow Creek areas of northern California. For comparison, each removal area will be paired with a control section where barred owls are not killed.

The removal plan is a "preferred alternative" that will become final after 30 days. Bown, the biologist in charge, thinks the experiment will work.

"I personally believe we'll see an improvement in our spotted owl population where we remove barred owls," she said. "What we don't know is how we'll keep them out the area -- the feasibility and efficiency and efficacy of the process."

--Eric Mortenson

Model made of mythical owls

GUEST VIEWPOINT

Model made of mythical owls

A flawed computer model led to nonsensical restrictions on timber management in Oregon

By Ross Mickey

For The Register-Guard

PUBLISHED: 12:00 A.M., JULY 14

On June 26 a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the Bureau of Land Management to comply with the law and offer more timber for sale in Southwest Oregon. The judge also found that federal agencies had broken the law by not adhering to rulemaking requirements in instituting the Owl Estimation Methodology, a flawed model for quantifying the impact of federal timber harvests on the spotted owl.

Most of the media coverage has rightly focused on the judge’s order to sell more timber. The little coverage of the owl estimation portion of the ruling has failed to describe the absolute lunacy underpinning a computer model that led to nonsensical restrictions on timber management throughout Western Oregon. It deserves greater scrutiny from the public and our elected officials.

What if an agent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service knocked on your door and told you that you could not harvest any of the vegetables in your garden because it is the home of a threatened slug? You know first-hand that none of these slugs exist in your garden, so your mouth drops when the agent insists that a very sophisticated computer model has determined that your garden is definitely the home of the slug.

Wondering what the consequences of harvesting your vegetables might be, you ask, “What would happen if I ate one of my carrots?”

He then becomes serious and tells you, “We would have to prosecute you for ‘taking’ a threatened species.”

Not believing your ears, you say, “Are you telling me if I ate one of my carrots, I would face federal charges for ‘taking’ a slug that no one has ever seen in my garden?”

“Yes,” he replies.

Wondering if this could get any more bizarre, you ask, “What would happen if I ate another carrot tomorrow?”

He answers, “You would be charged for taking another threatened species.”

For clarification, you ask, “So I would be charged for taking two slugs for eating two carrots even though no one has ever seen one of these slugs in my garden?”

His reply: “Yes.”

Following this, you wonder, “I have 50 carrots, 25 heads of lettuce, 25 zucchini and 25 summer squash. Would I be charged with ‘taking’ 125 slugs if I picked all my vegetables?”

He calmly replies, “Yes.”

Wouldn’t you be outraged at such a ridiculous situation? We were — which is why we joined the lawsuit challenging the use of the Owl Estimation Methodology to determine how many spotted owls would be “taken” due to harvesting trees on our publicly owned federal lands.

None of us wants any species to go extinct. Federal forest managers consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service to ensure that their actions will not jeopardize a threatened species. The owl methodology was developed following a different court decision requiring the agencies to either quantify the amount of “take” that would occur from an activity or to disclose that quantifying the “take” is impossible.

“Take” in this case is not the killing of an owl, but rather a disruption that somehow might “harm” the species. Rather than deciding to disclose why quantifying “take” for the spotted owl is impossible (which it is), the Fish & Wildlife Service developed a very sophisticated computer model built by the very best scientists to spit out a number the computer says is how many owls would be taken due to harvesting trees.

On many occasions, this model creates spotted owl home ranges where no owls have ever been found. The Fish & Wildlife Service then requires these acres to be protected the same as those lands that are occupied by owls. Most of these mythical home ranges are created in areas that are already below the habitat conditions the service has deemed to be necessary to avoid “take,” so the harvest of one tree will be deemed as a “take.”

Just as with the phantom slugs in your garden, under the Owl Estimation Methodology thousands of phantom owls can be taken that no one has ever found and are not known to even exist.

While the owl estimation madness has now been stopped, the Fish & Wildlife Service has created another “very sophisticated computer model built by the very best scientists” to declare that more than 9 million acres of federal land is “critical” spotted owl habitat, even though half of this land has been identified as either unsuitable or marginal habitat.

A lawsuit has been filed challenging this decision — but ultimately our elected leaders must step up to put an end to these flawed policies that threaten our forests and communities.

Ross Mickey of Eugene is the federal forest manager for the American Forest Resource Council.

Driven by exports from private forests, timber harvest in Oregon up for third year in a row

Driven by exports from private forests, timber harvest in Oregon up for third year in a row

A strong export market for private forest logs continues to drive increased timber harvests. (Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)

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By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian 
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on July 08, 2013 at 5:43 PM, updated July 08, 2013 at 5:55 PM

Oregon's timber harvest reached 3.75 billion board feet in 2012, continuing a recovery from the crash of the housing market and the depths of the recession. In 2009, loggers cut 2.75 billion board feet, but the harvest has increased each year since.

The increased harvest has been driven by a strong export market and a slight improvement in housing starts, according to a report by the Oregon Department of Forestry. Timber from state and federal forests cannot be exported, but tribal and other privately-held timber can be shipped overseas.

Harvests from Native American-owned forests increased 21 percent in 2012, reaching a total of 63 million board feet. The harvest on "industrial" forests -- land owned by large timber companies -- increased 4 percent to 2.56 billion board feet. Owners of smaller family forest tracts cut 318 million board feet in 2012, more than a 14 percent increase over 2011.

Private and tribal harvests accounted for approximately 78 percent of the timber harvest in Oregon in 2012 despite making up only 37 percent of Oregon's timberland. About 60 percent of Oregon's 30 million acres of forest is owned by the federal government. 

Harvests on U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state and county lands declined or remained about the same in 2012.

--Eric Mortenson

Bringing back good old days of logging difficult

Bringing back good old days of logging difficult

This May 29, 2008 file photo shows Jake Hamann of Butte Falls, Ore., on a U.S. Bureau of Land Management stewardship project near Selma, Ore. The BLM is working on a new management plan for its forests in Western Oregon to replace one that failed to meet Endangered Species Act requirements.(AP Photo/Jim Craven/Mail Tribune)

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Nothing came to symbolize the difficulty of bringing back the good old days of logging in Oregon like the Bush administration's plan to boost timber production on 3,750 square miles of federal land in 18 counties, an area about three times the size of Rhode Island.

Big promises of logs and revenue for timber counties won the Western Oregon Plan Revision the nickname of "The Whopper," spoken affectionately by timber interests and contemptuously by conservationists. But after five years of planning, it all came crashing down. Unable to pass muster under the Endangered Species Act, it was withdrawn by the Obama administration in 2009.

Now, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on a kinder and gentler approach. Though some people are calling it "Whopper Junior," the BLM pointedly is not. In a preliminary planning document released this month, the BLM's state director, Jerome E. Perez, said the new approach will be based on what the public wants, science, the law and on the goals of healthy forests, not board feet of timber.

"These 2.5 million acres have an important role to the social, economic and ecological wellbeing of Western Oregon, as well as to the greater American public," he wrote. "In an effort to try to change the dialogue, besides changing how we engage the public, I want to focus our discussions around outcomes, not outputs."

The BLM says it will finish the new plan by fall 2015. It has been asking tribes, conservation groups, counties and the timber industry what they want from the lands. The agency has hired a facilitator to make sure they keep in close touch with fish and wildlife scientists at other agencies — a requirement of the Endangered Species Act that was not followed in the first go-round.

With the details still to be worked out, conservationists warily welcomed the new approach. But the timber industry and some county officials worry the new plan won't allow the amount of timber production they think is necessary to improve the financial health of Oregon's timber country, some of whose counties are near bankruptcy.

"It is difficult. There is a lot of history. And it's a complex issue," said Mark Brown, a conservation biologist who is managing the project for BLM.

The stakes are high. Spotted owls continue to decline and some timber counties that depend on a share of federal logging revenues are struggling to pay for basic services, like jails and sheriff's patrols.

Timber has been a leading part of Oregon's economy since the days leading up to World War II, when it became the nation's leading timber producer. But the industry is a shadow of what it was before the 1990s, when logging on national forests was cut by 90 percent to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon.

After 30 years of fighting, the issues remain the same. The timber industry argues for more logging to produce logs, generate jobs and prevent wildfires. Conservation groups argue for less logging to prevent wildfires, protect fish and wildlife habitat, and maintain clean water.

The O&C lands are named for the Oregon & California Railroad, which got land in the 1860s to finance the railroad. After the company went bust, the government in 1916 took back a checkerboard of one-mile squares interspersed with private timberlands.

A special law enacted in 1937 governs management of the lands, an early attempt at managing federal lands for multiple uses, including clean water and recreation. They became a cash cow for the counties. Unlike the national forests, which share 25 percent of logging revenues with counties to help pay for schools and roads, the O&C lands share 75 percent, with no restrictions.

During the 1980s, BLM was selling 1 billion board feet of timber a year, producing so much money that some O&C counties did not have to assess property taxes. But in the 1990s, conservation groups won lawsuits demanding BLM and the U.S. Forest Service stop cutting old growth forests where salmon and spotted owls lived.

To settle the lawsuits, the Clinton administration produced the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging 90 percent to protect fish and wildlife. The O&C lands now produce a fifth of the timber they used to. That means less money for the O&C counties. Congress created a safety net for the counties that paid them a subsidy to make up for the lost logging revenues while they developed new sources of revenue. But the amount was steadily ramped down, and now has run out. Renewal is uncertain and voters have been loath to raise their own taxes to make up the difference.

The timber industry and the counties recognize there is no chance of hitting 1 billion board feet again. Even the original "Whopper" promised only half that. They view the 500 billion mark as a minimum and worry the new BLM plan won't produce the logs or revenues from timber they would like to see.

"More credence is being given ecological values, wildlife species and recreation, rather than the main emphasis being what the O&C Act calls for, which is sustainable timber supply," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group.

He and Doug Robertson, a Douglas County commissioner and president of the Association of O&C Counties, have pinned their hopes on Congress enacting proposed legislation that splits the O&C lands in two, with half going to timber production without the constraints of federal environmental laws, to produce $100 million for the counties.

Conservation groups are wary, but encouraged to see BLM taking a different approach. And they have little sympathy for the counties, noting they could solve their fiscal crises by raising taxes to levels that are still below the state average, and that industry automation is trimming jobs even as production increases.

Doug Heiken of the conservation group Oregon Wild said the O&C lands already produce more than a third of the timber of all the federal lands under the Northwest Forest Plan, and producing any more would threaten a key habitat bridge for wildlife between the Coast Range and the Cascades.

BLM has made a point of not promising anything in terms of timber or county revenues. The formal statement of what BLM hopes to achieve calls for large connected blocks of mature forests, clean water, conservation of threatened and endangered species, restoring the natural role of fire in the ecosystem, and a sustained yield of timber.

That all points to some level of timber less than the industry and the counties want.

Court’s Ruling in O&C Case a Victory for Oregon’s Rural Communities

Contact: Ann Forest Burns 

June 27, 2013 (503) 222-9505 

Court’s Ruling in O&C Case a Victory for Oregon’s Rural Communities 

Portland, OR - A federal district court in Washington, D.C. yesterday handed down a key victory for Southwest Oregon communities that are entitled to sustained yield timber harvests from Oregon and California Railroad Grant Lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). While this decision is focused on the O&C lands in Southwest Oregon, it has positive implications for communities throughout Western Oregon. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled the BLM failed to comply with timber harvest requirements under the federal O&C Act. The judge ordered the BLM to offer timber sales on its Medford and Roseburg Districts to the level identified under its existing resource management plans. In applying the O&C Act, the ruling confirms the agency is required to follow sustained yield timber harvest requirements that guide the management of over 2 million acres of O&C timberlands in Western Oregon. 

“This case is a victory for rural Oregonians who’ve been suffering through 20 years of gridlock on our federal forests,” said Tom Partin, President of the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC), one of the plaintiffs in the case. “We’ve been trying for years to get the BLM to comply with the law when it adopts a resource management plan. The judge confirmed the requirements under the O&C Act are clear, and they can’t be ignored by agency officials or interest groups who might wish to sever their connection with our rural, forested communities.” 

Partin said the ruling will generate new economic activity in rural communities while producing new revenue for cash-strapped county governments. However, he said federal agencies must take additional action to assure increased sustained yield harvests across all BLM districts. 

In the Medford District, for example, the timber sale program under the ruling would increase to 57 million board feet, up from the Fiscal Year 2013 level of 19 million board feet. For the Roseburg district, the level would be increased to 45 million board feet, up from Fiscal Year 2013 level of 29 million board feet. These harvest levels are just a small percentage of the annual growth volume of timber on these lands. The BLM lands in Western Oregon have 73 billion board feet of standing volume. These timberlands are capable of growing 1.2 billion board feet per year. The O&C Act clearly mandates that this entire growth be offered for sale each year. 

Partin said the industry will continue to push the agencies, through the courts if necessary, to fully implement the O&C Act. Partin added that every million board feet of timber harvested 

supports 11 forest sector jobs and an equal number of indirect jobs, such as car dealerships and grocery stores. 

“Sustainable timber management on the O&C lands is not only required by law, it’s critical to the health and economic well-being of our forests and our rural communities,” Partin said. “Increasing sustained yield harvests will create more family wage jobs and lift more Oregonians out of poverty. This ruling is a major step toward a permanent and comprehensive solution for managing these lands and assuring timber counties survive the crisis we’re facing today.” 

Partin said the ruling should be noted by Oregon’s Congressional delegation as they continue to work on legislation to increase harvests. 

“This decision confirming the clear commitment made to rural Oregon communities in the O&C Act comes at a key time as the Oregon Congressional delegation continues developing legislative proposals for the BLM lands,” Partin said. 

The case was filed in 2010 by Swanson Group Mfg. LLC, Rough and Ready Lumber Company, Washington Contract Loggers Association, AFRC and Douglas Timber Operators. Unfortunately, the decision comes too late for Rough and Ready, which closed its doors in May due to a lack of available timber from federal lands. 

In addition to requiring BLM to increase harvest levels, the judge also prohibited federal agencies from continuing to use a flawed method for estimating the number of owls affected by timber management activities unless they comply with the public notice and comment requirements of the federal Administrative Procedures Act. 

The “Owl Estimation Methodology” is a computer model that generates virtual owls on the landscape where none actually exist. The agencies then manage around these phantom owls, which has had a major impact on timber harvest levels. 

“Using a computer model that creates imaginary spotted owl home ranges and exaggerates the impact of forestry activities on these “virtual” owls that do exist is ridiculous and does nothing to protect the owl,” Partin said. “The judge did the right thing by telling the agencies they can’t use this method without subjecting it to public scrutiny, giving the public a chance to see what it’s all about.” 

Another lawsuit before the same judge, filed in 2011 by AFRC and the Carpenters Industrial Council, seeks to require BLM to meet its full O&C Act obligation on all of its districts. That case has been on hold pending the ruling made yesterday. 

The American Forest Resource Council represents forest product manufacturers and landowners throughout the west and is based in Portland, Oregon. www.amforest.org 

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

June 26, 2013, 6:10 p.m. PDT

AP

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell more timber in Southern Oregon, and vacated a system federal scientists use to avoid harming the northern spotted owl.

The ruling out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came in a case filed by the timber industry against the Department of Interior.

Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that BLM has failed to consistently offer as much timber as called for in its 1995 resource management plans for the Medford and Roseburg districts since 2004.

And he found that a computer model used by government agencies to estimate spotted owl numbers in timber sale areas was adopted without input from the public, as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. He prohibited government agencies from using the protocol until it goes through a public comment process. The ruling did not address whether timber sales that have been sold based on the invalidated owl estimation protocol, but not yet cut, were still valid.

That portion of the ruling leaves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service without a scientifically valid method of estimating whether spotted owls, a threatened species, can survive the harm from losing a portion of their forest habitat to logging, said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a conservation group. An earlier method was struck down in an earlier court ruling.

"It means, I suspect, that they will actually have to go look for them, which is something they have not wanted to do," he said.

BLM and Fish and Wildlife had no immediate comment on the ruling.

The timber industry called it a clear win, validating their longstanding position that a 1937 law known as the O&C Act sets timber production as the top priority for the BLM forests.

"This is clearly a victory for timber dependent communities in southwest Oregon, and it's a victory for the forest, that has not been managed appropriately," said Anne Forest Burns, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group involved in the lawsuit.

The judge ordered the agency to fulfill its obligation to meet 80 percent of the amount set in management plans in future years. The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Burns estimated that BLM will have to offer double the timber it now sells on the Medford District, and increase it by 55 percent on the Roseburg District. The extra 54 million board feet would be enough to fuel more than 400 logging and mill jobs.

She noted that the extra timber will come too late for one of the plaintiffs, Rough & Ready Lumber Co., which shut its O'Brien sawmill last month for lack of logs.

But conservation groups that intervened in the timber portion of the lawsuit said BLM would have a hard time offering more timber for sale without Congress increasing their budget, and without violating other environmental laws, such as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

Kristin Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, which represented conservation groups, said she felt an appeal was likely, from the government as well as conservation groups.