[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 173 (Monday, December 9, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Page S8572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WYDEN:
  S. 1784. A bill to improve timber management on Oregon and California 
Railroad and Coos Bay Wagon Road grant land, and for other purposes; to 
the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a bill to end the 
gridlock on the Oregon and California, O&C, lands and secure a new 
future. I recently unveiled my legislation in Oregon alongside Governor 
Kitzhaber, premier forest scientists, and a cross-section of supporters 
from timber, county, collaborative group and environmental interests. 
With the introduction of this bill, I look forward to working with 
supporters and interested parties, as well as the entire Oregon 
delegation, to end decades of uncertainty and broken forest policy with 
a science-driven solution.
  The 2.1 million acres of O&C grant lands have a history known too 
well by Oregonians. After the Oregon and California Railroad violated 
the terms of its land grant, Congress revested the lands to federal 
ownership in 1916. In 1937, Congress directed how the Department of the 
Interior was to manage these lands and laid out a formula for 
distributing timber receipts to the 18 Oregon counties with O&C lands. 
The high logging harvests of the 1980s made way for the spotted owl 
timber wars, and today the lands are ground zero for the battle between 
those seeking to halt logging in the Northwest and those seeking to 
return to the unsustainable logging levels of a bygone era.
  My bill ends the O&C gridlock by using science to guide management of 
the O&C lands while upholding bedrock federal environmental laws. This 
bill provides the jobs that Oregonians need, certainty of timber supply 
that timber companies require, and continued environmental protections 
that our treasures deserve. It is legislation that I believe can pass 
both houses of Congress and be signed by the President.
  The first step the bill takes is to divide the O&C lands--with 
roughly half set aside for forestry emphasis and the other half for 
conservation emphasis--to put a stop to the uncertainty and conflicting 
priorities that have contributed to Federal management failure on these 
lands and produce wins on both sides of the historic timber conflict. 
The forestry emphasis lands will employ proven forestry practices, 
known as ``ecological forestry,'' to mimic natural processes and create 
healthier, more diverse forests. Modeling using Bureau of Land 
Management analysis confirms that ecological forestry will roughly 
double the harvest on O&C lands compared to the last 10 years, meaning 
more jobs for rural Oregon.
  On the conservation side, my bill protects nearly a million acres of 
land, while designating wilderness lands, wild and scenic rivers, and 
other special areas. It creates 87,000 acres of wilderness and 165 
miles of wild and scenic rivers. In all, it will permanently conserve 
nearly a million acres of O&C lands, which would be the single biggest 
increase in Oregon's conservation lands in decades. That includes 
special areas protected for recreation, which is an increasingly 
important part of our rural economy, and is responsible for 141,000 
jobs in Oregon alone. Perhaps the most important conservation win in 
the bill is the first-ever legislative protection for old growth trees 
and stands on O&C lands.
  This strategy of dividing the lands into conservation and timber 
emphasis and protecting old growth takes the most controversial 
harvests off the table. Timber harvests and thinning projects must 
protect water quality, highly erodible land, wetlands, endangered or 
threatened species, and tribal cultural sites. Mills and timber 
companies that rely on federal forests will have new certainty of a 
sustainable yield from the harvested lands. This bill upholds the 
Endangered Species Act and other bedrock environmental laws while 
providing expedited procedures and strict timelines for legal and 
environmental reviews. Two large scale environmental impact 
statements--one each for moist and dry forests--will study 10 years of 
work in the woods, rather than a single project. Anyone with concerns 
will have a chance to sue over those studies, but once the 
environmental review is approved, any timber sale consistent with the 
10-year study can go ahead, without triggering a new legal stumbling 
block or procedural boulder that brings everything to a stop.
  Above all, forest policy should be dictated by science, not lawyers. 
The forestry principles used in this bill are based on the work of Drs. 
Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, two respected Northwest forestry 
scientists, and built off of forestry approaches used around the globe. 
The bill also establishes the first ever legislative protections for 
O&C streams thanks in large part to the work of one of the Northwest's 
foremost water resources experts, Dr. Gordon Reeves. The Northwest 
Forest Plan's stream protections are extended to key watersheds and 
four drinking water emphasis areas, with additional lands designated 
for conservation, to protect drinking water. Science also guides how 
the agency can treat trees near streams and a scientific committee will 
evaluate stream buffers and reserves in areas dedicated to timber 
harvests, increasing or decreasing the boundaries as needed to address 
the ecological importance of streams. This acknowledges that one size 
does not fit all.
  The bill also creates new tools to reduce fire danger in the dry 
forests of Southern Oregon. In areas that have grown prone to 
catastrophic fires, this bill reduces tree density and provides new 
tools for treating forest lands near residences. For the first time, 
county governments will have the flexibility to reduce fire danger 
within a quarter mile of homes, and private landowners can more easily 
protect against fire within 100 feet of their own homes.
  The O&C solution that I present today will indeed secure a new future 
for the O&C lands. Management will be based on science, not lawyers. 
Counties will be able to count on dependable forest revenues. 
Communities will have steady jobs, and mill's timber to process, in 
place of a struggle to survive. My bill certainly doesn't provide 
everything all sides want, but it can get everyone what they need. I 
look forward to working with Congressmen DeFazio, Walden and Schrader 
and our colleagues in the Senate and House of Representatives to pass 
an O&C solution into law.

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