Senate Forest Agreement Adopts Wyden Plan to Bring Forest Research Center to Central Oregon
Prineville facility to assess Western forest health, help reduce fire risk

October 1, 2003

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden announced today that the new agreement to move wildfire legislation through the U.S. Senate will bring a forest health research center to the headquarters of the Ochoco National Forest at Prineville, Oregon. The creation of the Prineville center was adopted into the Senate agreement from Wyden’s original wildfire legislation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). It will complement an East Coast research center created under the House-passed legislation (H.R. 1904), which called for one research facility to be located in Mississippi.

“The location of this facility in Prineville puts Central Oregon at the very heart of efforts to maintain forest health in the West, and will help ensure that the partnership between the Forest Service and Crook County continues well into the future,” said Wyden.

The Prineville facility will be charged with carrying out a major requirement of the wildfire legislation: to inventory and assess forest stands on federal forest land and, with the consent of owners, private forest land. The objectives of the assessment are to evaluate forest health conditions now and in the future, and to consider the ecological impacts of insect, disease, invasive species, fire and weather-related events. The center will work to make sure data is as accurate as possible in order to improve forest management.

In recent weeks, Wyden has helped lead the negotiations to create a balanced, bipartisan compromise on healthy forests legislation, and he announced an agreement earlier today. The Senate compromise will streamline restorative forestry in at-risk and unhealthy forests while preserving public input, protecting old growth, and reining in provisions of wildfire legislation approved earlier by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The wildfire legislation agreement was reached among U.S. Senators Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Wyden, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ariz.), Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).

 

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