Wherever you live in Western Oregon, you have a stake in the proposal
to protect old trees while spurring logging and funding public services

An estimated 2.5 million Oregonians live within 10 miles of Oregon and California Railroad Grant Lands, known as O&C lands. Chances are, you're among them.

So don't turn away from the coming debate over the proposal by three Oregon congressmen to put almost 1.5 million of the 2.7 million acres of O&C lands into a public trust managed primarily for timber production.

This is more than a lifeline to those in desperate rural counties who live near places -- the Rogue Valley, the south coast, the Siskiyou mountains -- that many Portlanders visit once in their lives, if at all. The draft bill that Reps. Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader and Greg Walden have released would affect the public services, drinking water, fish and wildlife and recreation in 18 counties across Western Oregon.

You need to understand the history. In 1866, Congress was so eager to see a rail link between Portland and San Francisco that it deeded to the Oregon and California Railroad company 12,800 acres for every mile of track it laid in Oregon. After the company failed to keep its agreement to sell the land to settlers, Congress took back title on more than 2 million acres. Later, it decreed that these forests, which lie in a checkboard pattern the length of Western Oregon, should be maintained as timberlands and managed for permanent forest production.

It hasn't worked out that way. Inconsistent management and litigation have stalled logging across the O&C lands. The DeFazio bill seeks to fulfill the historical economic commitment to Oregon by putting most of the land covered with younger forest stands into a public trust managed by a board of Oregonians appointed by the governor.

The bill also would provide the first legal protection for old-growth forests across Western Oregon. It would create several new or expanded wilderness areas and provide new protections on 150 miles of streams. These are significant protections.

Of course, the proposal raises serious questions. Is age-class of forests the only or best way to distinguish them? Would water supplies, salmon strongholds and other critical conservation areas among the O&C lands be fully protected? We need to see more, and more detail, to know for sure.

Another key question is whether Oregon's Forest Practices Standards, the rules that would be applied to logging on the public trust lands, are adequate protections. If they are solid enough to govern the private working forests of Western Oregon, shouldn't they be sufficient for what the DeFazio bill envisions as public working forests?

We acknowledge it will take more than this bill to solve the financial problems in timber counties. Most counties must raise more local revenue -- Curry County is right, for example, to consider a local sales tax. The state also must be part of the solution. There's talk of a bond proposal that could fund forest restoration and other activities. That, too, is promising.

But the ultimate solution has to include getting more logs, more jobs, more revenues, out of the public forests that cover Western Oregon. We urge Oregonians to keep an open mind about the DeFazio bill, to consider all the region could gain from carefully balanced legislation protecting old forests while providing a future for rural counties.

You're going to hear strong attacks on the bill. But watch and listen closely to the conservation and industry leaders who have traditionally looked for solutions to the stalemate on federal forests. Many of them see potential and promise in the DeFazio bill. So do we.

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