By DOUG ROBERTSON

For the Capital Press

There was recently a meeting with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in Washington, D.C., regarding federal forestlands in Western Oregon. I participated in the meeting, as did nearly the entire Oregon congressional delegation.

The meeting was the second with Salazar arising from our congressional delegation's concern about lack of timber-related jobs and the economy in the wake of the withdrawal of the Western Oregon Plan Revision, which would have created thousands of jobs if implemented.

The meeting centered primarily around three proposed pilot projects that would attempt to improve forest conditions and create limited timber harvest.

While I am hopeful for success, my expectations are low. Even the two professors in charge, Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin, attempted to lower expectations by cautioning that "the uncertainty created by the draft Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan affects what might potentially be accomplished as a part of any pilot projects given the abundance of owls in the Roseburg and Medford District."

The uncertainty comes from a labyrinth of overlapping federal rules that make any attempt to manage these federal lands nearly impossible. Hal Salwasser, dean of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, recently referred to federal forest management as "dysfunctional."

For instance, the proposed spotted owl recovery plan severely limits activity on forestland that is currently or could become occupied by a spotted owl. In essence, this requires protections for owls that don't exist. The pilot study areas have thousands of acres of this protected category of land.

In addition, before any management activity can take place, the agency must conduct a survey for many other species that are neither threatened nor endangered. Among these is a small rodent, the relatively abundant red tree vole, which is a food source for spotted owl. If voles are located in an area where timber is to be cut, the harvest must be moved or canceled.

There are many other examples of bureaucratic barriers to rational management.

Management for our federal forestlands is being driven primarily by an effort to "recover" the spotted owl. At the meeting with Salazar, the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was asked how we will know when the owl is recovered, and how long recovery will take. He had no answer to the first question and his response to the second was that it could take up to 150 years.

The spotted owl expert from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made no mention of the barred owl, in spite of a growing consensus that a major threat to spotted owl survival is the larger, more aggressive and invasive barred owl.

When asked how the agency would deal with this threat, the expert said the barred owl could be trapped, but he admitted that he had contacted many agencies on the East Coast, where the barred owl originated, but none of the states contacted wanted any of their native barred owls returned to them. The spotted owl expert mentioned shooting the barred owl, but doubted the public would support it.

The concern voiced by many is that we are building management policy for federal forest around the recovery of a species that can't be recovered.

With the focus on the proposed pilot projects, it is more important than ever that there be a genuine balance. That means rational thinking about environmental protection, and equal consideration for people, jobs and economic stability.

A plan proposed by the Association of O&C Counties offers balance. The counties' plan would protect over 1 million acres of the oldest timber as old growth habitat, while at the same time allowing timber management that would create many thousands of new jobs. Please take a moment and go to www.FFCSSA.org to ask questions or make comments.

Federal management has failed. It is time to try a new direction.

Doug Robertson is a Douglas County commissioner, president of the Association of O&C Counties, and vice president of the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition. O&C lands are remnants of the original Oregon and California Revested Grant Lands, which were part of a federal grant to build a rail line from Portland to the Oregon-California border.

The 2.5 million acres are in Western Oregon.