WASHINGTON — A new analysis released Tuesday of the two legislative proposals for more than 2 million acres of federally owned forests in Western Oregon concludes they would generate similar amounts of revenues for timber counties.

Headwaters Economics, a Bozeman, Mont.-based nonpartisan research organization, compared the plans for 2.4 million acres of Oregon & California Railroad Grant lands — known as the O&C lands — in 18 counties in Western Oregon.

The plan passed by the House of Representatives, written by Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Springfield; Greg Walden, R-Hood River; and Kurt Schrader, D-Canby, essentially splits the O&C lands in half, with old-growth forests set aside for conservation and other areas put into a public trust and managed to produce between 400 and 500 million board feet per year.

Last month, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released his own plan for the lands, which would also place about half of the forests off limits for timbering. It also would expand wilderness and wild and scenic river areas, and extend protections around riparian areas.

The remaining areas would be managed under the principles of ecological forestry, with loggers required to leave at least one-third of the trees standing, and old-growth stands in moist forests would be left intact if they were more than 120 years old. Any tree more than 150 years old could never be cut down.

Wyden claims his plan would produce harvests between 300 million and 350 million board feet per year, roughly twice as much as the 10-year average for the O&C lands.

Critics of Wyden’s proposal, including the Association of O&C Counties, claim it would produce $17 million to $19 million a year for cash-strapped timber counties, while DeFazio’s office claimed the House legislation would result in up to $90 million a year.

But to reach these varying figures, proponents of the House plan used different timber prices, Headwaters’ analysis explains. Based on timber volume, the price would be $98 to $126 for a thousand board feet in Wyden’s plan, while the DeFazio-Walden-Schrader bill would require prices between $340 to $425 per thousand board feet.

Additionally, the dollar estimates did not take into account the management costs associated with the House and Senate plans. Wyden’s bill would cap the management costs at 25 percent of receipts, or $20 million. Under the House plan, the public trust would be managed under a revised version of Oregon’s Forestry Practices Act, which has 36.2 percent management costs, which Headwaters applied to the bill’s expected harvests.

The Headwaters analysis also considered how much of the gross receipts would be returned to counties as specified by the different legislation.

Applying a price of $179 per thousand board feet to both plans, Headwaters found that Wyden’s plan produces in the range of $36.3 million to $42 million to timber counties. Using the same price, the House version generates between $33.4 million and $44.2 million under Headwaters’ calculations.

In a news release issued Tuesday, Wyden’s staff on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which he chairs, accused the timber lobby of relying on “misleading and unrealistic assumptions about timber prices” to distort the consequences of the two plans. It also called into question the $90 million figure associated with the House plan, noting an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office of the larger forestry bill that included the O&C proposal concluded the bill would generate $900 million over 10 years for all counties with federally owned forests across the country.

Wyden did not provide a dollar estimate for his plan, although a Q-and-A on his website maintains that to reach the $35 million in direct payments provided by Secure Rural Schools legislation last year, harvests would have to go “beyond acceptable levels” to between 700 million and 800 million board feet per year. The O&C Counties association applied that dollar amount to the harvest suggested by Wyden, 300 million to 350 million board feet, to reach their $17 million to $19 million figure for his plan.

Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson, president of the association, said Tuesday that Headwaters’ use of 36.2 percent for management costs for the House plan is very high. Management costs in state-owned forests in Washington are 22 percent, he said.

Robertson said it is not really possible to compare the two plans until everyone knows exactly what plots are available for timbering under Wyden’s proposal.

“Until Senator Wyden directs the Bureau of Land Management (which oversees the lands) to release the information that was used as the foundation for his bill, nobody really knows what revenue predictions are accurate or what land base is going to be available (for harvest),” he said. “At this point, everyone is flying blind.”

— Reporter: 202-662-7456, aclevenger@bendbulletin.com