Rep. Greg Walden’s bill to speed up salvage logging is getting a warm reception from the timber community but a cold shoulder from environmental groups.

"I think it’s breath of fresh air," said David Schott, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association.

"Anything they can do to accelerate what is now a broken process is to be applauded," he added.

Fire-killed trees, particularly smaller ones, quickly lose their commercial value because of insect infestation and decay, he said.

He noted that only about 60 million board feet of timber has been salvaged of the roughly 370 million board feet the agency decided to harvest.

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Complaints about timber salvage sales not being economically feasible are unfair when the burned trees are allowed to decay before they are harvested, he said.

But as the bill stands today, Walden will find little support within the conservation or the scientific community, predicted Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist who directs the World Wildlife Fund’s southwest Oregon office.

"He’s pushing a bill that has no scientific support," he said. "It’s not forest restoration. It’s going to be degrading to the forests. Post-fire logging is damaging to regeneration."

Two recent studies, one led by an Oregon State University graduate student in forestry and the other by scientists (including DellaSala), economists and former Forest Service employees, have concluded that salvage logging after the 2002 Biscuit fire damaged natural regeneration and resulted in a multi-million dollar loss for Uncle Sam, he said.

DellaSala said environmentalists were ready to accept the agency’s original proposal to salvage a little less than 100 million board feet of fire-killed trees. But an OSU study requested by the Douglas County Board of Commissioners and backed by the timber industry boosted the harvest level.

"We need to be doing small-diameter logging and working in the interface to reduce the threat of wildfires to rural communities, not logging in the back country," said DellaSala, who noted he has made his views known to Walden’s staff.