ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in southwest Oregon meeting with the timber industry and conservationists.
Salazar said Monday in Roseburg he hopes to find a way out of decades of bitter conflict over logging on federal forest lands in western Oregon.
Salazar pledged to meet again in Washington in mid-November with the goal of approving two pilot logging projects and a 20-year plan for managing the checkerboard of federal forests overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Those forests are an economic lifeline for rural counties.
Conservationists have managed to stop much of the logging to protect habitat for spotted owls and salmon.
