Rural Development and Ancient Forest Ecosystem Conservation Act - Title I: Rural Development in Rural Communities - Subtitle A: Rural Development for Communities and Businesses - Establishes the Community Rural Development Investment Fund and individual Community Rural Development Commissions for Oregon, Washington, and California. Requires each Commission to distribute Fund monies, in the form of low-interest rural developemnt business loans, to communities associated with employment in wood products, log harvesting, or log hauling or transportation.
Subtitle B: Dislocated Forest-Worker Assistance - Establishes the Dislocated Forest-Worker Assistance Account, funded with monies from timber sales from federally owned forests, to provide income supplements, vocational retraining stipends, job search allowances, relocation allowances, and other benefits to dislocated timber-harvesting and wood products industries employees who have exhausted State unemployment benefits.
Subtitle C: Miscellaneous - Requires employment of persons to perform forest ecosystem management practices on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management Lands. Allows withholding of sums from timber harvest contracts to fund such employment.
Requires the Secretaries of the Interior and of Agriculture (the Secretaries), for each timber sale contract, to retain a cash deposit as security to ensure contract compliance.
Expresses the sense of the Congress that annual Forest Service appropriations should not be less than those during the preceding ten years.
Allows States west of the 100th meridian from which unprocessed logs are exported to establish export restrictions because of temporary shortages in the supply of timber. Provides special rules for exports to Canada and for a presidential suspension on restrictions if U.S. trade obligations are violated.
States that western red cedar unprocessed logs from the Tongass National Forest may not be exported unless they are surplus to domestic processor needs.
Provides special policies for conservation and management of the Pacific yew (used in the manufacture of taxol for the treatment of cancer).
Amends the Wood Residue Utilization Act of 1980 to authorize appropriations for a pilot wood residue utilization project to demonstrate the commercial viability of cement fiber board products for use in the construction industry.
Authorizes appropriations.
Title II: Forest Ecosystem Conservation - Subtitle A: Westside Forests - Directs the Secretaries to manage late-successional/old-growth Westside forests in the ecoregions of Pacific Forest and Willamette-Puget Forest in a manner to maintain viable vertebrate species and restore biological diversity. Requires consistency with the Watershed and Fish Habitat Emphasis Option.
Requires management of key Westside watersheds to restore ecological forest elements and protect habitats of potentially threatened and endangered fish species and stocks of anadromous salmonoids.
Subtitle B: Eastside Forests - Requires a study of Federal forests in the ecoregion provinces of the Columbia Forest, Rocky Mountain Forest, Palouse Grassland, Intermoutain Sagebrush, Sierran Forest, and California Chaparral (Eastside forests) to determine ecosystem management strategies that will restore and protect the health of forests and their ecological elements. Provides for interim protection of Eastside watersheds and late-succession/old-growth forests.
Subtitle C: Miscellaneous - Establishes Forest Ecosystem Advisory Committees to recommend ecosystem management objectives for all BLM and Forest Service forests.
Requires Inspectors General of the Department of Agriculture and the Interior to conduct audits of standards used by the Secretaries in the development of land and resource management plans.
Requires development of a definition for a "dead and dying" tree.
Amends the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Research Act of 1978 to require the establishment of a program of studies to facilitate implementation of an ecosystem-based approach to the management of federally owned forests.
Authorizes appropriations.
Introduced in Senate
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture.
Referred to Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry.
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