Natural Resource News Note:
This week Ron Wyden visited Coos Bay City Hall for his yearly town hall meeting. The Coos Bay World reported [5] that Ron Wyden was optimistic about several natural resource issues including county timber payments, biomass and salmon help. Here is what the Coos Bay World reported:
“The best hope for reauthorizing federal payments to timber counties is to attach them to this year’s farm bill, Sen. Ron Wyden said Saturday…Wyden said he’d work with other Western senators to include the money in legislation that reauthorizes agriculture programs, including farm crop insurance, price supports, and the food stamp program.”
and also:
“He lauded biomass as an Oregon industry that would improve forest health by thinning trees and would get loggers into the woods and longshoremen onto the docks.'(Oregon is) the Saudi Arabia of biomass,” he said. And he promised to keep pressure on Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to release last season’s federal disaster aid for salmon fishermen in time for them to gear up for this year’s salmon season, but he had no progress report.”