BLM wants to increase logging in Oregon Federal officials said Thursday that they want to double logging allowed on 2.6 million acres of forests in western Oregon, a move that would doom more old-growth trees but boost timber-related payments to 18 rural Oregon counties and create an estimated 1,200 new jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management stepped back from an earlier proposal to triple logging in its western Oregon holdings, most in the Coast Range south of Salem. The agency, hit with a critical scientific review earlier this year, also increased buffer zones around streams and said it would defer logging of trees 160 years or older for 15 years to help the threatened northern spotted owl. The timber industry doesn't like the scaled-back plan, saying reduced management of forests will end up hurting county coffers and wildlife as well as loggers and mills. Each year, 1.2 billion board feet of timber grows on the BLM lands, said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council. But the plan calls for harvesting 502 million board feet annually, which is down from 727 million proposed last year. "We really hate to see that number slide," Partin said. Environmental groups say the plan is still too aggressive....