Federal forest lands west of the Cascade Range in Washington and Oregon are governed by the
Northwest Forest Plan, which was developed following the Presidential Forest Summit of 1993. Lands east of the Cascades were studied extensively in the
Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.
The Northwest Forest Plan has three parts: a program for managing the forests to achieve both sustainable timber production and protection of biological diversity; a system for coordinating federal agency implementation of the forest management effort and receiving advice from non-federal interests; and an initiative for providing economic assistance and job retraining to displaced timber workers, communities, and others who were adversely affected by reductions in the size of the timber program.