Here we go again with the Obama administration undoing a Bush administration policy. Pretty soon they’re going to run out of these, I just know it. Anyhow, today’s reversal comes to you from the Interior Department, which has reinstated limits on logging of old-growth forests in Oregon. The New York Times reports on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision:

Veering between swipes at “indefensible” moves by the Bush administration and pledges to step up noncontroversial timber sales, Mr. Salazar said in a conference call with reporters that he was reinstating a compromise reached 15 years ago to limit logging with the goal of protecting watersheds, trout and salmon fisheries and endangered birds like the spotted owl.

Calling the Bush policy one of many “mistakes” and “legal shortcuts,” Salazar reversed the policy that would have doubled the amount of logging allowable in the region under an agreement reached under President Clinton, and “would have allowed timber companies to cut up to 502 million board-feet of lumber annually from 2.6 million acres of forests.”

This is probably not a politically popular move in Oregon, as the logging industry would supply jobs to a state that has over 12 percent unemployment. In the county where the logging would take place, unemployment is almost 17 percent, thanks in large part to the timber industry shedding jobs. So, you can see how there might be some anger from those that live there. But, the administration believes that the policy was ill-conceived and dangerous to wildlife, so they shut it down. As a lawyer with Earthjustice said, “This is a big step for the Obama administration take.”

photo credit: Sam Beebe / Ecotrust’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons