DALLAS, Ore. (AP) — A former Weyerhaeuser sawmill in a county that a state economist calls a "poster child" for the decline of the wood products industry is being dismantled, extinguishing faint hopes that somebody would revive...

The last building block of the Obama administration's strategy unveiled Wednesday to keep the northern spotted owl from extinction nearly doubles the amount of Northwest national forest land dedicated to protecting the bird by the Bush administration four years ago.

Members of Congress from timber country came through Friday with a promised one-year extension of federal payments to rural counties dominated by federal lands.

The Senate has agreed to keep compensating rural counties for a decline in federal timber payments because of environmental protections for the spotted owl, salmon and other species.

To save the endangered spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a plan to shoot barred owls, a rival bird that has shoved its smaller cousin aside.

When forest harvest levels fell 82 percent on public forest lands in the years after passage of the Northwest Forest Plan, forests became a significant carbon “sink” for the first time in decades.