GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- Two Northwest congressmen are preparing a bill to speed up logging dead timber and planting new trees after storms and wildfires, but environmentalists fear it will harm forests more than help them.

Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Brian Baird, D-Wash.

, planned to introduce their Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act on Thursday in an effort to do for salvage logging what was done for forest thinning with the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act: streamline environmental analyses and challenges from the public.

With the size and severity of wildfires increasing, the bill demands that areas hit by fires, storms and insect infestations greater than 1,000 acres be restored quickly. It seeks to establish standardized approaches to restoring forests, taking into account differences in ecosystems, arguing that both wildlife habitat and timber production would benefit. It also promotes research.

Walden, who is chairman of the House Resources forests subcommittee, conceded that logging dead trees can increase erosion in the short term, which can harm salmon streams. But he said it allows faster restoration of a new forest and the habitat it provides for fish and wildlife.

"We want to design a system that allows for recovery of habitats faster," he said.

Currently, environmental analyses can take a year or more, followed by lengthy appeals and sometimes court battles. During that time, the commercial value of fire-killed timber steadily diminishes as insects and rot set in.

"We don't have a situation where federal managers can move in quickly after a catastrophic event," Walden said. "Instead of having a process that takes two to three years, you can shorten that to 120 days."

Walden and other lawmakers have long complained that it took nearly three years to start harvesting timber charred by the 2002 Biscuit fire, which burned 500,000 acres in southwestern Oregon.

Under pressure from the timber industry, the Forest Service took extra time to boost the timber goal of the salvage plan. Environmentalists challenged plans to log in old-growth forest reserves and roadless areas, and a federal judge ordered the Forest Service to mark the buffer zones for streams and wildlife trees itself, rather than leave it to loggers.

By the time logging began last spring, many of the trees were no longer suitable for lumber and were left on the ground.

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the bill would restore common sense to management of national forests.

"We need to restore and recover these devastated areas," he said. "We have a long history here in the West and across the country of doing exactly that. It has only been in the last 10 to 15 years where the process of doing that on federal lands has been obstructed and the environment ecosystems are paying the price."

But environmentalists argue that a growing body of scientific evidence indicates leaving fire-killed trees standing is crucial to building a natural forest able to withstand future fires and provide habitat for fish and wildlife, rather than a tree farm intended to produce timber and which is at greater risk of fire.

Mike Anderson, a policy analyst for The Wilderness Society, said he feared the Walden-Baird bill would allow salvage logging to proceed too quickly, eliminating protections of current environmental laws.