GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Acting on an agreement with the timber industry, the Bush administration has decided to quit looking for little-known snails, lichens and other sensitive species before selling timber in Northwest national forests, setting up another round of litigation over a plan created to protect spotted owls and salmon.

The U.S. Forest Service announced Friday that so-called “survey and manage” provisions have been eliminated from the Northwest Forest Plan by way of a final decision on an environmental impact statement signed by Assistant Secretary of Interior Steve Allred and Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey.

The decision makes it easier to log islands of old growth timber that remain standing on areas of national forests and U.S. Bureau of Land Management lands designated for timber production in western Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

“This decision is long overdue,” said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group. “We are wasting our time and money to have government employees crawl on their hands and knees and turn over rocks to look for snails and lichens and other critters.”

West added that none of the species under the “survey and manage” provisions are protected by the Endangered Species Act, and the increase in logging will only fulfill the timber production promises of the Northwest Forest Plan.

The mandate to look for hundreds of species of snails, lichens, mosses, mushrooms, truffles and small invertebrates, and leaving forests standing where they are found was added at the last minute by scientists who created the Northwest Forest Plan, which was adopted in 1994.

The plan was supposed to stop court battles that had paralyzed the Northwest timber industry by providing a smaller, but reliable source of timber while protecting habitat for northern spotted owls, salmon and other species.

The plan cut timber production by more than 80 percent and split federal forest lands into areas designated primarily for timber production, known as matrix, and others for fish and wildlife habitat. Ever since, conservation groups have been fighting to protect islands of old growth on matrix lands, arguing they are critical to restoring forests logged in the past.

Conservationists said they would go back to court to stop the Bush administration from weakening the Northwest Forest Plan.

“This is another in a long line of (Bush) administration’s attempts to rip out the last of our remaining old growth forests,” said Pete Frost, a lawyer for the Western Environmental Law Center, which represented conservation groups in litigation over the issue. “And it is no more legal today than it was when the court declared it to be illegal two years ago.”

The Forest Service said in a statement that the new environmental impact statement on survey and manage addresses the issues found deficient in court rulings, and will give them the flexibility they need to fulfill timber goals under the Northwest Forest Plan, while saving time and money on preparing timber sales.

The timber industry had sued the Bush administration over the “survey and manage” provisions. But before a ruling, the administration agreed to remove them from the Northwest Forest Plan. A judge reinstated them in 2006.