The Siskiyou and Rogue River national forests are weighing budget proposals that may cause layoffs of up to a quarter of their combined 350 employees during the next three years, several U.S. Forest Service officials said Wednesday.

The proposals may eliminate as many as 11 Forest Service employees in the Powers Ranger District, nearly half its work force - a possibility residents of the mountain town said threatens the viability both of the district and the community itself.

Draft budgets for the three-year period beginning Oct. 1 began to be circulated in mid-May after four months of discussions among district rangers, Forest Service specialists and union representatives, according to Carl Linderman, Powers district ranger.

Linderman said his district first received the drafts on May 14. The proposals would reduce the Powers district work force from 24 positions to as few as 12.5, depending on how many district jobs are combined with those at the neighboring Chetco and Gold Beach ranger districts.

"Certainly there is concern on the part of employees," Linderman said. "They've been analyzing the proposal. They're in the process of giving their input individually and through their union (Local 2010)."

In a letter addressed to U.S. senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Coos County Board of Commissioners, Powers School Superintendent Bill Gehling declared that the loss of more jobs in Powers would quash any chance of its economic revival.

"The community is trying hard to redevelop economically and believes that the resources of the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest (and this Ranger District) can be integral to the economic redevelopment of the area," Gehling wrote in the letter, dated May 27. "The reconfiguration ... will adversely affect redevelopment efforts."

Forest Service workers are needed to help the city benefit from the surrounding woodlands through trail and campground development, timber harvesting and other activities that can create local jobs or attract tourist revenue, he added.

A half-dozen budget plans are being circulated that would shrink the Siskiyou and Rogue River forests' work forces between 20 and 25 percent by September 2005, according to Resource Staff Officer Greg Clevenger.

Employee rolls would be cut mainly by giving some employees responsibility for two ranger districts, making their counterparts in neighboring zones expendable. Such measures would accelerate a consolidation that already has placed both forests under a single regional director.

Reduced timber sales and revenue since the 1994 advent of the Northwest Plan have continued to limit regional timber-cutting and have left the Rogue River and Siskiyou forests without enough money to maintain their current staffs, Clevenger said. As timber sales have dropped, the Forest Service also has reduced funds to Region 6 (comprising Oregon and Washington) directed to programs, such as forest roadbuilding, that support logging activity, he added.

"Historically, Region 6 has had one of the largest shares of the Forest Service budget," Clevenger said. "Now other regions are saying Region 6 is being funded disproportionately to its reduced timber sales."

A Forest Leadership Team representing rangers, employees and the Forest Supervisor's office in Medford will craft a budget and submit it to Regional Forester Linda Goodman in Portland, who will decide whether to approve it. Team members include district rangers, leaders of Locals 2010 and 2085 (unions representing Forest Service workers at the Siskiyou and Rogue River forests respectively) and directors of six Forest Service programs.

Although six alternative budgets are being considered, all feature reduced funding for timber management, said Public Affairs Officer Mary Marrs in Medford.

"It used to be a large, healthy program but it's been declining steadily over the last 12 years," she said. "The skills and position types will decrease because the budget has been decreasing."

The Forest Service predicts that salvage sales - the sale of wood following incidents such as forest fires - will fall 29 percent by the 2006 fiscal year, she added.

Any staff reductions will continue a trend toward the effective merging of ranger districts in southwestern Oregon, Marrs said. Although districts cannot be geographically combined except by federal directive, two pairs of districts within the Siskiyou forest already are controlled by single district rangers: the Gold Beach and Chetco districts, collectively known as the Pacific Zone, and the Illinois Valley and Galice districts.

Powers district employees are becoming concerned not only for their jobs but also for the department's ability to manage the Siskiyou lands, staff members said Thursday.

"They're worried about their job security and the caring of the land resources and management," said 25-year staffer Carla Blanton, a resource assistant who directs timber-sale appraisals and contracts. "Our comments (on Forest Service reorganization) are being considered and listened to, but we're not the final decision makers."

Several years of job cuts already compel Forest Service workers to handle multiple duties, according to Gary Norris, a staffer since 1977.

"I'm not much into job titles now," he said, "because with the job reductions, people's job titles expand as they take on more and more jobs."

The Forest Service's consolidation trend threatens to leave Powers unable to capitalize on its forest resources and may undercut its ability to sustain itself, Gehling said Thursday.

"My position is that the (local) economy is dependent on the resources of this area," he said. "If those can't be used, there might not be an economy and the area will cease to be, will dry up and blow away. It's what's happening to Powers already."

Unlike other Forest Service properties on the South Coast, the Siuslaw National Forest stands to be little affected by the job-reduction plans - but only because its work force already has been nearly halved since the early 1990s, according to Bill Helphinstine, district ranger of the Waldport and Mapleton districts. Employment has eroded as annual lumber production has dropped from more than 200 million board-feet before the implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan to 34 million in 2002, he added, mainly derived from the by-products of tree thinning aimed at fire prevention.

"We're already through the reorganization," said Helphinstine, a 14-year Forest Service veteran. "The peak employment was once about 300, but after 1994 our budget went down and we've been reducing personnel consistently ever since." After cutting 20 positions in the past two years, the full-time Siuslaw staff now numbers about 165, he said.

Members of the Forest Leadership Team will next discuss the budget proposals on July 8-9 at the Forest Service's Medford office.