WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has begun the final stages of a plan to relax environmental rules requiring detailed surveys of forest life before logging of federal lands in the Pacific Northwest.

The plan, prompted by a timber industry lawsuit, follows through on proposals announced since 2002 and is intended to boost logging on 24 million acres of public land in Washington, Oregon and northern California.

Under a rule published Friday, federal forest managers no longer will have to survey for nearly 300 sensitive plant and animal species before logging on land designated for timber harvest by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management under the Northwest Forest Plan.

The timber industry has complained for years that the so-called survey and manage rules - which require study of the potential effects of logging on about 300 plant and animal species - are overly intrusive and can take years to complete.

They also complain that the rules do little to protect threatened slugs, lichens and other species. According to the Forest Service, surveys conducted since the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted a decade ago have failed to locate new sites for more than 100 of the hard-to-find species.

Environmentalists defend the rules as crucial safeguards for rare wildlife species that live in old-growth forests and say the proposed changes could result in a sharp increase in logging of centuries-old trees.

They have been used to protect small blocks of old growth still standing within areas designated for logging, known as matrix lands. Matrix lands amount to 1.1 million acres in the three-state region.

"The Bush administration is breaking a promise we thought was very important," said Doug Heiken of the Oregon Natural Resources Council, a Portland-based advocacy group. "This will double recent logging levels on federal land."

Heiken and other environmentalists accused the administration of escalating the conflict over old-growth logging at a time when both sides of the Northwest forest wars are looking at ways to protect old growth.

The new rule, which could be finalized in a record of decision issued as soon as next month, "will result in industrial logging of old-growth forests that should be set aside to preserve rare wildlife species," said Pete Frost, a lawyer for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene.

But Dick Prather, a team leader for the survey-and-manage program, said the plan affects less than 15 percent of the old-growth forests covered by the Northwest Forest Plan, which prevents logging on nearly 7 million acres of mature and old-growth forest.

"Will there be some old-growth harvested? Yes," Prather said. "Does it release anything new? No."

Chris West of American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said the survey-and-manage requirements were little more than obstacles to logging imposed by the Clinton administration when it developed the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994.

While the industry is pleased at the final environmental impact statement published Friday, West said, it is under no illusions that the plan is a done deal.

"The finish line will still require the courts to sign off on this," he said, predicting a near-certain court challenge by environmentalists.

Frost said his group is already preparing to go to court to block a series of timber sales he said are likely to go forward this spring, when the record of decision takes effect.

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On the Net:

Northwest Forest Plan: http://www.or.blm.gov/nwfp.htm