The state Forest Practices Board will hold four public hearings around the state on two proposed amendments. The first hearing is Thursday in Kelso. Three others will be held during the first two weeks of June in Forks, Yakima and Mount Vernon.

The board could make a decision on Aug. 9 to make the rules permanent.

One rule imposes a temporary moratorium on the practice of "decertifying" spotted owl sites until June 30, 2007, when a federal recovery plan for the owl is expected. The state has opened thousands of acres of forest lands to logging by decertifying so-called "owl circles," a radius of 1.8 miles around sites where owls have been found.

Conservationists blame decades of clearcutting in old-growth forests, the owls' primary habitat, for the birds' decline, and had sought a rule that put a moratorium on logging on all state and private lands unless an environmental review of the area to be logged was done first.

"The emergency rule and new rulemaking does not go far enough to protect the species and maintain a forest habitat," said Heath Packard, policy director of Audubon Washington. "Until adequate strategies are developed and implemented to achieve recovery of the population, we should not be harvesting owl habitat."

Because the board did not adopt the more restrictive moratorium, the Seattle and Kittitas chapters of the Audubon Society filed a 60-day notice in April of their intent to sue Weyerhaeuser Co. and the state Department of Natural Resources.

State Land Commissioner Doug Sutherland, who is chairman of the forest practices board, said the conservationists' request was unreasonable.

"If you had a total moratorium on all harvesting, you're talking about areas where no known owls have ever been there," he said. "Why would you penalize people who had no contribution to the status of owls?"

Weyerhaeuser officials did not return calls seeking comment. But timber industry officials said logging can't be blamed for the owl's predicament.

"More trees isn't the answer. It's not that simple," said Cindy Mitchell with the Washington Forest Protection Association, which represents large timber companies. "There are areas where there are plenty of trees and owls are still having issues."

"We're seeing the owl population suffer in our state for a variety reasons, and we need to look at why that is, not conjure up old arguments and old bad feelings. That does not move us forward."

The state board, which oversees timber harvesting on 12 million acres of state and private lands, voted last August to begin the process of changing rules protecting spotted owl habitat. In September, the board approved the two emergency rules, which are now up for permanent adoption.

The other rule eliminates the potential for landowners without agreements to manage land with minimal habitat damage to benefit from actions on adjacent lands covered by such pacts.

The spotted owl was declared a threatened species under the federal Environmental Protection Act in 1990, primarily because of logging in the old-growth forests of the Northwest. That designation led to an 80 percent cutback on logging in national forests and restrictions on private timberlands.

Loss of habitat due to wildfires and harvesting, the West Nile virus and intrusions by barred owls into spotted owl territory have all been blamed for contributing to decline of the spotted owl.

Of the approximate 7,500 pairs of spotted owls in the West, about 1,500 pairs are believed to be in Washington state.

Last year, the Seattle and Kittitas chapters of the American Audubon Society sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to come up with a recovery plan for the bird. That case is pending.

This March, a settlement was reached among environmentalists, state government and the timber industry to make 42,000 acres of high-quality owl habitat virtually off-limits to logging. Light thinning with an eye toward habitat improvement would be allowed on another 45,000 acres of lower-quality habitat. That settlement ended a lawsuit that began in October 2004.