The House yesterday showed it is content to study the issue of forestry for another few years, hoping that the accumulated mass of evidence will someday produce a consensus on what ought to be done. Based on the current legislative session, Maine could be waiting a long, long time for such an event.

What the forest will look like then is anybody’s guess. Large landowners were ready last November to admit that the forest needs a lot of work and spent millions of dollars on promoting a lengthy plan, the Compact for Maine’s Forests, to accomplish it. The forest must have improved mightily since then because for the last couple of weeks dozens of industry lobbyists have prowled the State House assuring legislators that things are dandy in the woods. Couldn’t be better, they purred. Don’t worry: Be Sappi.

The public shouldn’t be satisfied with this.

Given industry’s fickleness, it is hard to know what to believe. But legislators can trust this: Large landowners should be harvesting so that a healthy forest is allowed to regrow and remain forever, and the public should be informed of which landowners meet that standard and which do not.

The majority bill cruising through the Legislature offers neither of these sustainability and audit features. It is the product of a state exhausted by a protracted forestry battle, and it shows. Before the Senate signs off on the work of the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee, it should slow down long enough to demand that these measures be included.

Amendments for them already exist. Salvaged from LD 1766 — the environmentalists’ attempt to pass a serious forestry package — sustainability and audit amendments are an opportunity for lawmakers to debate and negotiate on this issue before the next referendum season. The amendments are simple and straightforward.

The sustainability measure would have owners of more than 100,000 acres cut no more than they grow over a 10-year average. The audit program is similarly benign. It ensures that these same landowners protect the state’s waters and wildlife by harvesting intelligently and gives the landowners a grade on their work. The landowners thought this was such a good idea last year thet they volunteered to do it. Now, they’re calling it a radical idea.

The House clobbered these amendments yesterday, reflecting the sense that the various perspectives on the health of the forest cannot be reconciled. The Senate has a final chance today to prove this wrong.