GALICE, Ore. -- A 1990s' truce that quieted the bitter wars between loggers and environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest is in danger of collapse.

With that truce, made final in 1994 by the Clinton administration, the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, seemed to be getting the breathing space it needed to regroup. While some land was opened to loggers, nearly twice as much was set aside for owls' hunting grounds. But more than a decade later, their numbers continue to decline faster than expected.

Now the truce, the Northwest Forest Plan, is in jeopardy as one of the parties to it, the Bureau of Land Management, is rethinking its participation. It is proposing a threefold increase in logging on its 2.2 million acres in western Oregon, with greater increases in the old-growth stands that are the owls' preferred territory. The land agency's action would reduce by 10 percent the territory covered by the Northwest Forest Plan.

With the agency's proposal, it seems that the timber industry, which never stopped pressing for access to more trees than the Northwest Forest Plan allowed, is getting what it had long sought in court.

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But environmentalists and scientists argue that the agency's proposal will torpedo the whole Northwest Forest Plan, which encompassed 24 million acres, and damage the spotted owl's chances for survival.