feet (bbf) in 1986 and 1987, 2.3 bbf in 1988, and 1.9 bbf in 1989. AuCoin was also criticized for working with Senator Hatfield, Washington Representative Norman D. Dicks, and House Speaker Tom Foley for legislating a special timber sales program in 1990. The legislation, referred to disparagingly by some environmentalists as "The Rider from Hell," was in response to an injunction by federal judge William Lee Dwyer that shut down all logging in federal forests in the Pacific Northwest after the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management failed to develop management plans for the threatened northern spotted owl. Responding to the imminent collapse of jobs in timber and related industries, the amendment legislated a harvest, but also gave old-growth forests statutory status for the first time, directed that fragmentation of them be minimized, and banned logging of them in designated spotted owl habitat areas identified in the environmental impact statement., effectively overruling Judge Dwyer's order. While AuCoin and the other sponsors stated an intention for the law to be temporary while plans to protect forests and threatened species such as the spotted owl were put in place, it authorized a two-year harvest of more than 5 billion board feet in Oregon and Washington and became a precedent for future industry-supported environmental waivers long after AuCoin left Congress. In his last years in Congress, AuCoin worked to lower the regional harvest to 1.1 bbf in 1991, 0.8 bbf in 1992, and 0.6 bbf in 1993. Abortion AuCoin was one of the House's key leaders for abortion choice, helping to defeat the Hyde Amendment, which barred public funds for abortion services for pregnant Medicaid recipients as well as in U.S. military hospitals abroad. The amendment was dropped in the Senate when President George H. W. Bush threatened to veto the entire defense appropriation measure if it remained in. Gun control His opposition to gun control legislation angered many of his urban constituents while pleasing numerous rural voters. AuCoin switched his position during his legislative career, emphasized with an essay in The Washington Post, supporting what would become the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which passed after he left office in 1993. At the time of his action, no other member of the Oregon delegation supported tighter gun control laws. 1992 race for the U.S. Senate In 1992, AuCoin ran for the United States Senate against Republican incumbent Bob Packwood, giving