PORTLAND--Oregon is sticking with 1989 wetlands protection standards developed by federal scientific experts and will ignore changes proposed by a council led by Vice President Dan Quayle.

The Division of State Lands has projected changes proposed by the President's Council on Competitiveness that could eliminate protection for as much as half of Oregon's wetlands, the state announced Friday.

Ken Bierly, the division's wetland program manager, said the council's alteration of the federal wetlands identification manual developed by a team of experts is an attempt to change federal policy on wetlands protection.

Conservationists have accused Bush, who unveiled the proposed changes in August, of keeping his campaign promise to allow "no net loss of wetlands" by defining them away.

The new criteria relax protections for certain wetlands that are not as wet, or wet as often, compared with year-round bogs, swamps and marshes.

Under the new definition, the national wetlands inventory would drop by one-third from the 100 million acres protected under the current definition.

Under one proposed rule change, for example, regulators would have to prove that a piece of property is saturated to the surface for 21 consecutive days or flooded for 15 consecutive days during the growing season.

That standard lacks any scientific basis, Bierly said.

The 1989 standards, developed jointly by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and Soil Conservation Service, use a combination of soil types, vegetation and hydrology to determine if the property is a wetland and eligible for protection under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.

Section 404 allows states to assume responsibility for regulating wetlands, and Oregon has done that. Its removal-fill law, which applies to actions affecting all state waters, is considered more restrictive and more comprehensive that the federal law.