Contacts:
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (541) 434-1463
Meg Townsend, Center for Biological Diversity

Agency to Reevaluate Harm to Coho, Murrelets

PORTLAND, Ore.— In response to a lawsuit Monday by the Center for Biological Diversity and Cascadia Wildlands, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has pulled its authorization of federal disaster relief funding to rebuild Cook Creek Road. The road would have been used for logging in Oregon’s Tillamook State Forest.

“It’s a major victory that FEMA has decided to revoke funding for this disastrous logging road, which should never have been built in the first place,” said Meg Townsend, senior freshwater attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I’m delighted FEMA is taking its duty to protect threatened coho salmon and marbled murrelets seriously. Now we need the Oregon Department of Forestry to reconsider logging in Cook Creek and instead leave it for fish and fishing.”

In a letter sent late Monday, FEMA said it recognized the groups’ concerns and would consider the effects of the Forestry Department’s proposed timber sales, which could not occur if FEMA didn’t provide federal funding to rebuild the road.

In particular, the Forestry Department has two timber sales slated for 2024 that would involve clearcutting nearly 700 acres and constructing more than three miles of new logging roads on steep, landslide prone slopes in the Cook Creek watershed.

“We are relieved the government is going to reevaluate subsidizing Oregon’s attempts to log mature and old-growth forests,” said Nick Cady, legal director of Cascadia Wildlands. “Using disaster relief funds to facilitate logging that increases fire risks for Oregonians is ridiculous.”

Cook Creek Road has been closed since December 2015 when heavy rainfall washed out a section of the road into Cook Creek, halting all logging in the watershed.

The post Press Release: FEMA Pulls Oregon Logging Road Funding In Response to Lawsuit first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Press Contacts:
Josh Laughlin, Cascadia Wildlands, (541) 434-1463
Amy Atwood, Center for Biological Diversity
Jennifer Fairbrother, Native Fish Society

PORTLAND, Ore.— Resolving multiyear litigation over the harms of logging to coho salmon, conservation groups reached an agreement today with the Oregon Department of Forestry to greatly expand stream buffers across more than half a million acres of the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands and Native Fish Society brought the suit, which asserted that for years the Department had been harming threatened coho salmon — in violation of the Endangered Species Act — by hauling timber on roads hydraulically connected to streams and by logging steep slopes, which causes landslides. Both activities choke streams with fine sediments that smother coho spawning and rearing habitat and degrade water quality for people.

“For too long the timber industry has treated our state forests like cash cows, without enough protection for fish or water quality,” said Amy Atwood, senior counsel at the Center. “The protections provided by today’s agreement aren’t everything we want, but they’ll go a long way toward recovering coho salmon on Oregon’s North Coast.”

Under the agreement, no-cut stream buffers will be expanded from as little as 25 feet to 120 feet and will include many non-fish bearing and seasonal reaches that previously received little to no protection. The Department will also now buffer some upland sites where landslides start, as well as the seasonal stream channels that carry landslide debris into fish habitat, with devastating consequences.

“Logging the exceedingly steep slopes of the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests has real consequences for our beloved and iconic salmon,” said Jennifer Fairbrother, conservation director for the Native Fish Society. “While there is more to be done to improve the management of our state forests, there’s no question that these new protections will help restore fish as well as soil health, water quality and even our climate.”

The agreement also requires the Department to inventory the extensive road network on the state forests within five years to identify problems and estimate the cost to fix them. Built almost entirely for the benefit of the timber industry, there are currently more than four miles of road per square mile of state forest. These include many areas where roads are blocking fish passage, unstable, or contributing sediments directly to streams. The cost of fixing these problems likely extends into the hundreds of millions of dollars and will almost certainly fall to the public to cover.  

“The current model of logging state forests to pay for essential county services and Department expenses and provide Big Timber a subsidized source of logs is archaic and unsustainable,” said Josh Laughlin, executive director of Cascadia Wildlands. “Besides not providing a stable source of county funding, the model utterly fails to protect salmon and wildlife, water quality, soil health or our climate. It is past time Oregon leaders sever the tie between clearcutting state forests and county funding and devise a more contemporary strategy to pay for critical services.”

The protections in the agreement are also proposed as part of a “habitat conservation plan.” Under the Endangered Species Act this would allow the Department to cause some harm to coho salmon, as well as marbled murrelets, spotted owls and other imperiled species, in exchange for protecting portions of the state forests from logging and roads. The Department first developed a conservation plan in 1997 but has continuously failed to finalize one. The current plan is expected to be completed this year but is facing stiff opposition from the timber industry and some county officials.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands, and Native Fish Society were represented by Center attorney Amy Atwood and Oliver Stiefel and Maura Fahey of Crag Law Center.

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The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion.

The Native Fish Society is a nonprofit conservation organization with a mission to restore abundant wild fish, free-flowing rivers, and thriving local communities across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

The post Press Release: Legal Agreement Will Bring New Protections From Logging to Oregon Coast Coho Salmon first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Draft Plan Fails to Address Impacts of Roads,
Logging Steep Slopes on Salmon, Water Quality 

PORTLAND, Ore. — The Oregon Department of Forestry and the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a draft environmental impact statement today for a habitat conservation plan that regulates logging on more than 600,000 acres of state forest in western Oregon.  

The plan would allow the department to continue to log and harm endangered species, including coho and Chinook salmon, northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets and others, for 70 years in exchange for some habitat protection.  

The draft impact statement prepared by the Fisheries Service, however, does contain a “conservation alternative” that would buffer landslide initiation sites and create a process for addressing problematic roads.  

“Oregon needs to adopt the conservation alternative and do more to protect streams for our precious salmon,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Safeguarding streams in the Oregon Coast Range isn’t rocket science. All it takes is avoiding logging in the steepest areas and reducing road miles. The Oregon Department of Forestry’s preferred alternative, however, does neither.” 

Although the plan’s preferred alternative would increase the acreage of protected forest, it does little to address increased landslide risk due to logging the steep slopes found in much of Oregon’s state forests or to address problems with the thousands of miles of roads that crisscross these forests. Sediment pollution from logging and roads was a primary justification for listing Oregon Coast coho salmon under the Endangered Species Act. Such pollution causes problems for many wildlife species and people.  

The Center, Native Fish Society and Cascadia Wildlands are currently suing the Oregon Department of Forestry in federal court for the harm being done to coho salmon from logging and roads on state forests. The Fisheries Service in 2011 reaffirmed that Oregon Coast coho salmon qualify as a threatened species and identified logging operations on high-risk landslide sites and sediments from roads as major concerns for salmon survival. The lawsuit seeks to address these issues. 

“The impacts of this plan will reverberate for decades. We must ensure that it contains the changes that are needed on the landscape to sustain the recovery of these ecologically, economically and culturally important fish,” said Jennifer Fairbrother, conservation director at the Native Fish Society. 

“The adverse effects of climate change are happening faster than we or other species can adapt,” said Grace Brahler, wildlands director for Cascadia Wildlands. “Given that this plan will be in effect for seven decades and knowing what’s at stake, we cannot afford to let the department fail to take commonsense habitat protections.”  

The Fisheries Service will publish a notice of public availability Friday and take comments on the impact statement for 60 days. The Department of Forestry is planning to finalize the plan by spring of 2023.  

Public Draft of the “Western Oregon State Forests Habitat Conservation Plan”

TAKE ACTION: Sign the Petition HERE to support habitat conservation and reject calls for more logging on state forests.

The post Press Release: Oregon Department of Forestry Moves Flawed Endangered Species Plan Forward  first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Contacts:
Nick Cady, Legal Director, Cascadia Wildlands, (541) 434-1463
Noah Greenwald, Endangered Species Director, Center for Biological Diversity

Environmental Groups Sue to Stop Post-Fire Logging on Oregon State Forest

Organizations Challenge Department of Forestry’s Clearcutting in Santiam State Forest After Last Summer’s Wildfires

Portland, Oregon — Today conservation groups including Cascadia Wildlands, the Center for Biological Diversity, Willamette Riverkeeper, Audubon Society of Corvallis, Audubon Society of Salem, Oregon Wild, and the Benton Forest Coalition filed suit challenging the ongoing post-fire clearcutting in the Santiam State forest east of Salem. Closed to visitors since 2020’s Labor Day wildfires, the state forest is currently being extensively logged by the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). 

The Oregon Department of Forestry’s logging operations in the Santiam State Forest are particularly contentious as they are impacting areas beloved by mountain bikers, horseback riders, and hikers including the Monument Peak horse camp and the Niagara area. 

Mark Goldsworthy, a Salem resident and member of Cascadia Wildlands said:

“I’ve been mountain biking in this area for years and got to know the trails really well. When I heard that the area was due to be clear cut I was shocked and disheartened. It’s like losing an old friend.”

Community members and environmental organizations are also raising concerns about the significant ecological impact that heavy logging has on post-fire forests and watersheds. Research shows that post-fire salvage logging damages the local environment and delays forest recovery, while releasing large amounts of carbon — further exacerbating the global climate crisis. 

Nick Cady, Legal Director with Cascadia Wildlands, said:

“Oregon’s Department of Forestry is doubling down on the devastating effects of last year’s fire season, and clearcutting some of the most treasured recreation areas in the Santiam State Forest. These are beautiful forests in protected areas and the Department is taking advantage of the fires to log these areas and triple its volume output for the year. The agency is out of control.”

Post-fire logging typically removes most of the remaining trees and involves intense road building and maintenance, the planting of non-native species and the application of toxic herbicides. The combined impacts of these actions disrupt forest health, degrade habitat, harm forested watersheds, and impact aquatic ecosystems by driving erosion and removing potential habitat in the form of woody debris (Karr et al. 2004, Donato et al. 2006, Reeves et al. 2006). 

Noah Greenwald, Endangered Species Director with Center for Biological Diversity, said:

“Salvage logging the Santiam State Forest will do great damage to spotted owls, struggling salmon populations, water quality and forest recovery. The Oregon Department of Forestry is stuck in the 1950s and out of step with science and the values of most Oregonians.” 

Logging emits far more carbon than even severe wildfire (Law et al. 2018). While fire-killed trees may take several decades or even centuries to decompose, during the logging and milling process, most of the carbon is rapidly released into the atmosphere (Smith et al. 2006, Gower et al. 2006). Post-fire logging undercuts the natural sequestration and storage capacity of post-fire forests and contributes to carbon emissions that worsen climate change.

Rebecca White, Wildlands Director with Cascadia Wildlands, said:

“We’ve known for a long time that burned forests are great at storing carbon, but not when they’re logged. It’s time for our state land managers to plan actions that will help us fight against climate change, not contribute to making it worse.”

In congressional testimony to the House Subcommittee on Resources (November 10, 2005, hearing on HR4200), University of Washington Professor Jerry Franklin said “Timber salvage is most appropriately viewed as a ‘tax’ on ecological recovery.”

Travis Williams, Executive Director of Willamette Riverkeeper, said:

 “Protection of high watersheds of the Willamette River are critical to the overall health of the river system.” 

The Santiam watersheds drain some 1,800 square miles from the Cascade range, providing an abundance of clear, cold water that is beneficial to the Willamette River.

Find an interactive map of the areas proposed for logging here.
Find photos of the ongoing logging here.
Review the filed lawsuit here.

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Cascadia Wildlands is a Eugene-based nonprofit working to defend and restore Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Willamette Riverkeeper works to protect and restore the Willamette River’s water quality, habitat, and ecological health through advocacy, education, and on-the-ground projects across the Willamette River Basin. 

The post Lawsuit Filed Challenging Ongoing Post-Fire Clearcutting in Santiam State Forest East of Salem first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

by Alexander Harris, Forest Policy Consultant for Cascadia Wildlands

Last week, the Oregon Legislature ended its short session early, lacking the requisite number of legislators to pass any of the bills being considered. Two weeks prior, Republican members of the State House and Senate fled the state Capitol in protest of a cap & trade proposal being advanced by the Democratic supermajority, stalling all pending legislation and launching the Capitol into political turmoil.

The walkout marks the third time in the past year that Republican legislators have neglected the core responsibility of their public service – showing up to legislative session – in an attempt to thwart the quorum Democrats need to pass legislation. The temper tantrum, which began February 24, effectively ended the 35-day session two weeks early and denied Democrats the opportunity to pass not only the climate bill, but also bills addressing wildfire risk (see below), flood assistance, and more.

To add to the political drama, Republican obstructionism also endangered a historic agreement between Oregon’s largest timber corporations and conservation groups, resulting in a rare rift between the GOP and logging interests. Republican opposition to the climate bill was bolstered by Timber Unity, the front group funded and organized by logging interests; however, the walkout that ensued ended up undermining the timber industry’s chief priority this session by threatening the viability of the timber-conservation deal (read more below). This development is quite ironic due to the fact that timber corporations literally bankroll the campaigns of Republicans in Oregon’s legislature.

The sudden end to the legislative session leaves a great deal of uncertainty for the months ahead and sets the tone for what is expected to be a major year in American politics.

ONCE AGAIN, OREGON FAILS TO PASS CARBON REGULATION

The most high-profile bill this session, SB 1530, aimed to create a market-based cap & invest program known as the Oregon Greenhouse Gas Initiative (OGGI). Environmental and social justice activists have advocated for a statewide carbon program for years, prompting Democrats to prioritize passing a cap & trade program this short session over all other bills; however, as the legislative session approached the bill was increasingly watered down in an effort to keep Republicans at the table (and in the building), leading dozens of organizations to refrain from endorsing the legislation. If you can believe it, the timber industry won over the key Democrats in Salem and succeeded in exempting logging in Oregon from the cap & trade legislation, even though logging is a leading source of carbon emissions in the state.

The most concerning provision in the climate bill proposed allocating a quarter of the all OGGI revenue to fund the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) to conduct a landscape-scale thinning program, largely targeting National Forests and other public lands. Using cap & trade revenue to fund broadscale thinning seems to ignore the scientific literature about how aggressive thinning programs release far more carbon into the atmosphere than wildfires do as well as increase the severity of future forest fires. Cascadia Wildlands and partner groups have repeatedly advocated for wildfire funds to be allocated towards strategies that bolster community resilience and preparation rather than thinning over vast landscapes. (Watch Sam Krop, Grassroots Organizer for Cascadia Wildlands give testimony on this topic: video available below, or HERE – timestamp: 1:40:47.) The irony with this provision of the OGGI was thick — use monies from cap & trade legislation to fund extensive carbon-emitting logging across Oregon’s forested landscape.

OREGON ASSERTS NEW ROLE IN MANAGING FEDERAL LAND

The other major priority for legislators this short session was to pass comprehensive wildfire legislation. Each of the wildfire bills proposed this session were based on the recommendations developed by the Governor’s Wildfire Response Council, which released a report in November 2019. Many of the Council’s recommendations were encouraging, especially those focused on making communities more resilient to future wildfires – others, however, urged state lawmakers to double down on the 20th century strategies that are proven to be costly and ineffective (e.g. increased logging and fire suppression).

The Council’s most controversial (and expensive) recommendation was for an unprecedented, landscape-scale thinning program meant to disrupt wildfire behavior. The program – estimated to cost $4 billion – would greatly expand the role that the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) plays in managing our National Forests, and would authorize thinning vast swaths of Oregon’s forested landscape. Sure enough, the proposal to adopt a landscape-scale thinning program showed up in legislation this short session, recommending that ODF “treat” one-tenth of Oregon’s entire landbase!

In preparation for the session, Cascadia Wildlands helped lead an informal coalition of climate, social justice, and conservation groups to advocate for wildfire funds to be allocated towards community adaptation and resilience measures instead of thinning efforts in the backcountry on public lands. On the first day of session, Cascadia Wildlands joined 18 other organizations around the state in a letter to legislators advocating for wildfire policy to adhere to the latest science. In our letter, we wrote:

Scientists predict that the coming decades will bring more climate change-driven wildfires in Oregon’s forests. Therefore, we must prioritize policies focused on community adaptation rather than futile attempts to modify fuel conditions and control fire behavior across the entire landscape.

Experts have found that the three most effective strategies to protect homes and communities from wildfire are to: 1) retrofit homes with fire-resistant materials; 2) maintain defensible space within 100 feet of structures; and 3) limit new development in fire-prone areas. This approach differs starkly from landscape-scale thinning efforts, which are proven to be expensive, ecologically destructive, and ineffective at controlling wildfire behavior. Currently, government agencies spend millions of dollars logging to reduce fuels, yet data from the Forest Service shows less than 1% of thinning projects encounter wildfire each year, simply because our forests are vast and we cannot predict where fires will burn next. Thinning efforts should instead be focused on the forests directly adjacent to homes and communities where they can actually help enhance public safety.

Read our new factsheet to learn more about which strategies researchers say work best in protecting people and property from wildfire risks.

Over the last few weeks, several wildfire bills were wrapped into one large bill, SB 1536. Unfortunately, almost all of the adaptation measures we advocated for were dropped; however, due to our coalition’s efforts and the strong leadership of Senator Jeff Golden (D-Ashland), we were successful in striking the landscape-scale thinning program from the final bill. Instead, the bill includes a much more narrow and focused approach to reduce fuels by authorizing demonstration projects in strategic locations. These demonstration projects are meant to help inform state legislators and ODF about where thinning makes sense (and where it doesn’t), as well as how the state can expand its use of prescribed fire. The bill also includes many sideboards to keep commercial thinning out of the ecologically sensitive areas, although many notable exceptions remain.

Rumors of a special session are circulating around the Capitol, which means this bill actually has a chance of passing this year. If this happens, Cascadia Wildlands and partner groups will launch an extensive monitoring campaign to ensure these fuel reduction projects stay out of older, native forests and instead target the areas that pose the greatest risks to homes and communities – such as even-aged plantations and fire-suppressed stands near where people actually live.

FOREST WATERS BALLOT INITIATIVE – THE ROAD AHEAD

The Republican walkout derailed a variety of other important legislation, such as the aerial spray reforms agreed to by conservation groups and timber companies last month. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) – signed by two dozen conservation organizations and logging companies on February 10 – initiates a longer term process to enact comprehensive, science-based reforms to Oregon’s logging laws; however, the entire deal hinged on the legislature passing a bill this session to modernize aerial pesticide spraying laws.

With the legislative session now over, much remains uncertain about the future of this bill or the fate of the larger deal. The impetus behind the deal was the introduction of ballot initiatives by a statewide coalition of concerned communities and non-profit groups to greatly expand protections for Oregon’s forested watersheds. The growing “Forest Waters” movement around the state led the timber industry to propose their own counter ballot initiatives – which eventually prompted negotiations to scrap the initiatives and develop the MOU.

If the legislature is able to pass the aerial spray legislation during a special session – which is a viable possibility – the MOU will likely move forward as planned; however, if Republican obstructionism prevents bills from passing during a special session, conservation groups and frontline communities may well return to the original strategy of running a grassroots campaign to collect signatures and build awareness for a ballot initiative.

None of this progress would be possible without the grassroots support from activists and public lands defenders around the state. Thank you for staying active in all these efforts. Your voice matters even during these otherworldly political times, like when our lawmakers can walk off the job whenever they want to. Let’s keep our sleeves rolled up for what is likely to be one of the most consequential years in decades. Oregonians are demanding clean water, safety from wildfires, and expanded protections for our public lands – we won’t quit until systemic change is realized!

The post Salem Debacle Kicks Off a Very Consequential Year first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

By Will Watson, WildCAT Volunteer.

Last month, Cascadia Wildland’s staff attorney, Gabe Scott, and volunteers John Selove and I travelled up to Salem to a meeting of the Oregon State Board of Forestry. The BOF is the executive board of the Oregon Department of Forests. The ODF directly manages about 3% of Oregon’s 30 million acres of forest and provides fire protection for 16 million acres of public and private forest. Altogether, Oregon’s State Forests cover about 900,000 acres. The BOF was holding public hearings on their “Statement of Principles” for the new Forest Management Plan they are drafting, the current one having been adopted in the late 1970’s at the peak of the unsustainable logging boom that ended in the 1990’s.

I would recommend attending BOF meetings to anyone who wants to understand the stakes involved in forest management here in Oregon. The meeting was an eye opener.

Altogether, 32 witnesses testified on the Statement of Principles draft. 

The ODF’s currently funds its conservation and restoration activities through the sale of timber rights on limited lots in state forests. 98% of ODF revenues come from these sales. Clear cuts are the norm in modern logging, and there’s little if any selective cutting in state timber leases. Several times, witnesses claimed that ODF revenues and timber production are at an all-time high. Yet despite these record highs, ODF revenues are too low to achieve its conservation goals.  As one of these witnesses put it, “ODF is not going to clear cut its way out of this revenue crisis.”  All day we would hear calls for BOF to embrace a “new revenue model.”

Testimony came from a wide range of people. Hardly anyone spoke for the logging industry, although when I mentioned this as folks were milling around after the hearing, someone within earshot said, somewhat bitterly, “Don’t worry about that. The board speaks for the timber interests.”  There were a lot of private citizens and a dozen or so representatives of non-profits and NGO’s, one of whom uttered a memorable slogan: “Fish are a forest product.” Another said, “It’s easier to keep an ecosystem healthy than to restore it.” As we heard all day, from environmental pros and citizens alike, Oregonians were concerned that the “Statement of Principles” says next to nothing about climate change. Many called for ODF decisions to be based in “sound science, not revenue need.” CascWild’s own Gabe Scott warned the Board that “revenue reliance on extraction puts the board on a collision course with federal law.”

Most of the testimony we heard came from regular Oregonians, usually from rural precincts, who were living close to clear cuts, aerial spraying, road building and other logging impacts. They often identified themselves by describing the natural features of the land where they lived. They named creeks, watersheds, forests, rivers, mountains and such. Those who identified with towns came from places I later looked up on maps–Jewel, Wheeler, Garibaldi and others—so I got a geography lesson as well.

Their testimony was alarming, and often impassioned. These were people who lived every day with the ground truth of intensive logging.

All in all, the picture they painted was distressing:  too many forests in Oregon do not, in their current condition, warrant preservation. They were cut too young and replanted as close-packed, disease-and-fire-prone monoculture plantations. They’re drenched with toxins that run into creeks and rivers. They are choked with invasive species and fragmented by, according to US Forest Service figures, almost 80,000 miles of logging access roads, by far the most of any state. Streams are warming and clouded with silt and toxic runoff. Wildlife, some dangerous, are being driven into towns by aerial spraying.  

One witness, a woodlot owner from Jewel, compared stream temperature between two local creeks, finding that a shaded stream in an old forest was 10F cooler than one in a clear cut, a crucial temperature range for spawning salmon. This could be one reason why, as another witness described, salmon runs in some locations have diminished from ten per year to only one in just the last decade. Another witness complained to county commissioners about defoliants being sprayed on the local elementary school and the houses around it. She won a concession. In the future, helicopters spraying defoliants would observe a sixty foot (!) buffer zone around homes and schools. One witness, from Wheeler, on the Coast, employed a rather unsavory metaphor to describe forest management in the state. He compared Oregon to Washington and other western states and concluded that Oregon is “living in the toilet” of the West.  An environmental scientist warned that soil compaction around logging sites “made future restoration of the affected areas unlikely if not impossible.” Another witness, a wildlife photographer from Astoria, warned ominously that clearcutting was contributing to what biologists are calling “the sixth great extinction.” Over and over we felt the despair of woods-loving Oregonians who live in the middle of industrial clear cuts and destruction. 

There were exceptions, of course, like the recently protected 89,000-acre Elliott State Forest that one witness described as an example of a “new way forward” for state forest policy. However, witnesses on the ground suggest that the Oregon mountain backcountry is an industrial tree plantation more often than an actual, biodiverse forest.

The picture is not all bleak, though. Witnesses voiced all manner of smart restoration and revenue ideas. For instance, we heard several times that forest-based tourism creates 10-11x the revenue of logging. One witness encouraged, memorably “Let the big trees alone. Let them grow.”

New funding models were advanced, based on carbon trading, carbon taxes and restructuring the tax code. One witness pointed to a study that showed the Elliott Forest alone, which is only 10% of the total of state-managed forests, could sequester 3/4’s of the yearly CO2 emitted by transportation in the state. He called for the BOF to explore ways to “monetize the carbon storage capacity of Oregon’s forests.” After the hearing, I heard someone call Oregon a potential, “Saudi Arabia of carbon sequestration.”

Similarly, a Portland State professor called Oregon forest policy “a huge experiment with no control” and recommended preserving intact forests and watersheds to provide a baseline for future policy decisions. He also suggested that long-term rotation harvests on state lands could balance out the short-term rotation harvests on private lands.  Another witness called for the BOF to set aside what he called “terrestrial anchor acres” for each timber lease sold. In these, biological impact studies could be conducted in depth so that clear cut impacts could be fully understood. There was no shortage of alternatives to clearcutting in that room.

That night, back in Eugene, I kept coming back to a statement I heard repeatedly during the hearing: “The BOF is not going to clear cut its way out of this revenue shortfall.”  I wondered, darkly, at what point the state would cut the last of its big trees to pay off the revenue shortfall from trying to protect big trees, and I was reminded of a grisly old fable I had read somewhere.

A surgeon is stranded on a barren island with only his medical kit and no provisions. Starving, he begins to amputate and eat his limbs, all but his scalpel arm and hand. Then he starts in on all the organs of which we have two: kidney, eye, ear, testicle (I warned you it was grisly). Finally, there’s nothing left and he succumbs to starvation. What’s the moral for us, here in Oregon?

Well, the surgeon tried to survive by doing what he had been trained to do. And because he was so good at it, he extended his life, although at the price of eating himself alive. State forest policy is kind of like that surgeon. Here in the Beaver State, we can grow and cut trees like no one else. It’s what we do, what nature will help us do here. But the BOF must find another way to save Oregon’s state forests besides, paradoxically enough, destroying them.  

It’s time for entirely new priorities at the Board of Forestry.  Preservation, conservation, climate change, carbon storage and wildlands restoration need to be prioritized before there’s nothing left to preserve or restore. Let the big trees alone, I say. Let them grow.

The post “Let the Big Trees Alone. Let Them Grow” first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Greater Protections Sought for Threatened Marbled Murrelets in Oregon

Background:

Expected Timeline:

The post Greater Protections Sought for Marbled Murrelets in Oregon first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.