PORTLAND, OR—Frustration over the failure of the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to follow the law has lead the forest products industry to once again seek a Court Order directing the agency to sell timber in western Oregon.
The American Forest Resource Council and the Carpenters Industrial Union were joined by the Douglas Timber Operators and six family-owned businesses that manufacture products from the timber grown on the 2.1 million acres of Oregon and California (O&C) Railroad Grant Lands. Under the Resource Management Plans currently in effect, the BLM is required to sell 502 million board feet annually, which is only half of what the forests can sustainably produce. Sustained timber production is the statutory requirement for these lands.
Since the Plans were approved in 2008, the BLM has sold only a small fraction of the yearly timber harvest mandated under the Plans. The Medford District’s fiscal year 2011 planned target calls for harvesting just 19 million board feet of the 97 million board feet called for.
“At a time when our mills need this timber to survive, it is outrageous that the Obama Administration is directing the BLM not to sustainably harvest. Instead, these forests are being allowed to become overcrowded and prone to devastating forest fires that will destroy wildlife habitat and threaten water supplies. The situation our mills find themselves in is like starving to death in a refrigerator full of food,” said Tom Partin, AFRC President.
The six timber company Plaintiffs in the case, which was filed today in D.C. District Court against Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, are family-owned businesses whose employees work and live in Oregon communities hard hit by the current recession. Half of the proceeds from the sale of timber grown on the O&C lands goes to the Oregon counties where the lands are located. As payments under the federal Secure Rural Schools Act diminish and may come to an end, both the timber sale revenues and the tax revenues generated by local businesses are vital to the survival of these rural governments.
“Suing the government is always an uphill battle, but we are being forced to do so by the Interior Department’s blatant apathy towards the law and the plight of rural Oregon counties. Local BLM employees spent nearly five years and millions of dollars to put these plans together. Now, they need to be instructed to move forward to implement them until the agency is brought into compliance with the statutory requirement for sustained timber production,” said Partin.
The American Forest Resource Council represents forest product manufacturers and landowners throughout the west and is based in Portland, Oregon. www.amforest.org
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
On an Oregon Coast Range ridge, the future of forest management takes root
VERNONIA, OREGON - June 02, 2011 - "Ridge 77" in the Clatsop State Forest is a good example that shows various aspects of forestry within framework of a single timber sale. Many trees were left standing in this thinning operation above private property where a spring acts as household drinking water.
Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian New Timber Management gallery (17 photos)
Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian New Timber Management gallery (17 photos)
But after long years of environmental, economic and political paralysis, the logjam may be breaking. The recession and decimation of Oregon's rural communities produce a clamor for more logging, jobs and revenue for schools and counties. Biologists, conservation groups, government regulators and timber owners increasingly collaborate on habitat and stream protection plans that allow timber harvests, even clear-cuts. Most recognize the need to thin thick forests to dampen the threat of catastrophic wildfires.
Forty years of evolving forest management season the search for balance. As Oregon and the nation continue to grapple with natural resource policy, the future of forestry may be taking root in places like Ridge 77.
The land
Ridge 77 is one of those ripples in the landscape that make up the Oregon Coast Range. Volcanic action formed these hills and ridges, but 60 million years weathered them to nubbins.
Erosion flushed minerals from the basalt into soil that is deep and rich. Today the ridge is classic western Oregon timber country, damp and dense, with moderate temperatures and a long growing season.
From Mist to Jewel, on ridges above the Nehalem River, the trees grow big quickly. Western red cedar, hemlock, big leaf maple and alder, of course. But mostly tall, ramrod-straight Douglas fir, prized for lumber.
"Some of the best in the world," agrees Ron Zilli, an assistant district forester for the Clatsop State Forest.
"Once they get going, it's game on -- a race for the light."
The sale
The state selected Ridge 77 for sale after a series of screenings including stand age, geography and projected revenue. The area was surveyed for threatened northern spotted owls in 2007, 2008 and 2009. None was seen or heard.
Ridge 77 was put out for sealed bid in July 2009. Fifty acres of thinning and 41 acres of modified clear-cut, which would leave trees strategically scattered. The sale was expected to produce about 2.8 million board feet, almost all of it 66- to 68-year-old Douglas fir. The average fir would be 83 feet tall and a diameter of 25 inches at breast height.
The 80-page sale contract spelled out everything from how logs would be removed -- yarded by cable, with one end lifted off the ground to avoid gouging the soil -- to how they would be marked. At least one end of each log was hammered with a state-issued brand and painted with a minimum 2-inch diameter spot of orange paint.
The contract dictated where cable systems were deployed, ordered vegetation buffers along four seasonal streams, directed how roads and culverts were maintained and how much debris was left on site. It stipulated trees could not be felled across draws, roads or on top of already downed trees. "Maximum stump height shall be 12 inches or 60 percent of stump diameter, whichever is greater," the contract ordered.
The timing wasn't great, with the housing market and the demand for lumber at rock bottom. The state didn't expect to get much out of the sale, so set the minimum price low -- about $139 per 1,000 board feet.
Planners drew the name from the gravel Clatsop County Road that traces the southern, bottom edge of the sale: Old 77 Vesper Lane.
Perspective
Zilli, the assistant district forester, found a handwritten, hand-illustrated 1913 timber cruiser's report that said the ridge had burned in the 1890s. Department records show it was clear-cut in 1945 to answer the postwar building boom call for 2-by-4s and sheets of plywood.
Then, there must have seemed no end to the timber. Nearly every little town had a mill, and jobs in the woods were passed from father to son in "Sometimes a Great Notion" style.
They clear-cut the big trees, burned the slash, replanted in mono-culture. Stream banks, roadless areas and wildlife were an afterthought.
The ridge was privately owned until the late 1940s, when Clatsop County took it over in lieu of unpaid property taxes. The county deeded it to the state Board of Forestry, and it became part of the Clatsop State Forest.
The Oregon Department of Forestry manages about 818,000 acres, only about 3 percent of the state's forestland, but accounted for 9 percent of Oregon's 2010 timber harvest. The U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service own about 57 percent of Oregon's forests, but federal land has been so clamped by conflict that state land nearly matches it in timber production.
The department's 2010 management plan is deeply detailed and intended to result over the decades in forest structures that are a complex, healthy and productive mix of age, canopy and understory. You don't do that by running roughshod over old trees, wildlife and streams. Or people, either.
The pressure is on to free up more timber. The Board of Forestry directed the department to increase annual revenue by 5 to 15 percent above the 2002-06 average.
It's a balancing act. Done right, it completes what foresters call the triangle of "greatest permanent value" -- social, economic and environmental benefit for the people of Oregon.
The logger
Harve Dethlefs, president of Bighorn Logging Inc. in Banks, grew up in a logging family. His oldest son, Dwayne, was one of the colorful loggers in TVs reality show "Ax Men." Harve thought the show was nonsense and didn't want any part of it. He has a solid reputation; in 2008 the Oregon Department of Forestry named his company one of its "Forest Practices Operators of the Year" for building a berm to steer debris away from homes near a landslide-prone logging site.
Dethlefs left logging at one point and worked 20 years as a warehouse manager for Tektronix, the pioneering Oregon high-tech company. He came back to the woods in the early 1980s and started his own company. Until Ridge 77, Bighorn was a contract logging outfit, cutting and hauling for the mills and bigger companies that could afford to buy timber sales.
But he was intrigued by the low minimum price for Ridge 77. He bid $570,438 or $205.86 per thousand board feet and dropped off the required deposit at the Clatsop State Forest's district office in Astoria. His bid was well above the state's minimum and a gamble, but he figured the market might recover by the time he logged it. Still, he didn't expect to win.
"I told the gal, 'Well, we'll come back this afternoon to pick our bid deposit,'" he says.
When he returned, the woman said he couldn't have his check back -- he'd won.
"Holy mackerel," Dethlefs exclaimed. "Now what do we do?"
The neighbor
Ken Enneberg got a letter saying the ridge above his home would be clear-cut. He was familiar with the process. He was a fifth-generation logger -- at one point he worked for Dethlefs -- but got out of the woods 25 years ago.
Now, he's an electrician at Georgia Pacific's Wauna Paper Mill in Clatskanie.
"I miss the work, the being outside and not having someone looking over your shoulder," he says of logging. "But it was going to make an old man out of me."
Enneberg's well and a spring he uses to water livestock are charged by drainage off Ridge 77. He worried that heavy equipment might compact the soil or leak fuel or hydraulic fluid, possibly contaminating his water. "I wanted them to be a little more careful," he says.
In response, ODF revised the contract to require hauling logs off by cable rather than by machines on the ground, which pleased Enneberg.
"It would have been ideal to have that nice stand of timber across from my house, but that's not reality," he says.
"My house is made of wood, I burn wood for heat and I work at a pulp and paper mill."
Jobs
Dean Bernardi of Vernonia was out of work when Bighorn Logging hired him. Bernardi and his partner finished the job in 60 days, thinning slightly more than half the sale and clear-cutting most of the rest.
Bernardi, short, stocky and bearded, has been falling trees for 30 years and lived to tell about it. "So far," he says with a grin. "A few bumps, bruises and stitches."
Dethlefs, the company owner, waited as long as he could to log, watching the stumpage price rise and keeping an eye on the calendar. By contract, he had to finish by Oct. 31.
Seven others worked on the site in addition to the fallers. By the time the crew finished hauling logs off the site this spring, mills were paying $400 to $450 per thousand board feet -- double what Dethlefs paid. "It worked out pretty good for us," Dethlefs says mildly. "Pretty good margin."
Logs from state forests cannot be exported. The timber from Ridge 77 went to RSG's Olympic Forest Products mill outside of Mist. The mill was closed much of the spring, but managers decided recently that market conditions had improved and reopened it. Log buyer Kirk Harrison estimated 30 people would set to work. It will take them about a month, he said, to saw the Ridge 77 timber into 2-by-4 and 2-by-6 boards.
The school One-third of the money from state forest timber sales goes to ODF; counties and school districts get the rest. In the Clatsop State Forest, that has made the Jewel School District, with 148 students K-12, perhaps the richest district per capita in Oregon.
Of 42 timber sales planned in the Clatsop State Forest this fiscal year, Jewel was in line to receive a projected $2.5 million from 28 of them -- $36,223 from Ridge 77.
"Lucky geography," says Superintendent Brian Gander.
Timber sale money built a new $18 million school in 2007, paid in cash.
The district offers a forestry class and maintains a plot for students to tend, but timber's influence in the community -- beyond money -- is muted.
"They're proud of our heritage but they say they don't want our kids to do what we do," Gander says.
Some students ride the bus an hour to school. The school struggles to field an eight-man football team and borrows seventh- and eighth-graders to fill out the high school band, but does all right academically.
"We don't struggle with technology at all," Gander says. "We probably have more computers than is educationally necessary." Gander keeps that to himself when he meets with other superintendents.
"When they talk budgets, I sit back," he says. "I don't want to make a spectacle of our fortune."
Regrowth
Even loggers don't like the look of a clear-cut. The thinned area looks healthy, but half of Ridge 77 is a jumble of stumps, limbs and a few logs that shattered when they hit the ground. In a contract directive that reflects the latest forestry techniques, the loggers left some trees in the clear-cut. Among them are snags -- dead, standing trees that support the links of life. Wood-boring insects, followed by birds that feed upon them, followed by squirrels and voles, followed by predators.
Ridge 77 will be replanted in February or March. Depending on management policy, and barring fire, storm or disease, it will be ready for harvest again in 35 to 70 years.
The replacement seedlings, now a couple of inches tall, are growing in peat-filled containers at Pacific Regeneration Technologies in Hubbard. The nursery grows millions of trees each year for government and private forests.
On average, the Clatsop State Forest plants 600,000 to 750,000 trees a year. The planting usually is 60 percent Douglas fir, 30 percent hemlock, and a 10 percent mix of noble fir, grand fir, cedar and alder. Ridge 77, because it is prime timber ground, will get 70 percent Douglas fir and the rest hemlock.
They'll be planted 350 trees to the acre. About 90 percent will survive.
And begin the race for the light.
--Eric Mortenson
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
A Matter of Principle
If there was one thing from my 30 years in the logging woods as a faller that prepared me for natural resource policy in Siskiyou County, it would be the ability to function in a perilously chaotic environment. Next would be the capacity to tolerate inordinate levels of pain. In other words, natural resource policy is not for the timid.
It hasn’t always been this way. From our agrarian founding, Americans have inherently been aware that there is a relationship between use and care of the environment. It is only relatively recently that the balance point has been the source of a cultural divisiveness reminiscent of the passions of the Civil War era.
Instead of a singular Mason-Dixon geographical demarcation, however, this time multiple lines are drawn throughout the United States around our most densely populated regions. It is these crowded areas, where human respect for the environment is least apparent, that have primarily cultivated and empowered a modern “abolitionist” movement aimed at America’s natural resource infrastructure. Standing in the crosshairs are rural counties such as Siskiyou.
Those of us rooted in rural America are cognizant of our role as a primary source of America’s wealth and security. Despite widespread opinion, we are also well aware not only of our historical evolution, but our burden on behalf of society’s future.
Early on, America’s vastness and sparse population accommodated a short-term exploitative mentality. Hard lessons were acquired on that portion of the learning curve such as identifying and refining agricultural practices that contributed to the Dust Bowl. This and other experiences have long since instilled in rural communities a sense of the finite as well as a need to understand the complexities of the natural systems upon which we are inextricably dependent.
This is why my younger son got a forest engineering degree and why the kids of my farming and ranching neighbors aspire to and attend prestigious forestry and ag universities. The idea that the knowledge dearly bought by these future stewards of the land is devoid of a deep commitment to environmental responsibility is absurd.
Unfortunately, the scientific, legal, economic, political and social intricacies of these disciplines don’t lend themselves to the short attention spans and quick-fix expectations that dominate the populous political power centers of America. Couple this with our city cousins’ isolation from nature and their almost unrelenting exposure to the downsides of human interaction with Mother Earth, and it is easy to see how our livelihoods and ways of life are enormously misunderstood.
Yet we somehow must dispel the fiction of environmental mismanagement if communities like ours are to survive and provide for the future well being of America. This is where the woods-acquired traits I mentioned earlier come in most handy.
Amidst the chaos rampant amongst the belligerents and exponentially aggravated by conflicting Executive, Legislative and Judicial victories “won” by opposing sides on the ever-shifting political landscape, it is easy to feel one is in Fallujah without, thankfully, the bullets and bombs. It is easy to feel, Alice, that we’ve fallen down the Rabbit Hole and the Red Queen is on her way to lop off our heads.
Unfortunately, you can’t dumb this stuff down to a Cliff Notes version. What you can do, though, is to find starting points that everyone can agree on. Currently these seem universally to be “clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.” With justification, we have charged full tilt in this direction. In a common failure of American policy, however, this tactical assault was begun with insufficient strategic analysis.
Running up against an escalating groundswell of public outrage, agencies are being confronted with their disregard of the most elemental ingredient of our national identity: individual liberty. Having resorted to the expediency of increasingly complex, costly and onerous regulation, federal and state agencies are prompting a modern first-hand lesson as to why our Founding forebears saw government as the greatest threat to freedom.
It is this fundamental principle that is the key to our natural resource policies. It is the lens through which we must view every proposal and action. When an environmental need is perceived, it must be discussed and pursued with freedom foremost. But this precious commodity not only confers rights, it also demands responsibilities. As examples, whether it is understanding and conserving salmon or respecting the rights of private property, these simply test whether we possess the intellectual and moral commitment worthy of our American legacy. I am determined that Siskiyou County shall pass muster.
All:
Those of you who don't know me, I am the Natural Resource Policy Specialist for Siskiyou County. I am not a Forest Service retiree, but I am of the absolute conviction that the folks in NAFSR and their influence on the USFS are crucial to the vital reform needed to move the agency back in the direction of its proper mission. I fully appreciate and understand the abject discouragement at the current state of things. We are indeed again at a time that "tries men's souls." I am not one to plaster my personal rantings around for personal gratification, but the following that I wrote for my column in the Siskiyou Daily News is an essential component of our message if we are to secure sufficient public support to effect change. If our conversation with the public is left at the scientific and administrative level, we will get lost in the complexity of the issues. The article is timely as well for Memorial Day.
Ric Costales
It hasn’t always been this way. From our agrarian founding, Americans have inherently been aware that there is a relationship between use and care of the environment. It is only relatively recently that the balance point has been the source of a cultural divisiveness reminiscent of the passions of the Civil War era.
Instead of a singular Mason-Dixon geographical demarcation, however, this time multiple lines are drawn throughout the United States around our most densely populated regions. It is these crowded areas, where human respect for the environment is least apparent, that have primarily cultivated and empowered a modern “abolitionist” movement aimed at America’s natural resource infrastructure. Standing in the crosshairs are rural counties such as Siskiyou.
Those of us rooted in rural America are cognizant of our role as a primary source of America’s wealth and security. Despite widespread opinion, we are also well aware not only of our historical evolution, but our burden on behalf of society’s future.
Early on, America’s vastness and sparse population accommodated a short-term exploitative mentality. Hard lessons were acquired on that portion of the learning curve such as identifying and refining agricultural practices that contributed to the Dust Bowl. This and other experiences have long since instilled in rural communities a sense of the finite as well as a need to understand the complexities of the natural systems upon which we are inextricably dependent.
This is why my younger son got a forest engineering degree and why the kids of my farming and ranching neighbors aspire to and attend prestigious forestry and ag universities. The idea that the knowledge dearly bought by these future stewards of the land is devoid of a deep commitment to environmental responsibility is absurd.
Unfortunately, the scientific, legal, economic, political and social intricacies of these disciplines don’t lend themselves to the short attention spans and quick-fix expectations that dominate the populous political power centers of America. Couple this with our city cousins’ isolation from nature and their almost unrelenting exposure to the downsides of human interaction with Mother Earth, and it is easy to see how our livelihoods and ways of life are enormously misunderstood.
Yet we somehow must dispel the fiction of environmental mismanagement if communities like ours are to survive and provide for the future well being of America. This is where the woods-acquired traits I mentioned earlier come in most handy.
Amidst the chaos rampant amongst the belligerents and exponentially aggravated by conflicting Executive, Legislative and Judicial victories “won” by opposing sides on the ever-shifting political landscape, it is easy to feel one is in Fallujah without, thankfully, the bullets and bombs. It is easy to feel, Alice, that we’ve fallen down the Rabbit Hole and the Red Queen is on her way to lop off our heads.
Unfortunately, you can’t dumb this stuff down to a Cliff Notes version. What you can do, though, is to find starting points that everyone can agree on. Currently these seem universally to be “clean air, clean water and a healthy environment.” With justification, we have charged full tilt in this direction. In a common failure of American policy, however, this tactical assault was begun with insufficient strategic analysis.
Running up against an escalating groundswell of public outrage, agencies are being confronted with their disregard of the most elemental ingredient of our national identity: individual liberty. Having resorted to the expediency of increasingly complex, costly and onerous regulation, federal and state agencies are prompting a modern first-hand lesson as to why our Founding forebears saw government as the greatest threat to freedom.
It is this fundamental principle that is the key to our natural resource policies. It is the lens through which we must view every proposal and action. When an environmental need is perceived, it must be discussed and pursued with freedom foremost. But this precious commodity not only confers rights, it also demands responsibilities. As examples, whether it is understanding and conserving salmon or respecting the rights of private property, these simply test whether we possess the intellectual and moral commitment worthy of our American legacy. I am determined that Siskiyou County shall pass muster.
All:
Those of you who don't know me, I am the Natural Resource Policy Specialist for Siskiyou County. I am not a Forest Service retiree, but I am of the absolute conviction that the folks in NAFSR and their influence on the USFS are crucial to the vital reform needed to move the agency back in the direction of its proper mission. I fully appreciate and understand the abject discouragement at the current state of things. We are indeed again at a time that "tries men's souls." I am not one to plaster my personal rantings around for personal gratification, but the following that I wrote for my column in the Siskiyou Daily News is an essential component of our message if we are to secure sufficient public support to effect change. If our conversation with the public is left at the scientific and administrative level, we will get lost in the complexity of the issues. The article is timely as well for Memorial Day.
Ric Costales
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
High Wood Product Output Doesn’t Correlate to Higher Carbon Emissions According to US Forest Service Research
Posted by Robert Hudson Westover, Public Affairs Specialist, USDA Forest Service, on May 19, 2011 at 1:23 PM
A study by researchers at the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory shows that the lowest rates of deforestation and forest carbon emissions occur in global regions with the highest rates of forest product output.
Counter intuitively global regions with the highest rates of deforestation and forest carbon emissions rank lowest in forest product output or what is referred to technically as industrial roundwood harvest.
These findings are significant when looking at forest management not only in terms of sustainable timber supply and demand but also from a climate change perspective. Global deforestation is a major contributor to carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, while forest management and growth is a major factor in the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This seemingly contradictory conclusion was made by U.S. Forest Service researcher Peter Ince in the recently published book “Sustainable Development in the Forest Products Industry.”
The historical data Ince and other researchers examined in this study supports the hypothesis that an economically vibrant industrial forest products sector has been key to forest policies and forestry practices that support sustainable timber supply and demand.
Based on his observations, Ince concludes that the future direction of forest products technology can have a large influence on the sustainability of forests and forest management.
“If future technology and wood demands generate sufficiently high values for timber as a raw material, then historical experience suggests that forests and forest management will thrive,” said Ince. “If the value of timber is cheapened, however, through low-value use or insufficient forest product technology development, then forests may face significant challenges regarding their future sustainability.”
Ince and his colleagues compared global data on timber harvest by region with data on changes in forest area and net forest carbon emissions (change in forest stock). The team used timber harvest and inventory data from the most recent United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations’ Global Forest Assessment (2005) along with data on forest carbon emissions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A study by researchers at the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory shows that the lowest rates of deforestation and forest carbon emissions occur in global regions with the highest rates of forest product output.
Counter intuitively global regions with the highest rates of deforestation and forest carbon emissions rank lowest in forest product output or what is referred to technically as industrial roundwood harvest.
These findings are significant when looking at forest management not only in terms of sustainable timber supply and demand but also from a climate change perspective. Global deforestation is a major contributor to carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, while forest management and growth is a major factor in the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This seemingly contradictory conclusion was made by U.S. Forest Service researcher Peter Ince in the recently published book “Sustainable Development in the Forest Products Industry.”
The historical data Ince and other researchers examined in this study supports the hypothesis that an economically vibrant industrial forest products sector has been key to forest policies and forestry practices that support sustainable timber supply and demand.
Based on his observations, Ince concludes that the future direction of forest products technology can have a large influence on the sustainability of forests and forest management.
“If future technology and wood demands generate sufficiently high values for timber as a raw material, then historical experience suggests that forests and forest management will thrive,” said Ince. “If the value of timber is cheapened, however, through low-value use or insufficient forest product technology development, then forests may face significant challenges regarding their future sustainability.”
Ince and his colleagues compared global data on timber harvest by region with data on changes in forest area and net forest carbon emissions (change in forest stock). The team used timber harvest and inventory data from the most recent United Nations Food and Agriculture Organizations’ Global Forest Assessment (2005) along with data on forest carbon emissions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The vehicle pictured is a portable roundwood processor.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Oregon’s Timber Supply: Steward It or Lose It
Oregon’s Timber Supply: Steward It or Lose It
by Mike Dubrasich, Exec Dir W.I.S.E.A talk given to the 912 Project Salem – Focus on Forestry Convention, Salem OR, May 21 2011
Click the link above
Northwest Oregon County Doesn’t Want Timber Receipts
Clatsop County recalled four of their five Commissioners through a recall effort due to their support of an LNG facility on the Columbia. The new commissioners have fired the entire County Planning Department.
At a meeting discussing the Implimentation Plan for the Clatsop State Forest, commissioners discussed trying to unlink the connection between timber harvests and receipts returned to the County.
Below is a letter from Christine Bridgens to the Editor of the Cannon Beach Gazette objecting to the Commissions’ actions.
Posted: Monday, May 23, 2011 2:22 pm | Updated: 2:26 pm, Mon May 23, 2011.
Even after hearing testimony from over 50 people in the logging/forestry industry, Commissioners Huhtala, Birkby, Lee and Chair Rohne chose not to support implementation of the Department of Forestry's Management plan, which provides for timber harvest, environmental and wildlife protection, and recreational opportunities.
Many are not aware that Commissioners Birkby & Lee (Huhtala came and left) recently attended an April 26 Wild Salmon Center/Sierra Club meeting at which Bob Van Dyk (Wild Salmon Center) began organizing a committee of local folks with a goal to severely limit logging.
Another of their goals will be to "decouple" (their term) the connection between timber and Clatsop County revenue for our schools, fire departments, Clatsop Care Center, Union Health District and many other important county services. Neither Birkby nor Lee admitted, at the Board of Commissioners meeting, to having an ex parte contact, having attended this Wild Salmon Center/Sierra Club meeting.
One of the assignments for the decoupling committee will be to identify forest areas they especially like, and then go to elected government entities, like the Clatsop County Commission, and pressure them to buy into a permanent no-logging plan for these areas. According to Van Dyk, this will be a yearlong campaign entitled, "Not Timber First."
At the May 11th BOCC meeting, I heard some of the same talking points from Comm. Birkby, Lee & Huhtala that I heard at Van Dyk's meeting April 26.
At this April 26 meeting, held at Clatsop College, Bob Van Dyk said he would return in May to continue his organizing. I asked Mr. Van Dyk, at the recent BOCC meeting when his next meeting would be, and he told me that I could not attend because it would be only for those on the committee. I wonder if Commissioners Birkby, Lee or Huhtala will be allowed to attend, and if they will be transparent about their interest and connection to this activist, anti-logging, special-interest group.
I think most of us know the answer.
Irresponsible, reckless governance is unacceptable!
Christine Bridgens
Warrenton
Ironically, as the Clatsop County Commissioners object to the scientific forest management strategy of the World's most productive softwood forest lands, Oregon's legislature has several bills that would direct the increase in sustained yield timber harvests on State Forests to benefit county services, schools and state coffers. Unfortunately, as the 2011 session winds down, the prospects for the legislature adopting a measure to increase timber harvests dwindle.
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