|
BANDON -- Oregon's Secretary of State is defending a decision to increase logging on the Elliot State Forest, despite continued cries by environmentalists that endangered species will lose valuable habitat.
Kate Brown, speaking after a political fundraiser Saturday night, said she made the decision knowing that it would provide more revenue for Oregon and more local forestry jobs.
'I knew from every million board feet we harvested from the Elliot, we put 20 to 30 people back to work in Coos and Douglas County," Brown said.
Brown, along with the governor and the state treasurer, voted to increase logging on state land in October. The three officials manage the state's 153-year-old system of harvesting timber to support funding for Oregon schools.
But increasing the annual harvest from 500 acres to 850 acres on the Elliot, northeast of Coos Bay, has drawn stiff opposition from environmental groups. Members sat in trees last summer and launched legal challenges to protest the risk to the marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird. Last month, the new director of one group, Cascadia Wildlands, vowed he would continue to fight logging in the Elliot.
Brown counters that the state's new management plan would sufficiently protect species while generating badly-needed revenue for schools.
'I can totally understand the perspective that the protesters have, and, for me, it's about achieving a balance," Brown said.
The new forest management plan employs a system called 'take avoidance" used by private loggers. The state spends two years surveying an area of forest for threatened species before making a decision to log.
The Oregon Department of Forestry estimates the plan will increase the annual harvest from 25 million board feet to 40 million -- bolstering revenue from $7.5 million to as much as $13 million.
Those funds are re-invested into the principal of the Common School Fund. That $1 billion dollar trust, invested in the stock market, pays out about $50 million annually to Oregon's 197 school districts.
That's only a tiny sliver of the $6 billion the state spends on schools each year.
Reporter Daniel Simmons-Ritchie can be reached at 541-269-1222, ext. 249, or at dritchie@theworldlink.com.
Read more: http://theworldlink.com/news/local/top-dem-defends-elliot-state-forest-logging/article_1d18a8a4-5130-5c17-a48b-c576e1dac458.html?mode=story#ixzz1usDPzxAc
No comments:
Post a Comment