The usually calm Oregon State Land Board, SLB, meetings have
produced a lot of attention since environmental lawsuits brought forest
management activity to a screeching halt on the Elliott State Forest.
Over 50 protesters set up outside of the SLB meeting on
December 10, 2013 as Governor John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown and
State Treasurer Ted Wheeler decided to take competitive bids on 2,700 acres of
the 93,000 acre Elliott State Forest, ESF.
Constitutional
Requirement
Historically, the ESF has supported the state’s Common
School Fund, as directed by Oregon’s Constitution. However, due to the
litigation over the Marbled Murrelet, a small seabird that may use a tree on
the ESF for a nest, incoming revenue has ground to a halt. In fact, so far in
2013 the Common School Fund has paid over $3,000,000 to support the ESF! This
is something the Treasurer’s Office and school funding advocates loathe.
A DEMOCRATIC Process
Governor John Kitzhaber allowed all of the protesters a try
at testifying before the SLB. Many of the commenters were disgusted by the
notion that Oregon would cut trees to help fund schools. Historically, public
forests at the national and state level have always supported schools, not to
mention roads and public safety.
Forest management activities were not the only thing that
confounded the protesters, several that spoke decried the fact that the three
Democrats, Governor Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Brown and State Treasurer
Wheeler that compose the State Land Board were adopting a strategy that puts a
price on the ESF. “It’s a LIE that Democrats protect the environment!!!”
What it used to be
Making a return visit to the SLB was former Elliott State
Forest Manager Jerry Phillips. As he told the SLB, Phillips spent 33 years on
the ESF, 19 as Manager.During his
time on the ESF, the forest brought in $300 million for the Common School Fund.
Phillips spent much of his time on the Elliott working out land
exchanges, which needed State Land Board approval, to increase the size of the
93,000-acre forest. The 2,700 acres that were approved for the initial bidding
process included tracts that Phillips added.
You can see why the Oregon timber counties would be disappointed in Sen. Ron Wyden's new plan for cutting some more timber on the federal government's checkerboard Oregon & California Railroad land holdings. Wyden's plan won't produce as much timber, or as much county revenue, as the language that passed the House, and county officials say they're less confident that it could avoid getting bogged down in litigation.
Sen. Ron Wyden explains his Oregon timber proposal.Stephanie Yao Long
Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson, president of the Association of O&C Counties, declared "I have to admit disappointment," saying the Wyden proposal comes up short for the association's three bedrock principles: sharply reduced litigation, increased timber cut and increased financial support for local counties. By Wyden's estimation, his bill would approximately double the timber cut in the lands, to 300 million to 350 million board feet, and raise support to county governments.
For Southwest Oregon counties near the edge of disintegration, with public safety resources far below any definition of safety, Wyden's plan must indeed seem inadequate. The O&C language that passed the House allowed for a cut that might reach 500 million board feet, which could provide considerably larger revenue stream to the counties.
The problem is that with opposition by both the Senate and the White House, there is no chance of the House language becoming law. The best, most promising approach is to pass something through the Senate and get it to a conference committee with the House, creating the prospect of something that might actually become law and provide some assistance to the counties.
Even that possibility is far from certain, considering the barren recent record of congressional conference committees. It would be a long shot to expect the current arrangement in Washington to produce anything substantive. But considering the desperate condition of the counties, where in places ordinary law enforcement has vanished as a daily fact of life, the effort is vital.
Both bills increase the logging cut while putting a considerable amount of the 3 million O&C acres beyond logging forever. They both try to limit unending litigation, although the Association of O&C Counties expresses doubt about Wyden's version. With these similarities of direction and goals, it seems that something workable might be made from the two of them.
What's unlikely to survive are two particular aspects of the House bill that are essentially deal-killers to the Senate and President Obama. After dividing up the O&C lands into two different trusts, the House bill places extensive federal lands under state management, an arrangement certain to draw resistance. It also lacks the protections against clear-cutting in the Wyden bill, which offers an approach of "ecological forestry" that may indeed be more expensive and inconvenient, but is also more publicly acceptable.
There are limitations to what any Congress might produce on this issue. The cut is never going back to the billion-board-foot boom times of the late '70s. Even if it somehow did, with all the mechanization of the past decades, that would not recreate the historic levels of jobs. For the counties, whatever comes out of this process – if anything comes out of this process – won't be a full solution, but only part of a pathway to one.
The O&C counties aren't the only groups critical of Wyden's proposal. Some Oregon
environmental groups, such as Oregon Wild, have their own objections to its litigation rules, and some would simply oppose any increased cut on federal lands.
To refuse to advance with the process now would be a long-odds bet on dealing with a more friendly president and Senate in 2017.
Considering the current emergency conditions of many of the counties, it would be a long time to wait, for an outcome that may not arise – and years of full Republican control of Washington in the last decade didn't exactly resolve the problem, either.
Despite the counties' deepest hopes, 1978 is not coming again. What the counties, and all of Oregon, needs is to begin finding a path to 2020, and the years beyond.
Variable retention harvesting is prescribed in Sen. Ron Wyden's proposed legislation for harvesting in younger highly-productive Douglas fir and Western hemlock forests (the "moist forests") on the O&C lands of western Oregon. Understanding the forestry technique is critical to understanding the senator's plan.
View full sizeIn variable retention forestry, portions of forest are retained throughout the harvest. area providing "lifeboats" for ecosystems. (Computer simulation by Laura Hardin, OSU)
Variable retention harvesting is modeled on patterns of natural disturbances, such as wildfire. In contrast to clear-cutting, where essentially all of the trees are removed, significant amounts (about 1/3 in the proposed legislation) of the pre-harvest forest are retained throughout the harvest area (see top photo). The retention would typically include unlogged forest patches up to several acres in size well distributed through the harvest area – "aggregated retention" -- as well as individual or small clusters of live and dead trees and down logs, distributed over logged portions of the harvest area -- "dispersed retention." Some of the aggregated retention will be along streams within the harvest area.
One important objective of variable retention harvesting is to "lifeboat" many of the forest-related plant and animal species, sustaining them within the harvest area until the new forest becomes established. For example, forest-dwelling small mammals and amphibians can be sustained by retaining heavily rotted logs that provide critical habitat for them.
Variable retention also provides for continuity in life-sustaining flows of energy into the soil from trees. In addition, the un-harvested forest patches or aggregates have special ecological value since they include undisturbed forest floors, a full range of tree sizes and mellow microclimates.
View full sizeThe openings created in variable retention forestry aid development of highly bio-diverse ecosystems. (Photo by Jerry Franklin)
Variable retention harvesting is being widely applied globally as a versatile and effective silvicultural approach, particularly where management goals require integration of ecological, economic, and cultural objectives. It is currently being used on five continents in countries as diverse as Sweden, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Chile. It also is being used on a diversity of forest ownerships including federal, state, and local public lands, trust lands, and private forest lands. Hundreds of peer-reviewed publications document the scientific underpinnings and the ecological benefits of variable retention harvesting.
Of course, a key question is what stands would receive variable retention harvesting in Sen. Wyden's proposed legislation. Harvesting would occur only in moist forest stands designated for sustained yield management. All of these would be stands currently less than 120 years of age and most would be stands that originated after previous harvests (usually clear-cutting) 60-90 years ago. No old-growth forests or trees would be harvested.
As proposed for the Bureau of Land Management lands, variable retention harvesting has the additional major ecological benefit of providing the significant openings needed for development of the highly bio-diverse "early successional ecosystems." These are the ecosystems that initially develop on forest sites after a harvest or other major disturbance, such as wildfire. They are biologically rich communities of herbs, shrubs and trees that, in turn, support an immense variety of animal life because of the abundant and diverse sources of food – herbage, nectar, fruits, nuts, seeds and prey. (See bottom photo.)
Many of the species found in these early successional ecosystems are habitat specialists that require early successional habitats. These include many songbirds and butterflies. Also, as hunters know, they are favored and critical habitat for deer and elk, because there is food for them to eat. Research at Mount St. Helens – the biodiversity hotspot of the Cascade Range -- has been critical in helping us to understand the ecological importance of early successional ecosystems.
While private forest lands might be expected to provide for biologically rich early successional ecosystems, they generally do not. Production forestry on industrial lands -- the source of most private harvest in Western Oregon -- seeks to maximize economic returns with intensive practices, such as intensive site preparation, dense tree planting, and control of shrubs and herbs with herbicides. Encouraging shrub-dominated communities and gradual re-establishment of tree cover is not consistent with such goals.
In summary, variable retention harvesting proposed in Sen. Wyden's legislation is fundamentally different from clear-cutting and associated practices. Variable retention is grounded in principles derived from natural forest ecosystems. As proposed it will provide for both continuity in forest biota and creation of openings needed for early successional species and processes.
Jerry Franklin is a professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington; K. Norman Johnson is a professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. They each worked on development of the Northwest Forest Plan and on development of Sen. Ron Wyden's forest management plan unveiled this week.
The Oregon Board of Forestry,
frustrated with the performance of the Northwest Forest Management Plan for the
Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, assigned a Subcommittee to present options
to the full Board that can improve the financial performance of the forests
while also enhancing the recreational and conservation opportunities on the
once County-owned forestland.
The State took over management of the
forests from the Counties decades ago but the revenue generated from forest
management is shared with the Counties.
In 2001, the BOF adopted a new
strategy for the forests in an effort to develop forests that produced timber
revenue while providing habitat for wildlife species that favored a multi-layered
forest canopy.
The 2001 plan, dubbed
Structure-Based-Management, has never produced the volume of timber called for.
Frequent windstorms along the north coast have wreaked havoc for the
Structure-Based-Management Strategy since the trees that were left after management
frequently blew down.
The Stakeholders'
group met on November 11th and reviewed alternative forest management
strategies. Some group members were annoyed when the group struggled to
identify tactics that could lead to increased timber revenues.
The Stakeholders invited two forest analytical
experts, Terry Droessler and Mark
Rasmussen, to identify the biological and economic outcomes of the various
strategies being considered. The group will meet at least two more times before
presenting their recommendations to the BOF Subcommittee.
Rep. Reardon was interested in seeing the Oregon Forest
Practices Act in action. The Stimson tract, outside of Cannon Beach, was smack
in the middle of Cannon Beach’s water supply. Stimson forester Tim Shiel
described the coordination with the City and the details necessary to conduct
the logging of the unit.
It is not an understatement to say that that Rep. Reardon
was impressed with the detail that went into logging the tract. Previously,
Reardon had worked out in the woods for Weyerhaeuser in the 1960s.
Bob let Rep. Reardon climb up to the cab of his log
yarder/processor to see a high tech version of machinery that has been around a
long time. Bob’s processor operator reports that operating a modern high tech
helicopter is less complicated than controlling the log processor.
Environmental activists previously staged sit-ins, road blockades and protests at Elliott State Forest. A bill passed in the Oregon Senate Monday targets tree sitters and others who interfere with state forestland management. (Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)
A threatened sea bird that nests in coastal forests could impact funding for schools across the state.
The lawsuit largely tied up logging in the forest, which state officials had originally estimated would net $25.2 million for the state's Common School Fund over the next two years. Now, officials say the sale of the three parcels, if completed, would fetch enough to manage the forest in the current biennium without raising any money for the school fund.
"It just means the Legislature has to draw more on the general fund because it doesn't have as much Common School Fund money to use," said Jim Paul, assistant director of the Department of State Lands for the land management division.
State officials originally planned to harvest 40 million board feet in Elliott State Forest in the next two years, Paul said. The lawsuit forced officials to revise their projections to 15 million board feet, estimated to fetch $8 million this biennium to cover forest management costs.
The Department of Forestry already laid off seven full-time employees in the Coos Bay office who work on timber sales as part of budget cuts, Paul said.
The three parcels proposed for sale amount to 2,714 acres in Coos and Douglas counties and are not areas included in the lawsuit from environmentalists, said Julie Curtis, spokeswoman for the Department of State Lands. The department is accepting public comments on the proposed sale until 5 p.m. Sept. 3.
The State Land Board is scheduled to meet Dec. 10 to consider final approval of a land sale. Gov. John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown and State Treasurer Ted Wheeler comprise the State Land Board.
"In a time when the State Land Board should be taking responsibility for the mismanagement of the Elliott State Forest, they are going over the heads of the public and the courts and finding ways to manage our public lands for profit instead of conservation," Erin Grady, a Cascadia Forest Defenders member, said in a press release.
If state succeeds in selling the three proposed parcels, officials would consider selling more, said Paul, of State Lands.
"If the forestlands look like it's no longer going to be a revenue-generating land type, we're looking at possibly divesting in those lands," he said. "Since these are the first parcels, I would still call this a due-diligence phase. The potential is there for us to continue down this path and look at the sale of additional forestlands in the Elliott."
The charred remains of a deer lie in the Oxbow Burn of August 1966. (Paul Petersen/The Register-Guard, 1996)
By John Perry For The Register-Guard
PUBLISHED:
On Aug. 20, 1966, during hot, dry weather with persistent easterly winds, construction equipment working southwest of Eugene on the Oxbow Ridge road in the Coast Range threw sparks that ignited roadside grass and brush.
Gusty winds rapidly spread the fire, burning 2,000 acres of mature forest within the first hour; within a week the conflagration had blackened more than 42,000 acres, most of which was covered with old growth Douglas fir.
Twelve hundred firefighters, 30 bulldozers, 40 fire engines and seven helicopters fought the blaze. One man died.
At first, many feared the fire would keep going until it got to the coast. People in Reedsport prepared to evacuate.
At the time, the Oxbow fire was Oregon’s fifth largest fire of the 20th century (after the three Tillamook fires of 1933, ’39 and ’45 and the 1936 Bandon fire). And it was the first large fire to be contained without benefit of a major change in the weather, testimony to the tenacity of the firefighters.
The Oxbow Ridge fire burned a swath roughly 6 miles across by 15 miles long, encompassing about 66 square miles (42,274 acres). Federal O&C timberlands, managed by the Bureau of Land Management, comprised 57 percent of the total acreage burned, International Paper Company owned 42 percent, while other private lands made up the remaining 1 percent.
After the fire was extinguished, salvage logging of the blackened and dead but still usable trees began in earnest in a cooperative effort on both BLM and International Paper lands. Logging contractors were brought in from across the state. During the subsequent three years, dozens of salvage logging operations produced an average of one truckload of logs leaving for Eugene and Reedsport area sawmills and plywood plants every minute from dawn to dusk.
The last salvage logging was completed by 1971. Then the reforestation effort shifted into high gear.
In 1974, I hired on with International Paper as regeneration forester, and on the first day I drove to a ridgetop on the edge of the Oxbow burn and looked out over the biggest clear-cut I’d ever seen. By then, much of the replanting had been accomplished, but not all. And there is a lot more to successful reforestation than just planting trees. For the next decade and more, the Oxbow Burn was a big part of my life.
Every Oxbow Burn acre was reseeded by helicopter, hand planted or both. Due to delays caused by the salvage logging effort and initial shortages of Douglas fir seed suitable for the area, shrubs and other competing vegetation got a three- or four-year head start, presenting a major reforestation challenge. Herbicides were the answer, and virtually every acre owned by IP was sprayed by helicopter at least once.
Another serious problem was animal damage. Rodents and deer rebounded exponentially after the fire, causing significant mortality among tree seedlings. Several thousand acres needed replanting after initial seeding efforts came up short. But by 1978, the Oxbow Burn was declared “reforested.”
Some of the reforestation efforts overachieved, in that too many seedlings became established. That was remedied over the ensuing years by pre-commercial thinning by chain saw to get the young stands down to about 300 trees per acre. Afterward, to increase growth, the properly spaced stands were fertilized with urea delivered by helicopter.
Then, by the late-1980s, the new Oxbow forest was deemed “free to grow” — and grow it did.
Last month, after a 15-year absence, I drove from west to east up the Smith River and through the Oxbow area, and I was awed by the transformation. What was once a vast expanse of hillsides covered by brush and blackened stumps is now a beautiful, vibrant young forest approaching financial maturity.
Just east of the Oxbow Divide, I was pleasantly surprised to come upon an active logging operation, the first in the Oxbow burn area as far as I know. A contractor for Roseburg Lumber Co. (International Paper sold its timberland to Roseburg in 1996), Iron Horse Logging of Florence, had clear-cut about 50 acres of nice second-growth timber right in the middle of what once was “the burn.” A high-lead yarder, a de-limber and log loader were positioned on a landing abutting the main Oxbow road, along with several log decks.
None of the trees in the stand being harvested are older than 45 years, yet they are yielding very nice sawlogs.
Some people want to stop all logging, or at least stop clear-cutting. They claim the only genuine forest is an old growth forest and that industrial tree farms aren’t real forests.
I disagree. The new Oxbow forest is a shining example of the rapid renewability and value of Western Oregon forests and a showcase of successful forest management after a catastrophic fire.
Roseburg Lumber expects to harvest 600 million board feet from its 17,000 Oxbow acres over the next 10 to 15 years. If it takes 15 years, that works out to 40 million board feet annually, or about 13,333 log truck loads per year. Those 13,333 loads of logs represent a lot of good family-wage jobs in the woods and mills and will generate substantial tax revenue to help pay for government.
The BLM soon plans to begin commercial thinning its Oxbow acreage. Federal ownership in the Oxbow area is part of the revested O&C Railroad land included in Sen. Ron Wyden’s and Rep. Peter DeFazio’s proposal to break the region’s timber supply logjam.
If adopted, the BLM’s 24,000 acres in the Oxbow forest would be part of the 1.5 million acres dedicated to timber production, while another 1.5 million acres of old growth elsewhere would be preserved (until the next big fire, anyway).
See it for yourself. From a mile south of the community of Crow southwest of Eugene, take Wolf Creek Road to its end. Then continue southwesterly on the BLM road entering the Oxbow burn area about three miles past Alma (where the Lane County Sheriff’s Office has a mothballed work camp facility).
A white-painted message on the blacktop indicates precisely where the 1966 fire started. Continue past the logging site mentioned above, cross the summit divide, and drop into the Smith River drainage.
Continue down the river about 40 miles, eventually coming out on Highway 101 at Gardiner, just north of Reedsport.
The Oxbow burn is gone. Now it’s the Oxbow forest, which over the coming years will produce a large amount of forest products along with many high-wage jobs and significant tax revenue. Then, the logged-over land will be reforested and the cycle will repeat.
And it can and will be done while protecting fish and wildlife resources and habitat.
John Perry, a retired forester and former state fish and wildlife commissioner, lives on his Brownsville area wheat and Christmas tree farm.
Interior halts selection of scientists for peer review of wolf delisting proposal
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Published: Monday, August 12, 2013
The Interior Department is putting the brakes on a scientific peer review of its proposal to remove Endangered Species Act protections for wolves after discovering it had improper knowledge of the scientists who would be participating in the review.
The Fish and Wildlife Service was able to deduce which scientists its contractor AMEC was proposing to review the delisting proposal, a fact that runs afoul of the agency’s peer review standards, an FWS spokesman said.
The peer review selection process has been put on hold pending further review, said the spokesman, Gavin Shire.
“We’ve decided that [it] doesn’t meet the standard for independent peer review selections,” he said.
The decision is likely to come as a relief to wolf advocates who had criticized the agency for suggesting that AMEC exclude from the peer review three scientists who had signed a May 21 letter raising scientific objections to a leaked wolf delisting proposal (Greenwire, Aug. 8).
Today, one of those three scientists said the agency was wrong to recommend he be excluded from the peer review team.
John Vucetich, a professor at Michigan Technological University who has conducted extensive research on wolves at Isle Royale National Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said his past criticism of the agency’s delisting proposal should not disqualify him from the peer review team.
Vucetich, Roland Kays of North Carolina State University and Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, were among 16 scientists who signed the letter. AMEC proposed that all three be included in the peer review.
But Fish and Wildlife in a recent email to the firm — which had been selected to lead the peer review — said signatories to that letter would not be appropriate for the peer review, though it is not entirely clear why. The agency has not provided a copy of that email.
“Everyone who signed that letter was qualified and knowledgeable,” Vucetich said in an interview with E&ENews PM today. “People should be more concerned with the qualifications of a person rather than their final judgment.”
The opinions expressed in the May 21 letter are exactly what’s expected of peer reviewers, Vucetich added.
“If you pass judgment but don’t offer any reasons or if you pass judgment and simply aren’t qualified to, that’s inappropriate,” he said in a separate interview with the California Wolf Center that was posted to YouTube. “I and several others passed judgment, but we passed judgment after becoming familiar with the materials and based on our qualified knowledge of the topic. I don’t think that’s advocacy.”
Vucetich said FWS easily knew that he was among the scientists AMEC was proposing to take part in the review.
The firm had submitted the resumes of the scientists it was proposing for the review with the names removed. However, any reasonable observer could have identified Vucetich’s resume given that his name is cited about 100 times in the resume for the publications he has helped author, Vucetich said.
Wayne’s resume would have also been readily apparent, Vucetich said.
“It’s simply a lie,” he said, to suggest the agency didn’t know who was on the peer review list.
Vucetich was also picked to participate in the peer review by Atkins Global, another environmental consulting firm, which bid for the FWS contract but lost.
The agency’s handling of the peer review last week drew complaints from critics who argued it was trying to stifle scientific dissent.
“It seems like reviewers are being cherry-picked,” said Dan Thornhill, a scientist for Defenders of Wildlife who holds a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia and has been involved in peer reviews for more than 15 years. “It’s not like a jury. You really want things to be vetted by the best and brightest scientists.”
Defenders and other environmental groups have opposed the delisting proposal, arguing that wolves should be allowed to occupy more of their former habitat in the southern Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast.
Vucetich said the Endangered Species Act suggests that to be recovered, a species has to be “somewhat well distributed throughout its former range.” Currently, wolves occupy about 15 percent of their former range, he said.
The FWS solicitation for the peer review sought experts with backgrounds in wolf ecology who are sufficiently independent from FWS and who have not been engaged in advocacy.
“Peer reviewers will be advised that they are not to provide advice on policy,” the FWS solicitation stated. “Rather, they should focus their review on identifying and characterizing scientific uncertainties.”
FWS said it did not order the removal of any particular scientists from the peer review panel, though it did send an email to AMEC raising concerns over whether the signatories to the letter would be sufficiently independent and objective.
“Objective and credible peer review is critical to the success of threatened and endangered species recovery and delisting efforts,” agency spokesman Chris Tollefson said last week. “For this reason, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service takes every step possible to work with our independent peer review contractors to ensure that selected scientific experts have not prejudged the proposals they will review.”
The FWS delisting decision was hailed by Western states, livestock groups and hunters who agreed with the agency that wolves are no longer in danger of extinction after being nearly eradicated from the lower 48 states (Greenwire, June 7).
More than 6,000 wolves roam the western Great Lakes states and Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, up from nearly zero when they were listed in the 1970s.
