The 2012 Forest Report

Oregon Forest Resource Institute   

January 23, 2013

For immediate release

Contact: Paul Barnum – 971-673-2954

New video highlights ‘The Forest Report’

PORTLAND, Ore. – The Oregon Forest Resource Institute has produced a companion video to The Forest Report, a comprehensive economic study about the state’s forest sector.

The seven-minute video covers the main points of the 200-page study. Interviews with an economist, a conservationist, an industry analyst and a forest landowner help tell the story.

Dr. Tom Potiowsky, a Portland State University professor and one of the report’s authors, lays out the facts: 75 percent of Oregon’s annual timber harvest comes from private timberland, and the state’s forest sector accounts for 76,000 direct jobs and billions of dollars in income.

Mark Stern, director of The Nature Conservancy’s Forest Initiative, and Lindsay Warness, a forest policy analyst for Boise Cascade, discuss the plight of eastern Oregon’s national forests and the small towns struggling with the loss of mill after mill. They also emphasize that there are solutions that could restore forest health and revitalize rural economies.

The video also features landowner Brenda Woodard, who talks about her family’s forestland in Douglas County – what she calls “the middle of tree-growing country” – and notes how private timberlands are sustainably managed under the Oregon Forest Practices Act.

The brief video puts a human face on The 2012 Forest Report, which found that the forest sector, though hit hard by the recession, remains a vital contributor to Oregon’s economy. It is poised to rebound and add thousands of new jobs as the national housing market improves. The recovery will be stronger if state and federal leaders can find ways to provide Oregon mills with a stable, dependable supply of timber from the state’s vast federal forest resource, which is in need of more active management, the report says.

Watch the video on YouTube. Or view it at OFRI’s dedicated website, TheForestReport.org, where there is both a 12-page summary and the full report available for viewing or download.

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