Follow Wyden into the woods

Follow Wyden into the woods Editorial

By The Oregonian Editorial Board 
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on December 05, 2013 at 5:21 PM, updated December 06, 2013 at 9:22 AM

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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.

Bringing back good old days of logging difficult

Bringing back good old days of logging difficult

This May 29, 2008 file photo shows Jake Hamann of Butte Falls, Ore., on a U.S. Bureau of Land Management stewardship project near Selma, Ore. The BLM is working on a new management plan for its forests in Western Oregon to replace one that failed to meet Endangered Species Act requirements.(AP Photo/Jim Craven/Mail Tribune)

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Nothing came to symbolize the difficulty of bringing back the good old days of logging in Oregon like the Bush administration's plan to boost timber production on 3,750 square miles of federal land in 18 counties, an area about three times the size of Rhode Island.

Big promises of logs and revenue for timber counties won the Western Oregon Plan Revision the nickname of "The Whopper," spoken affectionately by timber interests and contemptuously by conservationists. But after five years of planning, it all came crashing down. Unable to pass muster under the Endangered Species Act, it was withdrawn by the Obama administration in 2009.

Now, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on a kinder and gentler approach. Though some people are calling it "Whopper Junior," the BLM pointedly is not. In a preliminary planning document released this month, the BLM's state director, Jerome E. Perez, said the new approach will be based on what the public wants, science, the law and on the goals of healthy forests, not board feet of timber.

"These 2.5 million acres have an important role to the social, economic and ecological wellbeing of Western Oregon, as well as to the greater American public," he wrote. "In an effort to try to change the dialogue, besides changing how we engage the public, I want to focus our discussions around outcomes, not outputs."

The BLM says it will finish the new plan by fall 2015. It has been asking tribes, conservation groups, counties and the timber industry what they want from the lands. The agency has hired a facilitator to make sure they keep in close touch with fish and wildlife scientists at other agencies — a requirement of the Endangered Species Act that was not followed in the first go-round.

With the details still to be worked out, conservationists warily welcomed the new approach. But the timber industry and some county officials worry the new plan won't allow the amount of timber production they think is necessary to improve the financial health of Oregon's timber country, some of whose counties are near bankruptcy.

"It is difficult. There is a lot of history. And it's a complex issue," said Mark Brown, a conservation biologist who is managing the project for BLM.

The stakes are high. Spotted owls continue to decline and some timber counties that depend on a share of federal logging revenues are struggling to pay for basic services, like jails and sheriff's patrols.

Timber has been a leading part of Oregon's economy since the days leading up to World War II, when it became the nation's leading timber producer. But the industry is a shadow of what it was before the 1990s, when logging on national forests was cut by 90 percent to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon.

After 30 years of fighting, the issues remain the same. The timber industry argues for more logging to produce logs, generate jobs and prevent wildfires. Conservation groups argue for less logging to prevent wildfires, protect fish and wildlife habitat, and maintain clean water.

The O&C lands are named for the Oregon & California Railroad, which got land in the 1860s to finance the railroad. After the company went bust, the government in 1916 took back a checkerboard of one-mile squares interspersed with private timberlands.

A special law enacted in 1937 governs management of the lands, an early attempt at managing federal lands for multiple uses, including clean water and recreation. They became a cash cow for the counties. Unlike the national forests, which share 25 percent of logging revenues with counties to help pay for schools and roads, the O&C lands share 75 percent, with no restrictions.

During the 1980s, BLM was selling 1 billion board feet of timber a year, producing so much money that some O&C counties did not have to assess property taxes. But in the 1990s, conservation groups won lawsuits demanding BLM and the U.S. Forest Service stop cutting old growth forests where salmon and spotted owls lived.

To settle the lawsuits, the Clinton administration produced the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging 90 percent to protect fish and wildlife. The O&C lands now produce a fifth of the timber they used to. That means less money for the O&C counties. Congress created a safety net for the counties that paid them a subsidy to make up for the lost logging revenues while they developed new sources of revenue. But the amount was steadily ramped down, and now has run out. Renewal is uncertain and voters have been loath to raise their own taxes to make up the difference.

The timber industry and the counties recognize there is no chance of hitting 1 billion board feet again. Even the original "Whopper" promised only half that. They view the 500 billion mark as a minimum and worry the new BLM plan won't produce the logs or revenues from timber they would like to see.

"More credence is being given ecological values, wildlife species and recreation, rather than the main emphasis being what the O&C Act calls for, which is sustainable timber supply," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group.

He and Doug Robertson, a Douglas County commissioner and president of the Association of O&C Counties, have pinned their hopes on Congress enacting proposed legislation that splits the O&C lands in two, with half going to timber production without the constraints of federal environmental laws, to produce $100 million for the counties.

Conservation groups are wary, but encouraged to see BLM taking a different approach. And they have little sympathy for the counties, noting they could solve their fiscal crises by raising taxes to levels that are still below the state average, and that industry automation is trimming jobs even as production increases.

Doug Heiken of the conservation group Oregon Wild said the O&C lands already produce more than a third of the timber of all the federal lands under the Northwest Forest Plan, and producing any more would threaten a key habitat bridge for wildlife between the Coast Range and the Cascades.

BLM has made a point of not promising anything in terms of timber or county revenues. The formal statement of what BLM hopes to achieve calls for large connected blocks of mature forests, clean water, conservation of threatened and endangered species, restoring the natural role of fire in the ecosystem, and a sustained yield of timber.

That all points to some level of timber less than the industry and the counties want.

Kitzhaber panel fails to reach consensus on O&C lands logging

Kitzhaber panel fails to reach consensus on O&C lands logging

By The Oregonian 
on February 07, 2013 at 6:00 AM, updated February 07, 2013 at 6:10 AM

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View full sizeJamie Francis, The Oregonian 

After three months of work, Gov.John Kitzhaber's panel of timber executives, environmentalists and leaders from Oregon's most financially strapped counties couldn't agree on how to solve the logging tug-of-war over on 2.6 million acres of federal forestland in Western Oregon.

But the 14-member panel has teed up Congress to forge a compromise by drawing on options the committee explored, Kitzhaber said Wednesday. He's recommending it remain in place to advise Oregon's Congressional delegation.

The panel has "changed the tone of the debate," Kitzhaber said, adding that he's "very, very optimistic" a solution will be found.

"We prepared a menu," the governor said. "Now they have to take it back to D.C. and prepare a meal."

The Oregon & California Railroad timberlands, mostly owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, are crucial for the state. Logging there provide jobs and federal payments to 18 rural counties and that money has dropped with logging declines, leaving some southwest Oregon counties struggling to provide basic services.

The lands, mixed into a checkerboard of private parcels, also provide critical habitat for fish and wildlife, including salmon and the northern spotted owl, listed as threatened in 1990.

The group's failure to reach consensus is a rare stumble for Kitzhaber, who said heexpected the panel to craft a proposal when he launched it last October. He also said that would be a tall order; the problem has confounded policy makers for decades.

The panel deadlocked on some key points, including the amount of logging and the degree of streamside protection. In a letter to Oregon's delegation, Kitzhaber declined to endorse a specific approach.

"I didn't throw in a specific proposal because ultimately this is going to be negotiated with a whole host of interests back in D.C.," he said.

Kitzhaber added a sweetener, pledging $10 million a year for 10 years toward voluntary private land conservation if a deal is reached.

County and timber representatives on the panel favored plans that would increase logging to more than 500 million board feet a year. They would generate more than $100 million dollars in annual county revenues, up from $13 million now.

Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader and Greg Walden have pitched one such plan. They proposed converting 1.5 million acres to a "public trust" managed for commercial logging purposes.

View full size 

Environmental groups say that approach would run afoul of federal environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, and cut into hundreds of thousands of acres of federally designated critical habitat.Conservation representatives on the panel favored sticking closer to the current 200 million board feet a year, though they agreed to "regeneration harvests" with limited clearcuts. O&C logging is largely thinning projects now.

Those proposals would generate up to $36 million a year for counties, who don't collect property taxes from federal lands.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has raised concerns about the political viability of DeFazio's proposal, and says he wants forest management "to comply with all federal laws."

Allyn Ford, a panel member and president of Roseburg Forest Products, said the governor helped build a better working relationship between all the parties. That's unique, he said, and should help going forward. "A grand consensus would have been wonderful," Ford said, "but the issue was really trying to get the facts on the table."

The governor's staff prepared a 94-page report that summarizes findings, including modeling runs for different logging scenarios. The panel also considered selling some federal land, perhaps 200,000 acres, to private logging companies to raise more money.

John Kober, a panel member and executive director of the Pacific Rivers Council, said there isn't enough land reasonably available for logging to solve the counties' financial plight.
Conservation members noted that property tax rates are low in the O&C counties and that Oregon's timber taxes are low among Western states.

"We can't solve it with timber alone," Kober said. "It's got to be a shared responsibility."
Statements from Wyden and DeFazio's offices did not address the odds of finding a solution or the timing of Congressional action.

Any solution likely won't come in time to help timber-reliant counties with their 2013-14 budgets. Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson, a panel member and president of the Association of O&C Counties, said counties will once again press for federal bridge funding.
About a third of Douglas County's $30 million general fund comes from county timber payments, Robertson said, down from two-thirds historically.

"We're eliminating positions and services and trying to identify priorities, mainly law enforcement," Robertson said. "It's not going to be pretty, I can tell you that."

Charles Pope of The Oregonian contributed to this report.
-- Scott Learn and Yuxing Zheng.

Governor Kitzhaber Calls for Congressional Action on O&C Lands


NEWS RELEASE

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Media Contact:
Tim Raphael, 503-689-6117
Amy Wojcicki, 503-689-5324

Governor Kitzhaber Calls for Congressional Action on O&C Lands  

 

(Salem, OR) —  Governor Kitzhaber today called for Congressional action to improve the financial stability of Oregon counties, ensure adequate sources of timber to support mills and jobs and meet conservation goals for land and water protection. In a letter to Oregon’s Congressional Delegation, Governor Kitzhaber reported on the work of his O&C Lands Panel and outlined components of a solution for hard-hit counties.

The Governor brought together a diverse group of 14 county officials, forest product industry representatives and conservation leaders that spent three months developing a series of forest management options. The panel seeks to continue its work with the Oregon delegation to resolve the longstanding O&C issue.

“I applaud the panel for establishing a foundation of understanding and trust between county officials, forest product industry representatives and conservation leaders that has eluded O&C discussions for decades,” said Governor Kitzhaber. “I believe a solution can and should be passed into law that achieves significant economic and environmental benefits for Oregonians.”

The O&C Lands Panel analyzed a range of land management options utilizing timber supply and projections modeling as well as ecological effects modeling. The results propose creative new ways to optimize public values tied to O&C land management.

In his letter to the Oregon delegation, Governor Kitzhaber highlighted several important components of an O&C solution that are supported by the analysis:

• Stable and predictable timber sale levels above current harvest levels can be achieved with minimal impact to old-growth and aquatic ecosystems;
• Timber harvest and/or land disposition revenues can significantly improve the financial stability of O&C counties;
• There are approximately 150,000 acres of special places deserving of Wilderness designation or some other form of legislative protection. Additional acres should be considered for Wild and Scenic River designation;
• Voluntary, non-regulatory private land conservation strategies can play an important role in advancing conservation values, timber supply and fire management; and
• The O&C Act should be amended to create more certainty in producing environmental and economic outcomes.

Oregon and California (O&C) lands are unique to Oregon. The 2.6 million acres of forests across 18 counties are a compilation of land ownerships resulting from various Congressional actions dating to the Oregon and California Railroad Act of 1866. For more detail:

Link to O&C Lands Report:
http://oregon.gov/gov/GNRO/docs/OCLandsReport.pdf

Link to Governor’s letter:
http://www.oregon.gov/gov/GNRO/docs/OCDelegationLetter.pdf

Link to Panel Perspectives:
http://www.oregon.gov/gov/GNRO/docs/OCPanelPerspectives.pdf

 

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Gov. Kitzhaber's timber panel is on necessary, difficult path

Gov. Kitzhaber's timber panel is on necessary, difficult path

By The Oregonian Editorial Board 
on October 22, 2012 at 5:20 PM, updated October 22, 2012 at 5:56 PM

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A truck carrying logs from private lands winds its way through Curry County, one of the counties hardest hit by a sharp decline in timber harvests on federal forestlands.Jamie Francis, The Oregonian

The 14-member panel appointed by Gov. John Kitzhaber to create a proposal for allowing more logging on federal lands in Oregon's timber-dependent counties has barely started its work. But already the task looks about as daunting as logging those lands with nothing but axes and old-fashioned cross-saws.

First, well-known conservationist Andy Kerr declined an invitation to join the panel. A week or so later, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who will play a key role in trying to persuade Congress to support the panel's proposal, sent another bolt of lightning into the forest when he released a seven-point "road map for federal legislation to navigate both the House and Senate." Wyden's road map included the notion that the counties "also need to do their part in reducing disparities in tax rates and developing a reasonable level of revenue from local activities."

Kerr and Wyden both did the right thing. If Kerr, as The Oregonian's Charles Pope reported, felt that Kitzhaber's ground rules required concessions he could not make, his presence would have been counterproductive. And Wyden only stated the obvious. If anything, their actions might help inject some urgency into the process.

Jamie Damon, a Clackamas County commissioner and member of the Kitzhaber panel who also is a professional mediator, described the challenge: "We're trying to create a new path forward where one doesn't necessarily exist."

Wyden's "road map" is really a list of seven principles that focus on what he thinks should be included in the proposal to make it politically palatable: stable funding for counties, sustainability, conservation, more efficient management of forestlands, legality, assignment of land-management responsibilities and safeguarding old growth. While the details within some of these categories -- such as the role of taxes in stable funding and the possibility of private management of some federal lands -- are controversial, the broad goals are reasonable.

Both Wyden and Kitzhaber have expressed concern that an existing proposal to revise management of so-called Oregon & California railroad lands -- backed by Oregon U.S. Reps. Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader and Greg Walden -- cannot navigate its way through Congress. Thus the need to find a new path.

While attention has focused on reaching a compromise between conservationists and the forest products industry, both of which are represented on the advisory panel, that is not the only challenge. Whatever compromise the panel negotiates must also be applicable in other states.

It helps that Wyden likely will be chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in the next Congress. But it's unlikely that he can deliver a bill that grants his home state more say in management of federal lands unless some of that leniency extends elsewhere.

"You don't get to do something that groundbreaking without other people looking to apply it to their states," said chief of staff Jeff Michels.

This probably seems unnecessarily complicated to rural residents long starved for hope. Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson, also a member of Kitzhaber's panel, said the view in these counties is: "They have been doing their part; they've been living within their budgets."

Robertson also points out that even if residents of struggling counties like Josephine and Curry wanted to raise their taxes, the options would be limited. The quickest path would be a temporary levy, and the political cultivation necessary for a yes vote would take months, if not years.

We will repeat our long-held belief that these counties, most of which have property-tax rates 40 to 80 percent below the state median, eventually need to raise taxes. But political leaders in Salem and Washington, D.C., also have to recognize that these rural residents want tangible signs that more forest jobs are on the way before they'll even think about voting for higher tax rates.

Damon, the mediator, summed up the challenge, saying both sides need to "come at it more from an analytical perspective and less of an emotional perspective."

That's easier to say than to do, but it's the only road map that's likely to lead to a more prosperous future.

Conservation leader bolts from Kitzhaber's county payments panel

Conservation leader bolts from Kitzhaber's county payments panel

Published: Thursday, October 04, 2012, 4:38 PM     Updated: Thursday, October 04, 2012, 4:54 PM

 By Charles Pope, The Oregonian 
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View full sizeThe Associated PressThe fight to replace county timber payments with a plan that would increase logging on some federal land has triggered controversy.

WASHINGTON – Gov. John Kitzhaber’s delicate effort to reachagreement for replacing the county timber payments program hit a bump Thursday when the leader of one conservation group refused to participate, denouncing it as an “effort to apply lipstick to a pig.”
    
The blast came from Andy Kerr, a well-known Oregon conservationist who Kitzhaber invited to join a panel of other environmentalists, county officials and timber interests to write a plan for using federal forests controlled by the Bureau of Land Management to fund payments to counties.
    
In a letter to Kitzhaber, however, Kerr declined, saying the starting point was fatally flawed because it would allow “clear cutting” on some federal land.
    
“I felt that the Governor’s necessary precondition of supporting clear-cutting as part of any possible solution he is willing to support to be unnecessary,” Kerr said in a statement. “Clear-cutting is so 20th Century.”
    
Kerr also said the three environmental groups that have accepted Kitzhaber’s invitation “collectively do not have the ability to deliver the necessary critical mass of conservation community support.”
    
The stakeholders are charged with crafting a blueprint based on a proposal offered by Reps.Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader.
    
The plan would convert 1.5 million acres of Oregon and California Railroad Grant, the so-calledO&C lands, to a "public trust" that would be managed by a committee selected by the governor. The trust property would be managed for commercial purposes with some of the revenue going to counties for such critical local functions as education and law enforcement.
    
Another large parcel would be managed as a conservation area. Walden, DeFazio and Schrader say they've charted a middle course that allows additional production while also including environmental protections. Their plan also would bestow federal protection to several pristine areas in the state, including 93 miles of the Rogue River and 15 miles of the Molalla River.
    
Whatever emerges will attempt to find a new source of income that once came from commercial logging. When the amount of timber harvested plummeted, Congress approved direct payments to the counties began beginning in 2000.  Those payments end next year and if a replacement isn’t found, some counties could face bankruptcy. Congress must approve any plan, however.
    
Kerr says the plan is not balanced. 
    
“As a card-carrying conservationist, I've compromised before and will do so again,” he said in an email interview. 
    
“The federal component can involve federal public lands, but not if it involves effective privatization and industrialization such as clear-cutting,” he said.
    
Walden said in an interview Thursday that Kerr’s decision would not slow progress. DeFazio and a spokesman for Kitzhaber agreed, characterizing Kerr as a rogue actor who’s out of step with the larger conservation community.
    
“It’s time to move forward with Oregonians who want to fix this problem,” Walden said.
    
“We will work through this and I have no doubt we’ll succeed. This is just one person,” he said.
    
“Frankly, people who do not want a solution should not be at the table anyway,” DeFazio said in a statement. “It says a lot that Kerr doesn’t even want to have a conversation about this issue, unless it’s on his terms.  That’s sad.  This process demands compromise – something Kerr is apparently not interested in.”
    
Kitzhaber’s spokesman Tim Raphael said the governor is “disappointed and surprised” by Kerr’s decision, insisting that Kitzhaber is committed to properly balanced conservation and production.

-- Charles Pope