Tom, an EOU alumnus, is currently serving as a member of
Oregon’s Board of Forestry.
According to the Blue
Mountain Eagle newspaper, Tom’s first task will be to listen to faculty,
staff and students as he transitions from forestry to academia.
Showing posts with label Boise Cascade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boise Cascade. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Timberman Trades Forest Products for University
Tom Insko, Boise Cascade’s Area Manager for its Inland
Region in Northeast Oregon and Northeast Washington, has been selected as the
next President of Eastern Oregon University in La Grande.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Matt Donegan, who turned love of the outdoors into millions, emerges as Oregon leader
Matt Donegan, who turned love of the outdoors into millions, emerges as Oregon leader
View full sizeMatt Donegan, president of the Oregon Board of Higher Education, leads the meeting in which University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere was fired in late 2011. The move was made, in part, after Lariviere strayed from the board's direction to limit his work on gaining more autonomy for the university.
Matt Donegan sits at the middle of a long table, spitting distance from the microphone where each increasingly frustrated witness testifies on behalf of then-University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere.
A larger-than-usual security crew dots the room, prepared in case the Oregon Board of Higher Education meeting to decide Lariviere's fate turns violent. A day earlier, Donegan, the board's president, had received a death threat from a Lariviere supporter.
The 40-something entrepreneur nods quietly as professors, politicians and wealthy alumni boo. Several yell "Shame on you."
But after several hours Donegan - still controlled and measured - politely steers board members toward a unanimous vote. It's Nov. 28, 2011, and Lariviere is out.
A relative newcomer to Oregon with no particular educational expertise or political experience, Donegan has been tapped by two governors for high-profile appointments based on his forest management background and a knack for problem-solving. Most recently, Gov. John Kitzhaber named Donegan to his Oregon Education Investment Board, where the twoare working to overhaul the state's education system from preschool through college.
Donegan, now 45, and a partner sold their billion-dollar timber investment firm last year, allowing him to focus more exclusively on public service, a calling instilled in him as a kid sitting around his Irish Catholic family's dining room table.
His successful leadership so far, and independent wealth, have generated rumors of a bright political future, including a possible bid for governor, a move Donegan says he won't rule out.
But as his public star has risen because of his ability to get results in tough situations, Donegan's private world has descended into chaos.
Eight days after the Lariviere hearing, Donegan's wife filed for divorce. Over the past year and a half, the private man's personal life has spilled into open court as he fights for custody of his three young children.
Traditional family roots
When he was 14, Donegan dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, or maybe a lawyer or an engineer, because he was good at math. Then his father took the family of five on their first-ever vacation.
They drove north from their Tampa, Fla., home for 12 hours, climbing slowly into the misty hills of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. They arrived at a musty little cabin after dark and the teen drifted to sleep.
He awoke to a new world.
"I remember the fireflies, the rivers and lakes. There was a deep connection I can't quite put my finger on," he said. "We came home from that vacation and it really put me on a new path."
Donegan's father, a first-generation American born to Irish immigrants, was an insurance claims adjuster in Manhattan, not far from the Bronx neighborhood where Donegan spent his early years. It was a solid job, but one that didn't provide for many extravagances. Strict Catholics, Donegan's parents preached patriotism, populism and service. Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were idolized. Big business was not.
He graduated with a forestry degree from the University of Florida, working along the way and, at times, sleeping on friends' couches. Later, with help from a guidance counselor, Donegan earned a full-ride scholarship in a master's program that wove in threads of finance and management. He graduated in 1991 and landed a job at Georgia Pacific where a career with good income and growth potential was mapped out before him. But it didn't feel quite right.
When an offer came from Hancock Timber Resource Group, an upstart based in Boston that managed millions of acres of timberland portfolios, Donegan was tempted. The firm was the first in its field to manage sustainable forests as a secure and profitable investment. Donegan talked to friends, family and colleagues. Some pushed him on; some said the 5-year-old firm seemed too risky.
"I vetted and vetted and vetted," he said, "that's what I do. I do well at the vetting process and come out with actionable steps. I don't come away with ambiguity."
Hancock was a perfect fit. He'd work all night, sleep a few hours, shower and still beat others into the office. He rose through the ranks, earning an executive position by age 28. But after four years, he felt the hunger to test his own skills and instincts.
On his second attempt to launch a business, Donegan teamed with a former Hancock colleague, Scott Jones. They crafted Forest Capital Partners as a smaller version of Hancock, and past colleagues and clients soon called looking to switch. Yet the young partners vowed not to poach from their old employer, which had treated them well.
Forest Capital grew slowly, landing small deals and pounding the streets for new investors. Until February 2005, when they went big time. The partners agreed to buy2.2 million acres in six states from Boise Cascade for $1.65 billion. The deal, which included 629,000 acres in Oregon, was the largest purchase of standing timber in U.S. history.
Donegan made a side trip through Portland after surveying some of the new land. Forest Capital needed a West Coast office, he thought, as he called an old friend for an over-the-phone driving tour of the city's best neighborhoods - and schools. He'd married a college classmate, Laura, three years earlier. They'd put off a family until Forest Capital seemed stable, and now Laura was pregnant.
By July, the couple were moving into a stately home on Southwest Jackson Street, three houses down from one of his largest customers.
"I had definitely traded in the life of anonymity in Boston to one of deep familiarity in Portland," he said. "It was as intense an immersion as you can contemplate."
Earning a name for himself Then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski met Donegan in 2006, not long after Forest Capital bought the Boise Cascade land - some of which the governor had wanted for a new state forest.
After a laugh over how the state had been outbid, the pair discussed shared beliefs in timber's future, from sustainable logging to using woody biofuels.
"Matt was an oddity in his industry," Kulongoski said. "He was a voice of the timber industry looking forward as opposed to always looking back."
Over the next three years, Kulongoski appointed Donegan to three state boards.
Donegan had sat on a variety of national boards and commissions through the years. But now, at 40, Donegan whittled away at the posts that took him across the country so he could stay closer to home and his growing family.
Kulongoski appointed him to the Oregon Board of Higher Education in 2009, saying later that he believed in Donegan's ability to learn quickly and manage people. Donegan admits he didn't understand the full extent of Oregon's higher ed issues or how funding for schools had become so choked. But he knew how to research, he said later, and he knew how his own education at public universities had changed his life.
After Kitzhaber was elected in 2011, he appointed Donegan to a second term on the higher ed board, which elected him president. Then Kitzhaber brought him onto the education investment board, which is streamlining how schools statewide are organized with the goal of getting all the state's students to earn a high school diploma or equivalent.
"Matt was clearly a force that broke on the scene," said George Pernsteiner, former chancellor of the Oregon University System who worked side by side with Donegan through the Lariviere decision. "He integrated as quickly into the business community as with his leadership in the state."
Other state leaders and business colleagues consistently praise his calm, deliberate manner. They call him an independent and analytical thinker. Donegan says that's because he's always questioning things, even those closest to his heart.
Donegan recalled a meeting he had with some Jesuit priests at Springhill College in Alabama. He was stuck, tortured by questions he'd long held about his Catholic faith. Questions that would not have been welcomed by his parents.
"You must cultivate your own conscience," Donegan recalls being told. "If that conflicts with convention, go with your conscience."
Hearing that, he said, was life-changing. Since moving to Portland, Donegan has regularly attended Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Donegan continued to balance his burgeoning public life with regular trips to scope new timberland and survey existing holdings. At Forest Capital he was the peacemaker. Occasionally satellite offices filled with foresters and biologists clashed with the administrative Portland office.
"The central office saw them as a threat to the company. I saw entrepreneurs and strong leadership," Donegan said. "I was hoping to empower them and work toward a common goal. I loved seeing those local guys innovate. It would have been a failure if I had squashed that energy."
It was the same with the meeting over Lariviere. In the snarling crowd were faces Donegan knew from his posh West Hills neighborhood, from his business dealings, even from his church, where one man ended up in a pew next to him a few days later.
"I just tried to put myself in their shoes," said Donegan, who allowed all who'd signed up to speak. "They had driven a long way to be heard. Their willingness to shout, to argue was so good for the state."
Still, critics complained they felt it didn't matter what they said, that the vote was preordained and that Donegan and his board had simply done Kitzhaber's bidding.
Kitzhaber, who'd watched the meeting televised live, said later that Donegan had kept the meeting together well.
"Though," he added, "it went on a little longer than it had to."
Family implosion, divorce
Three months after the Lariviere meeting, the Donegans celebrated their daughter's sixth birthday with an evening party for about 20 children and their parents. The catered event featured games, dancing for the adults and appletini cocktails at the Donegans' new $3 million, 6,200-square-foot home on Southwest Montgomery Drive.
It was an attempt at normalcy for the children as the couple slogged through divorce proceedings. They still shared the home, but according to court documents had agreed neither would have intimate relations with others when the children were in the house.
Around 1 a.m., Matt Donegan went upstairs and, according to court filings, said he was puzzled to find the door closed to the attic bedroom where Laura Donegan slept. Typically, the door was left open for the children.
Matt Donegan walked in and found Laura Donegan in bed with a man. According to court records, Donegan took out his phone to photograph the violation of the agreement. The other man grabbed the phone as Laura Donegan jumped on Matt Donegan's back and hit his face. The scuffle then spilled into their neighborhood street as Matt Donegan chased the other man and yelled to neighbors for help, according to the records.
Police arrived and Laura Donegan was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault. She later disputed some of her husband's allegations in court filings, but ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge and agreed to a court-ordered abuse prevention class that, if completed, could wipe the arrest from her record. She said later that she pleaded guilty only so as not to further delay the custody process.
Three days later, on March 2, 2012, Donegan presided over a daylong higher education board meeting in Salem. With a deep purple and gold-tinged bruise emanating from his left eye, Donegan heard an update on the search for a new president for University of Oregon. A vision of poise at a table of academics and business leaders, Donegan had spent the previous day securing an emergency restraining order that barred his wife from their home and vastly restricted her access to their children.
The picture that emerges from the inches-thick file amassing at the Multnomah County Courthouse doesn't match the image Matt Donegan had sought to build. Online, a story shares how the couple had their photo taken alongside President Barack Obama after donating $20,000 at a 2010 Kitzhaber campaign fundraiser. Or, the year before, when the couple leaned into each other at a party on a sunny rooftop restaurant to celebrate Laura's 40th birthday.
But court filings portray a couple who brought the worst out in each other. In custody-hearing testimony last month, Laura Donegan said she'd made some bad decisions, especially when she drank, but that she didn't deserve to have her time with her children cut so severely.
In July, as the divorce percolated, Donegan and his partner Scott Jones announced they'd sold Forest Capital Partners' holdings, including 573,000 acres it managed in Oregon. They'd tried to sell the company once before, but the deal fell apart along with the economy in late 2008. The new deal, estimated to be worth several billion dollars, was with Molpus Woodlands Group and Hancock Timber, the company where Donegan started his career.
The company he'd built was gone. For Donegan, the time had come to fight for his children.
View full sizeAs a co-founder of a timber investment firm, Matt Donegan pushed to sell 70,000 of their forest land to Minnesota. His partner Scott Jones was apprehensive. Jones and Donegan ultimately sealed the deal, setting aside the land for recreation. "€œMatt really dipped into his love of conservation and long-term social values and helped our company to the forefront.€"
Building a new life
Matt Donegan testified about two dozen times this past legislative session, pushing the education investment board's plans. The board is seeking a system that within 10 years will put 40 percent of Oregon students on the path to a bachelor's degree or higher, and 40 percent toward a postsecondary credential.
The task is harder at home, where Donegan is looking to create normalcy for his three children, all under the age of 8. He worries how the past will affect them, he worries his community will judge them.
He was awarded full custody of his children last month after an emotional nine-
day custody hearing that played out in an open courtroom. As with most cases of this kind, he and his family will receive intense guidance over the next year, from court-appointed parenting coaches to the judge.
So far, the multimillionaire capable of building successful corporations and streamlining inefficient systems admits the work of a single father is grueling. He often falls asleep with the children during their 7:45 p.m. bedtime routine. He's up again at 5 a.m., checking his daughter's homework and scheduling play dates and practices.
"I'm taking the summer to just play with my kids," he said. "After that I will really ramp up my public service, knowing that always it will be secondary to my job as a parent." They recently spent a day in the Coast Range, hiking deep into the towering stands of Douglas firs and Sitka spruce.
In a place very much like this, about 30 years ago, Donegan found himself.
Yet on this day under the cool, deep green umbrella, he felt nothing.
"I always wanted to share my passion for the outdoors with my children," he said. "I want my kids to experience that. And someday, hopefully soon, I'll catch up with them."
-- Laura Gunderson
View full sizeMatt Donegan, president of the Oregon Board of Higher Education, leads the meeting in which University of Oregon President Richard Lariviere was fired in late 2011. The move was made, in part, after Lariviere strayed from the board's direction to limit his work on gaining more autonomy for the university.A larger-than-usual security crew dots the room, prepared in case the Oregon Board of Higher Education meeting to decide Lariviere's fate turns violent. A day earlier, Donegan, the board's president, had received a death threat from a Lariviere supporter.
The 40-something entrepreneur nods quietly as professors, politicians and wealthy alumni boo. Several yell "Shame on you."
Matt Donegan
Age: 45
Family: Divorced with three children under age 8
Background: Born and raised through about half his childhood in New York, then his family of five moved to Tampa, Fla.
Education: Forestry degree from the University of Florida; MBA with a concentration in forest industries management from the University of Tennessee
Employment: Sold the holdings of his timber investment management organization he co-founded, Forest Capital Partners, in July, 2012
Current boards: Serves as president of the Oregon Board of Higher Education; Oregon Education Investment Board
Past boards: Leadership roles on Gov. John Kitzhaber's economic development team; Oregon Education Investment Team; Oregon Global Warming Commission; Oregon Forest Resources Institute, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the Oregon Business Council
Hobbies: Basketball, hiking and reading. He had a goal of visiting all 50 states, but has been stuck on 48 for the past seven years. This holiday weekend he'll cross the Dakotas off his list.
A relative newcomer to Oregon with no particular educational expertise or political experience, Donegan has been tapped by two governors for high-profile appointments based on his forest management background and a knack for problem-solving. Most recently, Gov. John Kitzhaber named Donegan to his Oregon Education Investment Board, where the twoare working to overhaul the state's education system from preschool through college.
Donegan, now 45, and a partner sold their billion-dollar timber investment firm last year, allowing him to focus more exclusively on public service, a calling instilled in him as a kid sitting around his Irish Catholic family's dining room table.
His successful leadership so far, and independent wealth, have generated rumors of a bright political future, including a possible bid for governor, a move Donegan says he won't rule out.
But as his public star has risen because of his ability to get results in tough situations, Donegan's private world has descended into chaos.
Eight days after the Lariviere hearing, Donegan's wife filed for divorce. Over the past year and a half, the private man's personal life has spilled into open court as he fights for custody of his three young children.
Traditional family roots
When he was 14, Donegan dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, or maybe a lawyer or an engineer, because he was good at math. Then his father took the family of five on their first-ever vacation.
They drove north from their Tampa, Fla., home for 12 hours, climbing slowly into the misty hills of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains. They arrived at a musty little cabin after dark and the teen drifted to sleep.
He awoke to a new world.
"I remember the fireflies, the rivers and lakes. There was a deep connection I can't quite put my finger on," he said. "We came home from that vacation and it really put me on a new path."
Donegan's father, a first-generation American born to Irish immigrants, was an insurance claims adjuster in Manhattan, not far from the Bronx neighborhood where Donegan spent his early years. It was a solid job, but one that didn't provide for many extravagances. Strict Catholics, Donegan's parents preached patriotism, populism and service. Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were idolized. Big business was not.
He graduated with a forestry degree from the University of Florida, working along the way and, at times, sleeping on friends' couches. Later, with help from a guidance counselor, Donegan earned a full-ride scholarship in a master's program that wove in threads of finance and management. He graduated in 1991 and landed a job at Georgia Pacific where a career with good income and growth potential was mapped out before him. But it didn't feel quite right.
When an offer came from Hancock Timber Resource Group, an upstart based in Boston that managed millions of acres of timberland portfolios, Donegan was tempted. The firm was the first in its field to manage sustainable forests as a secure and profitable investment. Donegan talked to friends, family and colleagues. Some pushed him on; some said the 5-year-old firm seemed too risky.
"I vetted and vetted and vetted," he said, "that's what I do. I do well at the vetting process and come out with actionable steps. I don't come away with ambiguity."
Hancock was a perfect fit. He'd work all night, sleep a few hours, shower and still beat others into the office. He rose through the ranks, earning an executive position by age 28. But after four years, he felt the hunger to test his own skills and instincts.
On his second attempt to launch a business, Donegan teamed with a former Hancock colleague, Scott Jones. They crafted Forest Capital Partners as a smaller version of Hancock, and past colleagues and clients soon called looking to switch. Yet the young partners vowed not to poach from their old employer, which had treated them well.
Forest Capital grew slowly, landing small deals and pounding the streets for new investors. Until February 2005, when they went big time. The partners agreed to buy2.2 million acres in six states from Boise Cascade for $1.65 billion. The deal, which included 629,000 acres in Oregon, was the largest purchase of standing timber in U.S. history.
Donegan made a side trip through Portland after surveying some of the new land. Forest Capital needed a West Coast office, he thought, as he called an old friend for an over-the-phone driving tour of the city's best neighborhoods - and schools. He'd married a college classmate, Laura, three years earlier. They'd put off a family until Forest Capital seemed stable, and now Laura was pregnant.
By July, the couple were moving into a stately home on Southwest Jackson Street, three houses down from one of his largest customers.
"I had definitely traded in the life of anonymity in Boston to one of deep familiarity in Portland," he said. "It was as intense an immersion as you can contemplate."
Earning a name for himself Then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski met Donegan in 2006, not long after Forest Capital bought the Boise Cascade land - some of which the governor had wanted for a new state forest.
After a laugh over how the state had been outbid, the pair discussed shared beliefs in timber's future, from sustainable logging to using woody biofuels.
"Matt was an oddity in his industry," Kulongoski said. "He was a voice of the timber industry looking forward as opposed to always looking back."
Over the next three years, Kulongoski appointed Donegan to three state boards.
Donegan had sat on a variety of national boards and commissions through the years. But now, at 40, Donegan whittled away at the posts that took him across the country so he could stay closer to home and his growing family.
Kulongoski appointed him to the Oregon Board of Higher Education in 2009, saying later that he believed in Donegan's ability to learn quickly and manage people. Donegan admits he didn't understand the full extent of Oregon's higher ed issues or how funding for schools had become so choked. But he knew how to research, he said later, and he knew how his own education at public universities had changed his life.
After Kitzhaber was elected in 2011, he appointed Donegan to a second term on the higher ed board, which elected him president. Then Kitzhaber brought him onto the education investment board, which is streamlining how schools statewide are organized with the goal of getting all the state's students to earn a high school diploma or equivalent.
"Matt was clearly a force that broke on the scene," said George Pernsteiner, former chancellor of the Oregon University System who worked side by side with Donegan through the Lariviere decision. "He integrated as quickly into the business community as with his leadership in the state."
Other state leaders and business colleagues consistently praise his calm, deliberate manner. They call him an independent and analytical thinker. Donegan says that's because he's always questioning things, even those closest to his heart.
Donegan recalled a meeting he had with some Jesuit priests at Springhill College in Alabama. He was stuck, tortured by questions he'd long held about his Catholic faith. Questions that would not have been welcomed by his parents.
"You must cultivate your own conscience," Donegan recalls being told. "If that conflicts with convention, go with your conscience."
Hearing that, he said, was life-changing. Since moving to Portland, Donegan has regularly attended Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Donegan continued to balance his burgeoning public life with regular trips to scope new timberland and survey existing holdings. At Forest Capital he was the peacemaker. Occasionally satellite offices filled with foresters and biologists clashed with the administrative Portland office.
"The central office saw them as a threat to the company. I saw entrepreneurs and strong leadership," Donegan said. "I was hoping to empower them and work toward a common goal. I loved seeing those local guys innovate. It would have been a failure if I had squashed that energy."
It was the same with the meeting over Lariviere. In the snarling crowd were faces Donegan knew from his posh West Hills neighborhood, from his business dealings, even from his church, where one man ended up in a pew next to him a few days later.
"I just tried to put myself in their shoes," said Donegan, who allowed all who'd signed up to speak. "They had driven a long way to be heard. Their willingness to shout, to argue was so good for the state."
Still, critics complained they felt it didn't matter what they said, that the vote was preordained and that Donegan and his board had simply done Kitzhaber's bidding.
Kitzhaber, who'd watched the meeting televised live, said later that Donegan had kept the meeting together well.
"Though," he added, "it went on a little longer than it had to."
Family implosion, divorce
Three months after the Lariviere meeting, the Donegans celebrated their daughter's sixth birthday with an evening party for about 20 children and their parents. The catered event featured games, dancing for the adults and appletini cocktails at the Donegans' new $3 million, 6,200-square-foot home on Southwest Montgomery Drive.
It was an attempt at normalcy for the children as the couple slogged through divorce proceedings. They still shared the home, but according to court documents had agreed neither would have intimate relations with others when the children were in the house.
Around 1 a.m., Matt Donegan went upstairs and, according to court filings, said he was puzzled to find the door closed to the attic bedroom where Laura Donegan slept. Typically, the door was left open for the children.
Matt Donegan walked in and found Laura Donegan in bed with a man. According to court records, Donegan took out his phone to photograph the violation of the agreement. The other man grabbed the phone as Laura Donegan jumped on Matt Donegan's back and hit his face. The scuffle then spilled into their neighborhood street as Matt Donegan chased the other man and yelled to neighbors for help, according to the records.
Police arrived and Laura Donegan was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault. She later disputed some of her husband's allegations in court filings, but ultimately pleaded guilty to the charge and agreed to a court-ordered abuse prevention class that, if completed, could wipe the arrest from her record. She said later that she pleaded guilty only so as not to further delay the custody process.
Three days later, on March 2, 2012, Donegan presided over a daylong higher education board meeting in Salem. With a deep purple and gold-tinged bruise emanating from his left eye, Donegan heard an update on the search for a new president for University of Oregon. A vision of poise at a table of academics and business leaders, Donegan had spent the previous day securing an emergency restraining order that barred his wife from their home and vastly restricted her access to their children.
The picture that emerges from the inches-thick file amassing at the Multnomah County Courthouse doesn't match the image Matt Donegan had sought to build. Online, a story shares how the couple had their photo taken alongside President Barack Obama after donating $20,000 at a 2010 Kitzhaber campaign fundraiser. Or, the year before, when the couple leaned into each other at a party on a sunny rooftop restaurant to celebrate Laura's 40th birthday.
But court filings portray a couple who brought the worst out in each other. In custody-hearing testimony last month, Laura Donegan said she'd made some bad decisions, especially when she drank, but that she didn't deserve to have her time with her children cut so severely.
In July, as the divorce percolated, Donegan and his partner Scott Jones announced they'd sold Forest Capital Partners' holdings, including 573,000 acres it managed in Oregon. They'd tried to sell the company once before, but the deal fell apart along with the economy in late 2008. The new deal, estimated to be worth several billion dollars, was with Molpus Woodlands Group and Hancock Timber, the company where Donegan started his career.
The company he'd built was gone. For Donegan, the time had come to fight for his children.
View full sizeAs a co-founder of a timber investment firm, Matt Donegan pushed to sell 70,000 of their forest land to Minnesota. His partner Scott Jones was apprehensive. Jones and Donegan ultimately sealed the deal, setting aside the land for recreation. "€œMatt really dipped into his love of conservation and long-term social values and helped our company to the forefront.€"Matt Donegan testified about two dozen times this past legislative session, pushing the education investment board's plans. The board is seeking a system that within 10 years will put 40 percent of Oregon students on the path to a bachelor's degree or higher, and 40 percent toward a postsecondary credential.
The task is harder at home, where Donegan is looking to create normalcy for his three children, all under the age of 8. He worries how the past will affect them, he worries his community will judge them.
He was awarded full custody of his children last month after an emotional nine-
day custody hearing that played out in an open courtroom. As with most cases of this kind, he and his family will receive intense guidance over the next year, from court-appointed parenting coaches to the judge.
So far, the multimillionaire capable of building successful corporations and streamlining inefficient systems admits the work of a single father is grueling. He often falls asleep with the children during their 7:45 p.m. bedtime routine. He's up again at 5 a.m., checking his daughter's homework and scheduling play dates and practices.
"I'm taking the summer to just play with my kids," he said. "After that I will really ramp up my public service, knowing that always it will be secondary to my job as a parent." They recently spent a day in the Coast Range, hiking deep into the towering stands of Douglas firs and Sitka spruce.
In a place very much like this, about 30 years ago, Donegan found himself.
Yet on this day under the cool, deep green umbrella, he felt nothing.
"I always wanted to share my passion for the outdoors with my children," he said. "I want my kids to experience that. And someday, hopefully soon, I'll catch up with them."
-- Laura Gunderson
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Blue Mountain timber: Top forester backs ambitious program of tree thinning and restoration
Blue Mountain timber: Top forester backs ambitious program of tree thinning and restoration
View full sizeA group of foresters and academics examines an overgrown woodland in the Blue Mountains northeast of Pendleton in August 2012. An ambitious reforestation program is being launched across the Blues, with timber harvests and thinning planned starting in summer 2014.
LA GRANDE -- Trucks gathering logs for the Boise Cascade sawmill here roll out at 2 a.m. to begin their daylong, 480-mile round trips to the Mount Hood National Forest, Washington's Okanogan National Forest and other federal woodlands in Idaho.
Policies designed to halt clear-cuts and restore habitat and wildlife have severely limited harvests in eastern Oregon's national forests for two decades, leaving more fuel for forest fires while costing jobs
View full sizeBill Aney, the new U.S. Forest Service restoration coordinator for eastern Oregon'™s Blue Mountains.
Many of the open, park-like expanses of Ponderosa pine that once characterized the Blue Mountains have disappeared, victims of a century of wildfire suppression and selective logging. According to Oregon State University extension agent Paul Oester of La Grande, fire-tolerant Ponderosas have been replaced by dense, unhealthy and explosively flammable stands of grand fir, Douglas fir and other tree species.
These concerns are what led Connaughton, lead federal forester for the Pacific Northwest, to support a program of accelerated restoration in the Ochoco, Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman forests.
View full sizeDave Powell, a silvaculturalist on the Umatilla National Forest, worries that unnatural fuel buildups and predicted increases in summertime temperatures could trigger devastating wildfires in the dry forests of eastern Oregon'™s Blue Mountains.
The roughly 50,000 acres thinned or logged annually within the four forests is probably less than 20 per cent of what's needed, Aney said.
View full sizeA group of foresters and academics examines an overgrown woodland in the Blue Mountains northeast of Pendleton in August 2012. An ambitious reforestation program is being launched across the Blues, with timber harvests and thinning planned starting in summer 2014.
"It is crazy to have to go that far for logs, totally," said Jim Princehouse of La Grande, who owns a fleet of 11 log trucks.
"This is a hard life," said Princehouse, 67. "It really is."
A staggering 800 million board feet of wood fiber annually reaches maturity in the nearby Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests. Only 11 percent gets to sawmills, while 400 million board feet succumb to insects, disease, fire and age, said industry spokesman Tom Partin. He likened the mills' situation to "starving to death when you are standing beside the refrigerator."
That may soon change.
The top U.S. Forest Service official for Oregon and Washington, Kent Connaughton , has asked his foresters to plot out an ambitious, multiyear program of tree thinning and forest restoration in the Blue Mountains. Dubbed "accelerated restoration," the goal is to free more timber for mills while stiffening the woodlands' resistance to tree-killing insects, disease and wildfires.
It's not clear precisely how much lumber will become available under the plan to reduce fuel loads in forests, and funding is still being worked out. However, mill owners are hopeful, while criticism from conservationists so far is muted.
"It is a pretty high priority for us to get this thing going and be successful at it," said Bill Aney, U.S. Forest Service restoration coordinator for the Blue Mountains. "We can't afford to lose the mills. We can't afford to lose the forests."
Fire threat
Policies designed to halt clear-cuts and restore habitat and wildlife have severely limited harvests in eastern Oregon's national forests for two decades, leaving more fuel for forest fires while costing jobs
The area encompassed by the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests has lost 17 mills and more than 1,200 sawmill jobs since 1990, said Lindsay Warness, a Boise Cascade forest policy analyst in La Grande.
Industry officials have long advocated for thinning of federal forests as a way to reduce fuel loads and keep mills running. As evidence that federal priorities are out of whack, Partin, who works for the Eugene-based American Forest Resource Council,noted that the federal government spent $3 billion fighting wildfires last yearbut only $350 million on forest management.
Leading forestry officials are beginning to agree, driven in part by concerns about climate change. A recent independent Climate Central study suggested that a summertime temperature increase of 1.8 degrees Farenheit could trigger up to six times the annual burning that the Blue Mountains has experienced in the past two decades.
"That is the thing that really worries me," says Umatilla National Forest silvaculturalist Dave Powell of Pendleton. "We may be dealing with fires that we don't have any historical precedence for."
Add the tinderbox effect of two decades of forest fuel buildups, and some communities could be extremely vulnerable, Powell said.
About 57 percent of the Umatilla National Forest has "very high" stand densities, up from 46 percent in 2001.
View full sizeBill Aney, the new U.S. Forest Service restoration coordinator for eastern Oregon'™s Blue Mountains.
In those dense stands, Oester said, wildfires burn fast and hot, and "ladder fuels" -- underbrush, dry grass and low branches -- carry flames upward into the forest crowns.
Last best hope
These concerns are what led Connaughton, lead federal forester for the Pacific Northwest, to support a program of accelerated restoration in the Ochoco, Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman forests.
Responding to questions about the plan by email, Connaughton said: "I've heard from collaboratives, scientists and public leaders and believe there is broad public support for actively managing our forests to be more resilient to the uncertainties of climate change, uncharacteristically destructive wildfires and inevitable disease outbreaks."
Aney, under Connaughton's direction, assumed leadership of the initiative last month. He intends to have a planning team in place by June, he said. It will lay out projects in concert with collaborative groups of citizens, government officials, environmentalists and others.
View full sizeDave Powell, a silvaculturalist on the Umatilla National Forest, worries that unnatural fuel buildups and predicted increases in summertime temperatures could trigger devastating wildfires in the dry forests of eastern Oregon'™s Blue Mountains.
"We need to at least double that" to stabilize forest health within 15 years, he said.
The plan Aney will execute calls for managing the Blues in blocks of several hundred thousand acres, instead of the current 30,000-acre planning units. Logging or thinning is likely on no more than 40 percent of each planning unit, Aney said. Individual projects will have to go through environmental reviews.
Work in the woods is expected to start in summer 2014.
Tom Towslee, spokesman for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said some provisions of the new restoration process are based on an eastside forest plan floated by Wyden, now the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Forest Service "liked what was in the bill" and integrated it into its plans, said Towslee.
Accelerated restoration is likely to become the model for restoring Oregon's westside forests and the unhealthy, overstocked eastside woodlands of Washington state, said Aney and Towslee.
Some conservationists support the Forest Service plan, saying forest restoration is impossible without the region's remaining sawmills, loggers and log truck drivers.
When sawmills close for lack of logs, even temporarily, "you always wonder, are they going to reopen?" said Susan Jane Brown, staff attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center, which has challenged federal timber sales in the past.
Veronica Warnock, conservation director for the La Grande-based Hells Canyon Preservation Council, was more guarded. She said forest restoration is necessary but should be avoided in places where science doesn't support it, such as stands of old growth or wildlife corridors.
The Blue Mountains "have some of the highest plant and animal diversity of any place in the United States," she said. "It's a treasure... something we have to protect and preserve."
Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild, said he wants more details. Stevens said the closer the projects adhere to Wyden's earlier eastside forest legislation, the happier he will be.
Timber executives are cautiously optimistic.
Bruce Daucsavage, of Prineville, president of Ochoco Lumber Co., said the company has been considering a month-long shutdown this spring for an Ochoco subsidiary that employs 90 workers in John Day. He said the accelerated restoration plan is his company's last, best hope.
"There is a groundswell here that I have not seen in 25 years," he said. "I think everybody has come to the conclusion that this is it."
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