Court’s Ruling in O&C Case a Victory for Oregon’s Rural Communities

Contact: Ann Forest Burns 

June 27, 2013 (503) 222-9505 

Court’s Ruling in O&C Case a Victory for Oregon’s Rural Communities 

Portland, OR - A federal district court in Washington, D.C. yesterday handed down a key victory for Southwest Oregon communities that are entitled to sustained yield timber harvests from Oregon and California Railroad Grant Lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). While this decision is focused on the O&C lands in Southwest Oregon, it has positive implications for communities throughout Western Oregon. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled the BLM failed to comply with timber harvest requirements under the federal O&C Act. The judge ordered the BLM to offer timber sales on its Medford and Roseburg Districts to the level identified under its existing resource management plans. In applying the O&C Act, the ruling confirms the agency is required to follow sustained yield timber harvest requirements that guide the management of over 2 million acres of O&C timberlands in Western Oregon. 

“This case is a victory for rural Oregonians who’ve been suffering through 20 years of gridlock on our federal forests,” said Tom Partin, President of the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC), one of the plaintiffs in the case. “We’ve been trying for years to get the BLM to comply with the law when it adopts a resource management plan. The judge confirmed the requirements under the O&C Act are clear, and they can’t be ignored by agency officials or interest groups who might wish to sever their connection with our rural, forested communities.” 

Partin said the ruling will generate new economic activity in rural communities while producing new revenue for cash-strapped county governments. However, he said federal agencies must take additional action to assure increased sustained yield harvests across all BLM districts. 

In the Medford District, for example, the timber sale program under the ruling would increase to 57 million board feet, up from the Fiscal Year 2013 level of 19 million board feet. For the Roseburg district, the level would be increased to 45 million board feet, up from Fiscal Year 2013 level of 29 million board feet. These harvest levels are just a small percentage of the annual growth volume of timber on these lands. The BLM lands in Western Oregon have 73 billion board feet of standing volume. These timberlands are capable of growing 1.2 billion board feet per year. The O&C Act clearly mandates that this entire growth be offered for sale each year. 

Partin said the industry will continue to push the agencies, through the courts if necessary, to fully implement the O&C Act. Partin added that every million board feet of timber harvested 

supports 11 forest sector jobs and an equal number of indirect jobs, such as car dealerships and grocery stores. 

“Sustainable timber management on the O&C lands is not only required by law, it’s critical to the health and economic well-being of our forests and our rural communities,” Partin said. “Increasing sustained yield harvests will create more family wage jobs and lift more Oregonians out of poverty. This ruling is a major step toward a permanent and comprehensive solution for managing these lands and assuring timber counties survive the crisis we’re facing today.” 

Partin said the ruling should be noted by Oregon’s Congressional delegation as they continue to work on legislation to increase harvests. 

“This decision confirming the clear commitment made to rural Oregon communities in the O&C Act comes at a key time as the Oregon Congressional delegation continues developing legislative proposals for the BLM lands,” Partin said. 

The case was filed in 2010 by Swanson Group Mfg. LLC, Rough and Ready Lumber Company, Washington Contract Loggers Association, AFRC and Douglas Timber Operators. Unfortunately, the decision comes too late for Rough and Ready, which closed its doors in May due to a lack of available timber from federal lands. 

In addition to requiring BLM to increase harvest levels, the judge also prohibited federal agencies from continuing to use a flawed method for estimating the number of owls affected by timber management activities unless they comply with the public notice and comment requirements of the federal Administrative Procedures Act. 

The “Owl Estimation Methodology” is a computer model that generates virtual owls on the landscape where none actually exist. The agencies then manage around these phantom owls, which has had a major impact on timber harvest levels. 

“Using a computer model that creates imaginary spotted owl home ranges and exaggerates the impact of forestry activities on these “virtual” owls that do exist is ridiculous and does nothing to protect the owl,” Partin said. “The judge did the right thing by telling the agencies they can’t use this method without subjecting it to public scrutiny, giving the public a chance to see what it’s all about.” 

Another lawsuit before the same judge, filed in 2011 by AFRC and the Carpenters Industrial Council, seeks to require BLM to meet its full O&C Act obligation on all of its districts. That case has been on hold pending the ruling made yesterday. 

The American Forest Resource Council represents forest product manufacturers and landowners throughout the west and is based in Portland, Oregon. www.amforest.org 

The Problem is not in Salem

When Rough & Ready Lumber Company announced the closure of the family-owned sawmill on April 18^th; legislators filled Oregon’s Capitol with speeches denouncing the loss of 85 family-wage jobs and the closure of one of Oregon’s venerable companies after 90 years.

The speeches brought bipartisan offers to do something, anything, to help. Unfortunately, the problem is not in Salem, the problem is in Washington D.C. Federal forest management has failed forest health, county receipts, rural communities, and the public timber dependent industry the U.S. Forest Service encouraged to locate in the Pacific Northwest following World War II.

Jennifer Phillippi, granddaughter of Rough and Ready’s founders, has graciously responded to media requests for the rest of the story. Her portrayal of the paradox of having a mill located in the middle of a productive National Forest yet her company is unable to purchase sufficient raw materials that would allow Rough and Ready to provide lumber for the improving housing market.

Jennifer’s poise in a difficult situation would have made her late father Lew Krauss, swell with pride. While keeping the sawmill operating, Jennifer has served the timber industry and the public tirelessly as a member of Oregon’s Board of Forestry and before that a board member of the Oregon Forest Resource Institute.

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.

Oregon Department of Forestry's management plan didn't use best science

Published: Friday, April 29, 2011, 3:57 PM     Updated: Friday, April
29, 2011, 4:45 PM
By Eric Mortenson, The Oregonian

An independent review of the Oregon Department of Forestry's
management plans for the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests said the
department consistently failed to use the best available science,
reached unjustified conclusions and measured nearly everything by how
much timber was produced.

Conservation groups called the report by Oregon State University's
Institute for Natural Resources a "scathing" indictment of the
department's plans to increase logging in the state forests. Industry
supporters were critical as well, saying the Board of Forestry
undermined its staff by asking for the review.

"I think your bell has been rung," Tillamook County Commissioner Tim
Josi said during a forestry board meeting Friday in Salem. "This is
going to be used against you like a club."

Some board members also took issue with the report. Jennifer
Phillippi, business manager for a Cave Junction lumber company, said
the institute's work was "misleading and insensitive" to rural
communities hard-hit by reductions in logging and by mill closures.

"I can't line up my experience with what you're saying," she said. "We
might not be timber-dependent anymore, I think we're welfare-
dependent. The communities are literally falling apart."

The institute was asked to review the science the department
considered as it evaluated forest management plans and a strategy for
helping "Species of Concern" such as northern spotted owls, voles,
amphibians, steelhead and salmon.

Mike Cafferata, deputy chief of the department's state forests
division, said his staff analyzed, compared and made fish and wildlife
projections based on management plans that would result in forests
that were 50 percent or 30 percent "complex" -- with older trees,
multi-layered canopies and other characteristics.

"They're saying the best available science is better than the trends
you analyzed," Cafferata said of the institute's report. "I think we
learned a lot."

The department will prepare a response by June, State Forester Doug
Decker said.

Brenda McComb, an OSU forestry professor who led the review, said the
group did not intend to dismiss the work done by the department.

"There are things they could have done better, in our opinion," she
said. "The staff did a good job with the resources and time available.
I hope it's taken in that way."

Board Chairman John Blackwell urged environmentalists and industry
groups to avoid "polemics" in discussing the report.

Blackwell said his intent in asking for the scientific review was to
obtain "social license for the middle ground" in the contentious
forest management debate. The board will filter its future decisions
through the information gained in the report, he said.