Oregon legislators optimistic they can reach deal on timber harvests in western Oregon

Oregon legislators optimistic they can reach deal on timber harvests in western Oregon

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By Jeff Mapes, The Oregonian 
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on July 31, 2013 at 4:36 PM, updated July 31, 2013 at 10:19 PM

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A log truck navigates a road in Southern Oregon's Curry County, which has been hard-hit by a loss of timber revenue.Jamie Francis/The Oregonian

A sweeping federal forest bill that would hike timber harvests in western Oregon cleared its first major congressional hurdle on Wednesday.

The controversial bill has been eagerly sought by rural Oregon counties hard-hit economically by the decline of logging over the last two decades, but denounced by environmentalists as a return to the days of massive clear-cuts on federal lands.

The House Natural Resources Committee approved the bill, which also calls for major increases in logging on federal lands throughout the country. It incorporates separate legislation sought by three Oregon congressmen -- Democrats Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader and Republican Greg Walden -- to increase timber production on lands once owned by the now-defunct Oregon & California Railroad.

"Today was the first really big step in putting in place a long-term solution for the solvency and prosperity of the O&C counties in Oregon," said DeFazio, who this month became the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.

Walden, a member of the House Republican leadership, predicted that the House would take up the bill in September after a monthlong recess.

If the bill passes the House, it will set up negotiations with the Democratic Senate -- where Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has vowed to develop his own O&C legislation.

Wyden said he too wants to provide some additional logging, but not at the expense of sweeping aside federal environmental laws.

Putting together a compromise that could pass both chambers and be signed into law is widely regarded as a tough task, but on Wednesday, Wyden and the Oregon House members sounded optimistic.

"Everyone feels the same sense of urgency about creating jobs in rural Oregon and provide O&C counties with a stable source of funding while protecting water, old growth and critical habitat," said Wyden spokesman Tom Towslee. "Sen. Wyden is confident that the details of how we get there can be worked out over time."

DeFazio said the Senate is unlikely to accept provisions in the overall House billthat would mandate higher logging levels in national forests. In fact, he said he didn't yet know whether he would support the bill in the House because of several "problematic provisions" that Democrats on the committee were unable to change.

But DeFazio said a compromise could be crafted around provisions in the House bill aimed at improving forest health and reducing their vulnerability to massive fires. He noted that Wyden and the House resources chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., met earlier this year to begin laying the groundwork for a compromise.

Watching nervously is the environmental community, which argues that harvest levels can only be increased modestly on the O&C lands without damaging the habitat.

"Oregonians should be outraged that the first thing Rep. DeFazio has done as ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee is to partner with one of the most anti-environmental legislators in Congress on a bill that represents the worst threat to the nation's public lands in a generation," said Sean Stevens, executive director of Oregon Wild, in a statement.

DeFazio countered that the O&C legislation includes important new environmental protections for the Molalla, Rogue and Chetco rivers as well as additional wilderness designations.

Under the House bill, about 1.6 million of the 2.8 million acres of the Oregon & California lands would be placed in a trust managed by the state for more intensive logging. Officials estimate the bill would increase harvests from less than 200 million board-feet annually to more than 500 million board-feet.

In addition, the House bill also would extend the now-expired federal program to provide federal payments to timber-dependent counties to support local services.

--Jeff Mapes

Model made of mythical owls

GUEST VIEWPOINT

Model made of mythical owls

A flawed computer model led to nonsensical restrictions on timber management in Oregon

By Ross Mickey

For The Register-Guard

PUBLISHED: 12:00 A.M., JULY 14

On June 26 a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the Bureau of Land Management to comply with the law and offer more timber for sale in Southwest Oregon. The judge also found that federal agencies had broken the law by not adhering to rulemaking requirements in instituting the Owl Estimation Methodology, a flawed model for quantifying the impact of federal timber harvests on the spotted owl.

Most of the media coverage has rightly focused on the judge’s order to sell more timber. The little coverage of the owl estimation portion of the ruling has failed to describe the absolute lunacy underpinning a computer model that led to nonsensical restrictions on timber management throughout Western Oregon. It deserves greater scrutiny from the public and our elected officials.

What if an agent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service knocked on your door and told you that you could not harvest any of the vegetables in your garden because it is the home of a threatened slug? You know first-hand that none of these slugs exist in your garden, so your mouth drops when the agent insists that a very sophisticated computer model has determined that your garden is definitely the home of the slug.

Wondering what the consequences of harvesting your vegetables might be, you ask, “What would happen if I ate one of my carrots?”

He then becomes serious and tells you, “We would have to prosecute you for ‘taking’ a threatened species.”

Not believing your ears, you say, “Are you telling me if I ate one of my carrots, I would face federal charges for ‘taking’ a slug that no one has ever seen in my garden?”

“Yes,” he replies.

Wondering if this could get any more bizarre, you ask, “What would happen if I ate another carrot tomorrow?”

He answers, “You would be charged for taking another threatened species.”

For clarification, you ask, “So I would be charged for taking two slugs for eating two carrots even though no one has ever seen one of these slugs in my garden?”

His reply: “Yes.”

Following this, you wonder, “I have 50 carrots, 25 heads of lettuce, 25 zucchini and 25 summer squash. Would I be charged with ‘taking’ 125 slugs if I picked all my vegetables?”

He calmly replies, “Yes.”

Wouldn’t you be outraged at such a ridiculous situation? We were — which is why we joined the lawsuit challenging the use of the Owl Estimation Methodology to determine how many spotted owls would be “taken” due to harvesting trees on our publicly owned federal lands.

None of us wants any species to go extinct. Federal forest managers consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service to ensure that their actions will not jeopardize a threatened species. The owl methodology was developed following a different court decision requiring the agencies to either quantify the amount of “take” that would occur from an activity or to disclose that quantifying the “take” is impossible.

“Take” in this case is not the killing of an owl, but rather a disruption that somehow might “harm” the species. Rather than deciding to disclose why quantifying “take” for the spotted owl is impossible (which it is), the Fish & Wildlife Service developed a very sophisticated computer model built by the very best scientists to spit out a number the computer says is how many owls would be taken due to harvesting trees.

On many occasions, this model creates spotted owl home ranges where no owls have ever been found. The Fish & Wildlife Service then requires these acres to be protected the same as those lands that are occupied by owls. Most of these mythical home ranges are created in areas that are already below the habitat conditions the service has deemed to be necessary to avoid “take,” so the harvest of one tree will be deemed as a “take.”

Just as with the phantom slugs in your garden, under the Owl Estimation Methodology thousands of phantom owls can be taken that no one has ever found and are not known to even exist.

While the owl estimation madness has now been stopped, the Fish & Wildlife Service has created another “very sophisticated computer model built by the very best scientists” to declare that more than 9 million acres of federal land is “critical” spotted owl habitat, even though half of this land has been identified as either unsuitable or marginal habitat.

A lawsuit has been filed challenging this decision — but ultimately our elected leaders must step up to put an end to these flawed policies that threaten our forests and communities.

Ross Mickey of Eugene is the federal forest manager for the American Forest Resource Council.

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

Judge orders BLM to sell more timber

June 26, 2013, 6:10 p.m. PDT

AP

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell more timber in Southern Oregon, and vacated a system federal scientists use to avoid harming the northern spotted owl.

The ruling out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came in a case filed by the timber industry against the Department of Interior.

Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that BLM has failed to consistently offer as much timber as called for in its 1995 resource management plans for the Medford and Roseburg districts since 2004.

And he found that a computer model used by government agencies to estimate spotted owl numbers in timber sale areas was adopted without input from the public, as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. He prohibited government agencies from using the protocol until it goes through a public comment process. The ruling did not address whether timber sales that have been sold based on the invalidated owl estimation protocol, but not yet cut, were still valid.

That portion of the ruling leaves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service without a scientifically valid method of estimating whether spotted owls, a threatened species, can survive the harm from losing a portion of their forest habitat to logging, said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a conservation group. An earlier method was struck down in an earlier court ruling.

"It means, I suspect, that they will actually have to go look for them, which is something they have not wanted to do," he said.

BLM and Fish and Wildlife had no immediate comment on the ruling.

The timber industry called it a clear win, validating their longstanding position that a 1937 law known as the O&C Act sets timber production as the top priority for the BLM forests.

"This is clearly a victory for timber dependent communities in southwest Oregon, and it's a victory for the forest, that has not been managed appropriately," said Anne Forest Burns, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group involved in the lawsuit.

The judge ordered the agency to fulfill its obligation to meet 80 percent of the amount set in management plans in future years. The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1.

Burns estimated that BLM will have to offer double the timber it now sells on the Medford District, and increase it by 55 percent on the Roseburg District. The extra 54 million board feet would be enough to fuel more than 400 logging and mill jobs.

She noted that the extra timber will come too late for one of the plaintiffs, Rough & Ready Lumber Co., which shut its O'Brien sawmill last month for lack of logs.

But conservation groups that intervened in the timber portion of the lawsuit said BLM would have a hard time offering more timber for sale without Congress increasing their budget, and without violating other environmental laws, such as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act.

Kristin Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, which represented conservation groups, said she felt an appeal was likely, from the government as well as conservation groups.

Logging for spotted owls

Logging for spotted owls

Published: Thursday, July 26, 2012, 10:00 AM     Updated: Thursday, July 26, 2012, 10:52 AM

 By The Oregonian Editorial Board

View full sizeAP PhotoA spotted owl in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, in 2003.
The latest research finding that logging can help the beleaguered spotted owl is certain to provoke controversy. The owl's protection collapsed federal logging on Oregon's forests over the past two decades, sinking many rural economies. Yet the owl continues to be in decline. 

Meanwhile, our under-harvested forests pile up with dead and diseased trees, brush and tinder that threaten to explode into catastrophic fire. That was the case with the Biscuit fire, which in 2002 consumed nearly a half-million acres in the Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon and northern California. While people and structures were threatened for days, at least a dozen known activity areas for the spotted owl were wiped out. 

Now comes a team from Oregon State University and Michigan State University arguing partial harvest -- call it heavy thinning but not clear-cutting -- acts to reduce fuel loads and set a forest up for improved habitat that will support more species, the spotted owl among them. But the result is not instant. 

John Bailey, an associate professor in OSU's College of Forestry, explained to The Oregonian that even limited logging operations act to clear the ground and open up the canopy prized by owls, temporarily creating unsuitable habitat while making the forest less fire-prone. But over several decades, "the balance flips," Bailey said, meaning the canopy closes up on a healthier, fire-resistant forest that is far more attractive to owls. 

What's this mean now? Oregon needs to get going in its forests. 

While no study by itself can be the ticket that opens forests up for heavy logging, the OSU findings suggest a middle-of-the-road sweet spot for logging levels that could serve several purposes: restore jobs in cash-strapped rural communities, reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and create healthier forests that eventually support more species such as the spotted owl. 

But not all forests are created equal when it comes to fire risk. Those east of the Cascades, situated in dry heat and more vulnerable to insect infestation and disease, become especially dangerous with the pileup of fuels. Yet several westside forests are considered dry, too, and they would be good candidates for stepped up harvests. 

It turns out a little thinning here and a little thinning there won't do. Computer models the OSU researchers employed calculated that at least 20 percent of any fire-prone landscape would need robust thinning to significantly reduce fire risk while creating, over time, more habitat preferred by spotted owls. 

Researchers in California previously demonstrated that not all fire is considered a threat to spotted owl habitat, and the new findings do not dispute that. But the OSU report at its simplest shows that big, clear-cut logging operations and big, explosive fire are bad things for bird habitat. 

Knowing only that much, it makes sense to launch more of the moderate harvest levels the OSU study finds will reduce fire risk in fire-prone forests while creating a happier home for the Northwest's signal species in decline. 

The O&C's New Man At The Scene Of The Crime

The O&C's New Man At The Scene Of The Crime
By: Jim Petersen, Co-founder and Executive Director, The Evergreen Foundation

Last week, Oregon Governor, John Kitzhaber appointed Tom Tuchman to be his new man at the scene of the crime that is the administration - dare I say the management - of the revested Oregon and California Railroad Lands, commonly known as "the O&C lands."  

These are federal lands in western Oregon - arguably the finest Douglas-fir timberlands on the face of the earth. They, together with western Oregon's national forests, formed the economic backbone of western Oregon's timber economy for more than 40 years. Then the spotted owl was listed as a threatened species [in 1990] and the entire federal timber sale program came crashing down on those who first gave it life.

It is frequently argued that the 1937 O&C Act - which mandates a sustained yield harvest and an economic return to the 18 counties in which the lands are located - trumps the owl listing. But the argument has fallen on deaf ears. In modern-day America, the draconian federal Endangered Species Act trumps all economic reality. So be it.

Tuchman is no stranger to this conflict. In fact, it was he who led the development of the Clinton Forest Plan which has never been implemented, thanks to impossible to navigate regulations and errant federal court rulings - plus the crushing and misguided political influence of environmental groups that oppose commercial timber harvesting in federal forests to the detriment of rural counties that are now bankrupt or soon will be.

The truth here is that there is nothing Governor Kitzhaber or Tuchman, the Governor's officially titled Forestry and Conservation Financial Advisor, can do about the sorry state of O&C affairs. Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, is running this silly show - and he seems to find anathema in the Western Oregon Plan Revision, an exhaustive and scientifically sound idea that he took off the table as soon as the Obama Administration took power. He apparently believes it was a gift from the outgoing Bush Administration to its friends in the timber industry. It was not. In fact, what was left of the industry had already gone to court over the proposed harvest level.

Kitzhaber deserves credit for going through the motions. Appointing Tuchman would seem to be a politically shrewd move. Both are Democrats with long years of front line experience in the region's forest wars. So this would seem to be a good time to reintroduce my late friend, Dan Goldy, another Democrat of considerable renown, and a man who, long ago, actually won a bitterly fought forest war of another kind.

Dan Goldy was Pacific Northwest Regional Administrator for the Bureau of Land Management in the early 1950s. More important though is the fact that Goldy is the man most responsible for preventing the region's largest private timberland owners from hijacking the entire O&C timber sale program, which they attempted to do in the late 1940s under the seductive guise of a series of "cooperative sustain yield agreements" with the Bureau.

The agreements, which were shot down by the Truman Administration, would have granted the big landowning outfits the exclusive right to harvest O&C timber from tracts adjacent to their own lands. Had they succeeded, the technology-driven sawmilling industry that took root in western Oregon after World War II would never have materialized. Why? Because Goldy and his fellow Democrats understood that, minus the presence of innovative, upstart lumbermen, there would be no spirited bidding for O&C timber, no great financial return to the counties and no motivation for the big outfits to modernize their aging and wasteful mills. Today, there are state-of-the-art mills here with overruns above three. This means that for every board foot they buy in log scale, they are cutting three board feet in lumber scale. Lord only knows how many billion board feet of old growth timber have been spared by these remarkable recovery rates.

Goldy was himself a fierce competitor who hated to lose. He thus played a critical but little understood behind the scenes role in the development of the old Western Forest Industries Association, which represented the diverse interests of independent lumbermen for more than 40 years. I know this because I spent more than five years researching a book I've written that centers on the growth and development of the region's family owed sawmills. It is titled The Independents, a word the West's lone wolf lumbermen often used to describe themselves.

But this column is not about my book. It is about what Goldy and the Truman Administration believed concerning the development of the West's federal estate. And what they believed to the depths of their souls was that these vast and productive forests were the greatest economic engines the country had ever seen. They saw their development as the key to the nation's post-war homebuilding boom, and thus the blossoming of middle class prosperity - a first in the nation's history - that followed World War II.

A very solid case can be made for the fact that the fabled GI bill - which guaranteed every returning veteran a low-interest home loan - could never have fulfilled its mission had it not been for the opening of federal forests and the abundance of competitively priced lumber that the Democrat-inspired federal timber sale program provided. Although most people don't know it, very little federal timber was harvested in the West before the late 1940s. Virtually all of the nearly 60 billion feet of timber consumed by our armies during World War II came from private lands because federal lands were still mostly roadless.

I knew Dan Goldy fairly well, but I got to know him better after he died by spending more than a week at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Goldy's voluminous and enlightening papers are stored there, as are those of his boss, C. Girard Davidson, who was Assistant Secretary of the Interior during Truman's first term. It was Davidson who courageously killed the monopolistic cooperative agreements. He later opened a law practice in Portland, and served as Democratic National Committeeman for Oregon for several years, chairing the party's Natural Resources Committee during Jack Kennedy's run for the White House.

Goldy's letters and speeches - and Davidson's as well - should be required reading for every contemporary Democrat. Suffice it to say, there was a time in America when Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder with loggers, lumbermen, miners, farmers and ranchers. No more. Today, save for Southern Democrats, there are few in the party who give a damn about people who get their hands dirty every day, or have the slightest idea where the nation's wealth begins. [Hint: it isn't taxes]

Through an odd set of circumstances, I have more than 100 letters that Goldy wrote to friends in his later years. Mostly, they are chatty notes about his world travels. But last week I came across one I had not read before that I want to quote here in its entirety in the hope that someone will show it to Governor Kitzhaber or Tom Tuchman, who might then be inspired to start acting more like old time Democrats and less like shills for the environmental industry.

Goldy, who died in December of 2000, wrote this letter to the late Mark Hatfield, Oregon's most revered U.S. Senator, on August 28, 1990. It references people most of you won't know, including his wife, Rusty, who lured him to Oregon not long after he got out to the Navy. By then, he was a well-connected Democrat. Among his close friends was Monroe Sweetland, a Molalla newspaper publisher and guiding force in Oregon Democratic Party politics for four decades. Sweetland also played a vital behind the scenes role in the development of the O&C timberlands. Now - without comment - Goldy's letter:

Dear Mark:
Rusty and I have been traveling in Eastern Europe, and since our return I have been riding horses in the wilderness and have been making speeches around the country. This is the first opportunity I have had to focus on the political campaign in Oregon.

I am enclosing a contribution for your re-election campaign. As a Democrat, I find it rather easy to sit on the sidelines this year and to keep my checkbook in the drawer. I find few Democrats worthy of support. In your race, I feel that no less than the future of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest is at stake. Harry Lonsdale admits he is politically unsophisticated, but this is no excuse for aligning himself with the most radical elements of the preservationist movement to lock up the forest resources of the Northwest.

It is my view - which I have been asserting in speeches around the country - that the Vento's, Jontz's. Adkins', Yates' and Leahy's of the Congress will, if they are successful, inflict an environmental disaster on the Northwest. To lock up all of the old growth timber and permit nature to manage it in its brutal fashion with fires, insects and blow-downs, is a formula for catastrophe. Moreover, their insistence that only the young second growth be harvested means that we will be depriving the region of any forestry future, and will shortly exhaust these limited resources of young timber that are keeping our mills going for the moment. Indeed, I have heard from industry sources that at the rate their young second growth is behind harvested, it will all be gone in four to five years.

Aside from the devastating effects of this approach on the economy of the Pacific Northwest, I find it appalling that these members of Congress do not understand the economic significance to the entire United States of eliminating its wood basket. Even our own people are surprised to learn that approximately 50 percent of the total softwood lumber consumed in the United States comes from Oregon, Washington and northern California; that two-thirds of what is domestically produced in the United States comes from these three states [the difference being what is imported from Canada].

Recently, I have consulted with the experts in the various wood products associations in this region to get an estimate of the size of the cutback we are facing in Oregon, Washington and northern California. Taking into account the initiatives on the ballot in California, the impact of the spotted owl listing on private lands, and the reduced sales levels from national forests called for in the House markup of the 1991 appropriations bill, we expect a reduction in timber harvests of about nine billion feet. This translates into 14.4 billion board feet of softwood lumber if all of those logs were put through sawmills. That is about one-third of total U.S. consumption. These estimates, bad as they are, do not take into account the likelihood of mass appeals of federal timber sales when Section 318 expires September 30.

That much lumber cannot be withdrawn from the U.S. market - even at its present depressed levels - without producing a large inflationary spike in prices. It would increase enormously the median price of a house in the U.S., and would make housing unaffordable for more than a million additional families.

I have recently had a meeting with Dale Robertson and George Leonard and pointed out to them that a reduction in wood products from this region of this magnitude cannot be made up from other sources. Now that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service guidelines on the owl are being applied by the states to private lands, there appears to be no way that the cutbacks in federal harvests can be compensated for by increased harvests from private lands. Moreover, their statements to Congress that Canada can make up some of the difference is refuted by their own 1985 study of British Columbia which predicted a precipitous drop in harvest levels as past overcutting and failures in forest utilization practices catch up with the Canadians. The Canadian experts in the B.C. forests have recently reported we can expect a reduction in magnitude of about 7.5 billion board feet in harvests sometime in the next five years.

You are in a unique position as the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee to provide the leadership to achieve a national solution to this problem. I never understood what possessed the Oregon electorate to give up the enormous clout and constructive influence that Al Ullman exercised on our behalf when he was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, or to retire Bob Duncan despite his growing influence on the House Appropriations Committee. It would be an even greater act of insanity to substitute an extremist like Harry Lonsdale for a seasoned leader like you.

Rusty and I want you to know that we want to be as helpful as possible in your re-election campaign.

With warmest regards and best wishes,

Daniel L. Goldy

Tom Partin: The spotted owl did help destroy the timber industry

Tom Partin: The spotted owl did help destroy the timber industry

By TOM PARTIN

READER’S VIEW FOREST POLICY Idaho Statesman

Spotted owl did collapse timber industry

I write to set the record straight. Niels Nokkentved, whose guest opinion piece appeared May 27, simply does not know what he is talking about. Following the dialectic of the environmental movement, he would have readers believe the listing of the spotted owl had nothing to do with the neglect our federal forests are now suffering or the plight of our rural communities which those forests surround.

I have lived in Oregon for all of my 62 years, mostly in small rural communities. I have witnessed firsthand the appalling damage done by misguided federal forest policy to our forests, our communities and our families. Here are some facts.

The Northwest Forest Plan, implemented in 1994, was designed to assure the recovery of the northern spotted owl. The plan allocated only 15 percent of the 24.5 million acres of federal land it covers to multiple use management and set aside 85 percent for special uses. This drastic reduction in manageable land reduced the amount of timber available annually from 4.5 billion to 1.1 billion board feet. This reduction, coupled with the fact that less than 40 percent of the projected 1.1 billion was ever made available for harvest, led to the closure of 261 mills supporting at least 50,000 jobs in western Washington, western Oregon and northern California.

Based on a conservative production estimate of at least 500 board-feet per acre per year, growth on the Northwest Forest Plan acres since 1994 has been in the neighborhood of 12.1 billion board feet per year. The annual harvest has been only about 4 percent of growth. The resulting buildup of dead and dying trees in Northwest forests has led to catastrophic fires burning millions of acres, much of it prime spotted owl habitat.

The Pacific Northwest is the premier timber growing region in the world. We have the laws and standards in place to assure good environmental management and protection of air and water quality when we harvest. Yet today, America is importing 40 percent of its softwoods from Canada. We are in a prolonged period of high unemployment in America — and especially in Oregon, Washington and northern California. Poverty in rural areas of the Northwest continues to fester. More than 25 percent of rural Oregon families are on food stamps and a record number of our children depend on free school lunches and even breakfasts to meet their basic nutritional needs.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to nearly triple the critical habitat set aside for protection of the spotted owl from 5.3 million acres to nearly 14 million acres. This despite the fact that owl numbers have continued to decline rapidly due to catastrophic wildfire and predation by the more aggressive barred owl. Curtailing harvest well below that envisioned by the Northwest Forest Plan has not helped the owl because habitat is not the limiting factor.

In closing, I suggest if Mr. Nokkentved is going to write about Oregon and Washington, he get out of Idaho and come visit some of our unhealthy forests and communities and witness the devastation firsthand. It is only a three-hour drive to visit the community of John Day, where I lived for 18 years and was the mayor for two. I watched the demise of the federal timber program and watched that community lose its timber industry, its infrastructure and its identity, while surrounded by a sea of dead and dying federal timber. It’s time to get it right.

Tom Partin is president of American Forest Resource Council in Portland.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/06/03/2140631/tom-partin-the-spotted-owl-did.html#storylink=cpy

The Great Recession’s Impact on Douglas County

The Great Recession’s Impact on Douglas County

NewsWatch 12 KDRV.com

By Brandi Smith

ROSEBURG, Ore. -- Spread over more than 5,000 acres, Douglas County encompasses the entire Umpqua River basin from Diamond Lake to Reedsport. Its economic history is as rich as the land its first settlers mined.

When the county was established in 1852, people came there looking for gold. But they found something else valuable in the soil: its ability to grow just about anything.

"Prunes grew well here. Nut crops grew well here," said UCC professor Chris Lake. "Kruse Farms had 700 acres of cauliflower a long time ago."

Over time, focus turned to another natural resource; lumber mills started popping up all over the valley. After World War II, things really started hopping.

"I think the best years were mid-50s to mid-60s," said Art Adams, owner of Nordic Veneer, Inc. "There were a lot of mills in the area then, but it was great."

Things steadied in the 1980s. The mills became a way of life for their workers, like 17-year Roseburg Forest Products employee Jeremy Wiest.

"I think it's probably the biggest thing we have in this county, the timber industry," he said. "It was in my family. My dad worked in the industry, worked for Roseburg Forest Products."

Mills are also a way of life for their owners, like Adams. His father owned Nordic when he started working there in 1966.

"It's been a big part of my life my entire life," he said. "This pretty much defines me."

The industry also came to define the county, which made a name for itself as the timber capital of the state, the country and the world. Nearly 8 percent of the people who work in Douglas County work in wood products manufacturing. Compare that to about 2 percent of Lane County or 3 percent of Coos County.

When the 1990s rolled in, the spotted owl and more logging restrictions on federal land did too. The climate was changing -- and for Douglas County, it was not changing for the better.

"We've lost a lot of capacity due to the curtailment of harvesting on government timber lands," said RFP president Allyn Ford. "We cannot manufacture products out of air. We need trees."

Just more than four years ago, the housing bubble burst. What had always been the county's greatest strength was now clearly its greatest weakness.

"In Douglas County, the recession was especially bad because it's still somewhat dependent on manufacturing, especially wood products," said Worksource regional economist Brian Rooney.

New home construction dropped by nearly 70 percent. There were 2 million housing starts in 2007, but in 2012, that number is closer to 600,000. When demand drops that drastically, layoffs are a given. RFP handed pink slips to about 20 percent of its workers.

"Doesn't matter whether you're somebody who pours concrete, if you're a framer, if you're somebody who's in the cabinetry business," said Ford. "You work up the supply chain and into the manufacturing side, it's been devastating."

"t affects every business in this community," said Debbie Fromdahl, Roseburg Chamber of Commerce president, "because those are the folks who are actually spending money in all those different venues."

Unemployment soared from 7.4 percent in 2007 up to 16.2 percent in 2009. Even today, it's nowhere close to those 2007 numbers.

"I've been in the industry for almost 45 years," said Ford, "I guess I have hash marks up and down my sleeve that indicate I've been through quite a few of them. This one -- there's no comparison."

Monday on KEZI 9 News at 6:30, we'll look at how Douglas County's timber industry is bouncing back from the Great Recession.

Study: Barred owl out-competing spotted owl

Friday, April 13, 2012

Ryan Imondi
The News-Review

ENLARGE

A Barred owl is seen at the Miami Science Museum in Miami. To save the threatened spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a plan to shoot or relocate barred owls, a rival bird that has shoved its smaller cousin aside.

AP photo

A three-year study released Thursday shows the barred owl is out-competing the spotted owl for resources critical for survival, but does not connect the barred owl to the spotted owl's continuing decline.

The study, conducted by the Oregon State University and the U.S. Geological Survey, monitored interactions between 28 spotted owls and 29 barred owls.

Researchers found the barred owl's larger population and ability to produce more offspring have left the spotted owl losing out on habitat and prey.

Many studies have followed the species separately, but this was the first track them simultaneously, researchers said.

The spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990, causing sharp reductions in logging on federal forests. Recently federal scientists have concluded that barred owls are now on par with logging as a threat to spotted owls.

Geological Survey researcher David Wiens said the new study did not last long enough to determine if the barred owls' growth was contributing to spotted owls' decline.

Researchers reported that barred owls had a 92 percent survival rate each year compared to 81 percent for spotted owls. The barred owl produced six times as many offspring.

Wiens said the study confirmed previous findings that the barred owls is gaining dominance in the Northwest over the spotted owl.

“Pretty much wherever a spotted owl goes, it will encounter barred owls,” he said.

The spotted owl's population has declined by 40 percent over the past 25 years.

Over the past 30 years, the barred owl has expanded its range from east of the Rockies and now overlaps the entire range of the northern spotted owl.

Loss of habitat to logging and competition from the barred owl are the two main threats to the spotted owl, according to federal scientists.

Wiens said the spotted owl's low numbers make competing with the barred owl more difficult. He said there were signs the two species could coexist because the barred owl has a wider range of prey and habitat.

The Obama administration announced in early February it will consider shooting or capturing and relocating barred owls to help the spotted owl.

Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson said Thursday he questions the benefits of attempting to rescue the spotted owl if the species may already be doomed.

“If you look at that as a public policy, you can look at how perverse our role is on controlling nature,” he said. “Is our life going to change if we have barred instead of spotted owls in the forest?”

• You can reach reporter Ryan Imondi at 541-957-4211 or by email at rimondi@nrtoday.com.