Activists warn ‘big timber’ to leave Elliott State Forest alone

News Review Today, Roseburg

http://www.nrtoday.com/news/Activists warn ‘big timber’ to leave Elliott State Forest alone10669252-113/timber-state-forest-elliott

Christina George
cgeorge@nrtoday.com
Follow Me

Anti-logging activists say they would physically block timber harvests on Elliott State Forest parcels sold by the Department of State Lands.

Cascadia Forest Defenders, in an open letter addressed to “big timber” Monday, said protesters “will not respect new property lines, signs or gates.”

“If timber companies are buying this, they are not just buying a piece of land they can log, they are buying a giant controversy with a large and unified movement encompassing a spectrum of tactics and a spectrum of people,” organizer Erin Grady said Tuesday in an interview.

Three other groups last week threatened to sue any timber company that bought pieces of the Elliott, a 93,000-acre forest between Reedsport and Coos Bay.

The twin warnings aren’t likely to discourage timber companies from bidding, Douglas Timber Operators Executive Director Bob Ragon said today.

“We’re a mature industry. We recognize the hazards, and we’ll conduct our operations in full compliance with the laws,” he said.

The Department of State Lands will go ahead and open bids March 28 despite the threats of lawsuits and blockades, the department’s assistant director, Jim Paul, said.

“We can’t control how other folks are going to react to this sale,” he said.

The State Land Board — made up of Gov. John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown and Treasurer Ted Wheeler — decided to sell 2,738 acres to make up a $3 million deficit in the Common School Fund. The shortfall opened after the state curtailed logging because of lawsuits filed by environmentalists.

In its message to timber companies, Cascadia Forest Defenders accused the State Land Board of “trying to wash their hands of the Elliott.”

“If these forests are privatized, we know what the outcomes will be. We have seen the way that private timber companies have destroyed the land they own,” the letter states.

The group charged the land board with not caring about residents of Douglas and Coos counties “who are sick of seeing the hills above their homes yarded away to a timber mill while their counties grow poorer.”

The activists promised to disrupt operations.

“Do not bid on these sales. If you become the owner of the Elliott, you will have activists up your trees and lawsuits on your desk. We will be at your office and in your mills.”

Said Ragon: “I think it’s kind of an affront to be threatened like that.”

“Who do they think we are? Hooligans running around the woods with chain saws cutting down trees without regard for the environmental consequences?”

Cascadia Wildlands, Audubon Society of Portland and the Center for Biological Diversity have threatened any timber company that buys a piece of the Elliott with litigation. The groups claim logging would harm marbled murrelets and violate the Endangered Species Act.

Cascadia Forest Defenders’ tree-sitters have been effective in stopping since June the 187-acre White Castle timber harvest on Bureau of Land Management timberlands east of Myrtle Creek.

Grady declined to comment on whether tree-sitters have remained there since Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands sued in January to stop the timber harvest.

Cascadia Forest Defenders has staged previous anti-logging protests. Tree-sitters were arrested in the Elliott three years ago when state forest managers proposed increasing annual timber harvests.

The state will open bids this month for the 788-acre East Hakki Ridge in Douglas County and the 355-acre Benson Ridge and 310-acre Adams Ridge Tract 1 parcels in Coos County.

The state plans to auction off another 1,300 acres within the Adams Ridge parcel in the fall.

•You can reach reporter Christina George at 541-957-4202 or at cgeorge@nrtoday.com.

Seabirds Threaten School Funding

Quiet meetings turn intense

The usually calm Oregon State Land Board, SLB, meetings have produced a lot of attention since environmental lawsuits brought forest management activity to a screeching halt on the Elliott State Forest.

Over 50 protesters set up outside of the SLB meeting on December 10, 2013 as Governor John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown and State Treasurer Ted Wheeler decided to take competitive bids on 2,700 acres of the 93,000 acre Elliott State Forest, ESF.

Constitutional Requirement

Historically, the ESF has supported the state’s Common School Fund, as directed by Oregon’s Constitution. However, due to the litigation over the Marbled Murrelet, a small seabird that may use a tree on the ESF for a nest, incoming revenue has ground to a halt. In fact, so far in 2013 the Common School Fund has paid over $3,000,000 to support the ESF! This is something the Treasurer’s Office and school funding advocates loathe.

A DEMOCRATIC Process

Governor John Kitzhaber allowed all of the protesters a try at testifying before the SLB. Many of the commenters were disgusted by the notion that Oregon would cut trees to help fund schools. Historically, public forests at the national and state level have always supported schools, not to mention roads and public safety.

Forest management activities were not the only thing that confounded the protesters, several that spoke decried the fact that the three Democrats, Governor Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Brown and State Treasurer Wheeler that compose the State Land Board were adopting a strategy that puts a price on the ESF. “It’s a LIE that Democrats protect the environment!!!”

What it used to be

Making a return visit to the SLB was former Elliott State Forest Manager Jerry Phillips. As he told the SLB, Phillips spent 33 years on the ESF, 19 as Manager.  During his time on the ESF, the forest brought in $300 million for the Common School Fund.

Phillips spent much of his time on the Elliott working out land exchanges, which needed State Land Board approval, to increase the size of the 93,000-acre forest. The 2,700 acres that were approved for the initial bidding process included tracts that Phillips added.

News Coverage of the State Land Board Decision

Kitzhaber, Oregon officials approve exploring Elliott State Forest land sale

Oregon board OKs controversial forestland sale

As Oregon weighs Elliott State Forest sale, marbled murrelet habitat raises financial questions

State Land Board agrees to sell off parcels in Elliott State Forest

SW Oregon Logging Plan Moves Ahead

Elliott forest sale only alternative

Follow Wyden into the woods

Follow Wyden into the woods Editorial

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

Email

You can see why the Oregon timber counties would be disappointed in Sen. Ron Wyden's new plan for cutting some more timber on the federal government's checkerboard Oregon & California Railroad land holdings. Wyden's plan won't produce as much timber, or as much county revenue, as the language that passed the House, and county officials say they're less confident that it could avoid getting bogged down in litigation.

Sen. Ron Wyden explains his Oregon timber proposal.Stephanie Yao Long

Douglas County Commissioner Doug Robertson, president of the Association of O&C Counties, declared "I have to admit disappointment," saying the Wyden proposal comes up short for the association's three bedrock principles: sharply reduced litigation, increased timber cut and increased financial support for local counties. By Wyden's estimation, his bill would approximately double the timber cut in the lands, to 300 million to 350 million board feet, and raise support to county governments.

For Southwest Oregon counties near the edge of disintegration, with public safety resources far below any definition of safety, Wyden's plan must indeed seem inadequate. The O&C language that passed the House allowed for a cut that might reach 500 million board feet, which could provide considerably larger revenue stream to the counties.

The problem is that with opposition by both the Senate and the White House, there is no chance of the House language becoming law. The best, most promising approach is to pass something through the Senate and get it to a conference committee with the House, creating the prospect of something that might actually become law and provide some assistance to the counties.

Even that possibility is far from certain, considering the barren recent record of congressional conference committees. It would be a long shot to expect the current arrangement in Washington to produce anything substantive. But considering the desperate condition of the counties, where in places ordinary law enforcement has vanished as a daily fact of life, the effort is vital.

Both bills increase the logging cut while putting a considerable amount of the 3 million O&C acres beyond logging forever. They both try to limit unending litigation, although the Association of O&C Counties expresses doubt about Wyden's version. With these similarities of direction and goals, it seems that something workable might be made from the two of them.

What's unlikely to survive are two particular aspects of the House bill that are essentially deal-killers to the Senate and President Obama. After dividing up the O&C lands into two different trusts, the House bill places extensive federal lands under state management, an arrangement certain to draw resistance. It also lacks the protections against clear-cutting in the Wyden bill, which offers an approach of "ecological forestry" that may indeed be more expensive and inconvenient, but is also more publicly acceptable.

There are limitations to what any Congress might produce on this issue. The cut is never going back to the billion-board-foot boom times of the late '70s. Even if it somehow did, with all the mechanization of the past decades, that would not recreate the historic levels of jobs. For the counties, whatever comes out of this process – if anything comes out of this process – won't be a full solution, but only part of a pathway to one.

The O&C counties aren't the only groups critical of Wyden's proposal. Some Oregon

environmental groups, such as Oregon Wild, have their own objections to its litigation rules, and some would simply oppose any increased cut on federal lands.

To refuse to advance with the process now would be a long-odds bet on dealing with a more friendly president and Senate in 2017. 

Considering the current emergency conditions of many of the counties, it would be a long time to wait, for an outcome that may not arise – and years of full Republican control of Washington in the last decade didn't exactly resolve the problem, either.

Despite the counties' deepest hopes, 1978 is not coming again. What the counties, and all of Oregon, needs is to begin finding a path to 2020, and the years beyond.

Alternative harvesting method provides foundation for Wyden O&C plan

Alternative harvesting method provides foundation for Wyden O&C plan: Guest opinion

Print

By Guest Columnist 
Follow on Twitter 
on November 30, 2013 at 9:00 AM, updated November 30, 2013 at 9:04 AM

By Jerry F. Franklin
and K. Norman Johnson

Variable retention harvesting is prescribed in Sen. Ron Wyden's proposed legislation for harvesting in younger highly-productive Douglas fir and Western hemlock forests (the "moist forests") on the O&C lands of western Oregon. Understanding the forestry technique is critical to understanding the senator's plan.

View full sizeIn variable retention forestry, portions of forest are retained throughout the harvest. area providing "lifeboats" for ecosystems. (Computer simulation by Laura Hardin, OSU)

Variable retention harvesting is modeled on patterns of natural disturbances, such as wildfire.  In contrast to clear-cutting, where essentially all of the trees are removed, significant amounts (about 1/3 in the proposed legislation) of the pre-harvest forest are retained throughout the harvest area (see top photo). The retention would typically include unlogged forest patches up to several acres in size well distributed through the harvest area – "aggregated retention" -- as well as individual or small clusters of live and dead trees and down logs, distributed over logged portions of the harvest area -- "dispersed retention." Some of the aggregated retention will be along streams within the harvest area.

One important objective of variable retention harvesting is to "lifeboat" many of the forest-related plant and animal species, sustaining them within the harvest area until the new forest becomes established. For example, forest-dwelling small mammals and amphibians can be sustained by retaining heavily rotted logs that provide critical habitat for them. 

Variable retention also provides for continuity in life-sustaining flows of energy into the soil from trees. In addition, the un-harvested forest patches or aggregates have special ecological value since they include undisturbed forest floors, a full range of tree sizes and mellow microclimates.

View full sizeThe openings created in variable retention forestry aid development of highly bio-diverse ecosystems. (Photo by Jerry Franklin)

Variable retention harvesting is being widely applied globally as a versatile and effective silvicultural approach, particularly where management goals require integration of ecological, economic, and cultural objectives. It is currently being used on five continents in countries as diverse as Sweden, Canada, Australia, Argentina and Chile. It also is being used on a diversity of forest ownerships including federal, state, and local public lands, trust lands, and private forest lands. Hundreds of peer-reviewed publications document the scientific underpinnings and the ecological benefits of variable retention harvesting.

Of course, a key question is what stands would receive variable retention harvesting in Sen. Wyden's proposed legislation. Harvesting would occur only in moist forest stands designated for sustained yield management. All of these would be stands currently less than 120 years of age and most would be stands that originated after previous harvests (usually clear-cutting) 60-90 years ago. No old-growth forests or trees would be harvested.

As proposed for the Bureau of Land Management lands, variable retention harvesting has the additional major ecological benefit of providing the significant openings needed for development of the highly bio-diverse "early successional ecosystems." These are the ecosystems that initially develop on forest sites after a harvest or other major disturbance, such as wildfire. They are biologically rich communities of herbs, shrubs and trees that, in turn, support an immense variety of animal life because of the abundant and diverse sources of food – herbage, nectar, fruits, nuts, seeds and prey. (See bottom photo.)

Many of the species found in these early successional ecosystems are habitat specialists that require early successional habitats. These include many songbirds and butterflies. Also, as hunters know, they are favored and critical habitat for deer and elk, because there is food for them to eat. Research at Mount St. Helens – the biodiversity hotspot of the Cascade Range -- has been critical in helping us to understand the ecological importance of early successional ecosystems.

While private forest lands might be expected to provide for biologically rich early successional ecosystems, they generally do not. Production forestry on industrial lands -- the source of most private harvest in Western Oregon -- seeks to maximize economic returns with intensive practices, such as intensive site preparation, dense tree planting, and control of shrubs and herbs with herbicides. Encouraging shrub-dominated communities and gradual re-establishment of tree cover is not consistent with such goals.

In summary, variable retention harvesting proposed in Sen. Wyden's legislation is fundamentally different from clear-cutting and associated practices. Variable retention is grounded in principles derived from natural forest ecosystems. As proposed it will provide for both continuity in forest biota and creation of openings needed for early successional species and processes.

Jerry Franklin is a professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington; K. Norman Johnson is  a professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. They each worked on development of the Northwest Forest Plan and on development of Sen. Ron Wyden's forest management plan unveiled this week.

Board of Forestry Seeks Better Financial Management

Board of Forestry Seeks Better Financial Management 

The Oregon Board of Forestry, frustrated with the performance of the Northwest Forest Management Plan for the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, assigned a Subcommittee to present options to the full Board that can improve the financial performance of the forests while also enhancing the recreational and conservation opportunities on the once County-owned forestland.

The State took over management of the forests from the Counties decades ago but the revenue generated from forest management is shared with the Counties.

In 2001, the BOF adopted a new strategy for the forests in an effort to develop forests that produced timber revenue while providing habitat for wildlife species that favored a multi-layered forest canopy.

The 2001 plan, dubbed Structure-Based-Management, has never produced the volume of timber called for. Frequent windstorms along the north coast have wreaked havoc for the Structure-Based-Management Strategy since the trees that were left after management frequently blew down.

The Stakeholders' group met on November 11th and reviewed alternative forest management strategies. Some group members were annoyed when the group struggled to identify tactics that could lead to increased timber revenues.

The two timber representatives, Dave Ivanoff, Hampton Affiliates and Ray Jones, Stimson Lumber Co. and Tillamook County Commissioner Tim Josi see a direct link between improved forest management activities, including timber harvesting, and increased revenues.

The Stakeholders invited two forest analytical experts, Terry Droessler and Mark Rasmussen, to identify the biological and economic outcomes of the various strategies being considered. The group will meet at least two more times before presenting their recommendations to the BOF Subcommittee.

Legislator Views Modern Logging Practices

 Legislator Views Modern Logging Practices

 

Rep. Jeff Reardon, Bob Luotto, Andrea Salinas

State Representative Jeff Reardon, D-Happy Valley, spent a day with logger Bob Luotto, Cross & Crown, Jim Geisinger, Associated Oregon Loggers and Ralph Saperstein, timber industry spokesman visiting an active unit that Luotto’s company was logging for Stimson Lumber Co.

Rep. Reardon was interested in seeing the Oregon Forest Practices Act in action. The Stimson tract, outside of Cannon Beach, was smack in the middle of Cannon Beach’s water supply. Stimson forester Tim Shiel described the coordination with the City and the details necessary to conduct the logging of the unit.

It is not an understatement to say that that Rep. Reardon was impressed with the detail that went into logging the tract. Previously, Reardon had worked out in the woods for Weyerhaeuser in the 1960s.

Bob let Rep. Reardon climb up to the cab of his log yarder/processor to see a high tech version of machinery that has been around a long time. Bob’s processor operator reports that operating a modern high tech helicopter is less complicated than controlling the log processor.

Proposed Elliott State Forest land sales pit school funding against environmental conservation

Proposed Elliott State Forest land sales pit school funding against environmental conservation

By Yuxing Zheng, The Oregonian 
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 AM, updated August 15, 2013 at 9:35 AM

Environmental activists previously staged sit-ins, road blockades and protests at Elliott State Forest. A bill passed in the Oregon Senate Monday targets tree sitters and others who interfere with state forestland management. (Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian)

A threatened sea bird that nests in coastal forests could impact funding for schools across the state.

Environmental activists are protesting against the proposed sale or exchange of three parcels in the Elliott State Forest, which they say are prime nesting grounds for the marbled murrelet. Three environmental groups in May 2012 filed a lawsuit that said logging in the forest would threaten the bird.

The lawsuit largely tied up logging in the forest, which state officials had originally estimated would net $25.2 million for the state's Common School Fund over the next two years. Now, officials say the sale of the three parcels, if completed, would fetch enough to manage the forest in the current biennium without raising any money for the school fund.

"It just means the Legislature has to draw more on the general fund because it doesn't have as much Common School Fund money to use," said Jim Paul, assistant director of the Department of State Lands for the land management division.

Interest earned from the fund goes to the state's K-12 school districts through the Oregon Department of Education. Last year, the fund paid about $48 million to Oregon schools. The $4.1 million that Portland Public Schools received from the fund last year paid for the equivalent of 48 teachers, according to a state fact sheet.

State officials originally planned to harvest 40 million board feet in Elliott State Forest in the next two years, Paul said. The lawsuit forced officials to revise their projections to 15 million board feet, estimated to fetch $8 million this biennium to cover forest management costs.

The Department of Forestry already laid off seven full-time employees in the Coos Bay office who work on timber sales as part of budget cuts, Paul said.

The three parcels proposed for sale amount to 2,714 acres in Coos and Douglas counties and are not areas included in the lawsuit from environmentalists, said Julie Curtis, spokeswoman for the Department of State Lands. The department is accepting public comments on the proposed sale until 5 p.m. Sept. 3.

The State Land Board is scheduled to meet Dec. 10 to consider final approval of a land sale. Gov. John Kitzhaber, Secretary of State Kate Brown and State Treasurer Ted Wheeler comprise the State Land Board.

The state owns about 700,000 acres of land, from which mineral and timber proceeds help pay for schools.

Environmental activists fear the three parcels in Elliott State Forest will be sold to a logging company.

Activists affiliated with Cascadia Forest Defenders and Cascadia Earth First!staged road blockades, tree sits and protests at Elliott State Forest in recent years andat the Oregon State Capitol in May and June 2012, which led to arrests. The groups oppose an October 2011 decision to increase logging in the forest.

"In a time when the State Land Board should be taking responsibility for the mismanagement of the Elliott State Forest, they are going over the heads of the public and the courts and finding ways to manage our public lands for profit instead of conservation," Erin Grady, a Cascadia Forest Defenders member, said in a press release.

The Elliott protests in recent years spurred the Oregon Legislature this spring to passa law allowing forest contractors to sue environmental activists. A companion bill that would've created the crime of interference with state forestland management passed the House but died in the Senate.

If state succeeds in selling the three proposed parcels, officials would consider selling more, said Paul, of State Lands.

"If the forestlands look like it's no longer going to be a revenue-generating land type, we're looking at possibly divesting in those lands," he said. "Since these are the first parcels, I would still call this a due-diligence phase. The potential is there for us to continue down this path and look at the sale of additional forestlands in the Elliott."

-- Yuxing Zheng