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Timber Jobs: A Boost for Oregon’s Economy

by Cascade Policy Institute Monday, June 1. 2009

timber money tree.serendipityThumb Timber Jobs: A Boost for Oregons EconomyBy Karla Kay Edwards

In today’s economy everyone is looking for ways to create jobs and increase revenues. That includes Senator Ron Wyden, who has drafted the Oregon Forest Restoration and Old Growth Protection Act, which would manage Oregon’s federally owned forests tree by tree instead of as a sustainable landscape. Though his goals to improve forest health while providing jobs in our rural communities is well intentioned, it will only create more bureaucracy while jeopardizing forest health and our rural communities’ livelihoods.

As the leading lumber producer in the U.S., Oregon has the opportunity to stimulate the economies of rural communities which depend on forestlands for jobs and revenue generation. Currently, the federal government owns 57% of Oregon forestland but contributes only 7% of the yearly timber harvest (versus privately owned forest, which constitutes 37% of Oregon forest and 85% of the yearly harvest). There is definitely need for more active management to improve the health of our federal forest.

Better forestland management designed to prevent further infestations of insects and disease, as well as assisting with forest fire protection, could stimulate economies throughout rural Oregon. But this can’t be accomplished through legislation focused on individual tree size and age instead of on the landscape as a whole.

Unfortunately, Senator Wyden’s draft legislation would add to the bureaucratic process and essentially halt the approval of all current and future timber harvest. If the Senator wants to help, he should ensure that current timber contracts are fulfilled and that an appropriate level of funding is provided for active local forest management.

Karla Kay Edwards is Rural Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute. She has held positions of leadership in numerous organizations focusing on agricultural and rural industries and issues, including the Fresno (California) Farm Bureau, Washington Cattlemen’s Association, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

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Posted by at 06:00 | Posted in Measure 37 | 13 Comments |Email This Post Email This Post |Print This Post Print This Post
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  • eagle eye

    Dream on! The forest industry didn’t get its way under Bush/Clinton/Gingrich/Bush, it certainly isn’t going to get its way under Obama/Pelosi.

    And I love the part about “focus on … the landscape as a whole.”

    As if the appearance of the landscape isn’t the principal reason so many people hate the forest industry and are happy to have the ESA shut it down!

    • Anonymous

      I think you should to to Sisters Oregon and drive a few miles toward the coast. Look at the hundreds of thousands of dead, burnt trees, then tell me again about the landscape.

    • David from Eugene

      Eagle Eye is correct; the appearance of a clear cut is an important factor in the public’s opposition to Timber Harvesting. Simply put, a clear cut is ugly, it is ugly close up, ugly at long distances and it remains ugly for many years. Until the Timber cutters figure out how to cut trees without leaving ugly clear cuts observable from miles away there will be a sizable segment of the general population that will support the fringe environmentalist’s efforts to stop the cutting of public lands. The aftermath of Forest Fires may be equally ugly but they are not as directly related by the general public to public policy as clear cutting. This is one of the cases where perception has more weight then the facts with the public.

      • eagle eye

        I partly agree with you, but I don’t consider the aesthetics of clear cutting to be a “fringe” issue. It takes an extreme materialist position to view aesthetics as merely a minor consideration.

        It’s possible to do forestry in an aesthetically pleasing or at least acceptable way with selective thinning. There are some examples on private land south of Eugene that I’ve driven by probably hundreds of times. This is probably not as economically remunerative as clearcutting, but if practiced by the forest industry, would save them a heap of trouble. Perhaps it could be partially or wholly subsidized by the state or federal government.

        But nobody ever talks about it, not in Oregon anyhow. The state seems perpetually stuck in its same old ways.

        • contrarian

          Its a complex matter. The timber industry has hundreds of thousands of acres of irrigated poplar plantations along the Columbia River that are clearcut on 10-15 year rotations. It makes no sense, ecologically, aesthetically or otherwise to managed these selectively. They are truly tree farms and nothing more.

          It also has vast areas of Douglas fir plantations in the coast and Cascade Mountain ranges. Most industrial timber companies manage these on 35-50 year clearcut rotations, creating the type of ugliness (and other ecological problems) Eagle Eye points to. They use clearcutting because it is far cheaper operationally. Other forest owners, mostly smaller scale, manage the same types of forests selectively, with periodic small clearcuts (2-5 acres) that are not obtrusive aesthetically and help diversify things ecologically. Selective harvesting is just as productive as clearcutting, but is less economical due to operational costs.

          Paying timber companies to not clearcut has been done through conservation easements. The Cascade Forest Trust has done a lot of this near Seattle.

          • eagle eye

            Just imagine if there was an ethic of managing the forests for beauty, rather than money, or even “sustainability”! If only partially. The industry might find that it had a lot more friends. It might even make more money.

          • contrarian

            We don’t have to imagine it. That ethic exists. a lot of forest land owners manage their forests in that way, including the Collins Company as just one example. The problem is the publicly traded timber companies, from Weyerhaueser on down, who pretty much have to maximize short term revenues at the expense of anything that does not turn a profit. They are not bad people, and most that I know work responsibly, but lets face it. Capitalism compels private companies who answer to stockholders to continuously improve productivity and profitability or be left behind. And if Oregon regulates private forests to the extent that they become unprofitable, well there goes what is left of the industry.

            Its a conundrum we have not been able to even talk about rationally let alone solve. But there is a growing movement among private timber land owners, those not publicly traded, to manage forests for a wider set of values. There are also alternative investment strategies and land trusts who are gaining title to forest land and managing them more the way you and I would like them to be.

            Question. When you go to the lumber yard, will you pay a bit more for a 2×4 with an FSC label on it? That is the key.

  • eagle eye

    Been to Sisters and the Coast many many times. Drove to the Coast from Eugene just two weeks ago. I noticed a lot of clearcuts and “Mohawk” forests, but no burns.

    There is a great burn out at Fall Creek near Lowell. Some jackass with an illegal summer campfire a few years back. I liked it a lot better before it was burnt, but that doesn’t mean I wish it had been logged to avoid the burn.

    If you think the average person finds the industrial forest more beautiful, on average, than the natural forest, I would say you’re dreaming. Too much time behind a chain saw? Anyhow, dream on.

  • Joe

    But dead trees must be preserved as habitat for wildlife.
    Cutting a dead tree is the same as cutting live one.
    It is very bad to the environment and the animals.
    We must stop looking to the forest for our salvation.
    Leave the forest alone and let it repair itself.
    Then all will be good.

  • Al Gore Rules

    I have a better idea-let’s destroy the only industries we have in this state, then bitch about how there’s no jobs and no revenue for things like libraries and sheriff patrols!
    Then we can patiently wait for ecotourism to replace the family wage jobs that we lost! And we can rely on groups like EarthJustice to replace the lost tax revenues, because they’ve done so much to create jobs for the people of Oregon!

  • contrarian

    Comparing timber production on private forests with federal is misleading. Private forests are mostly low elevation, better soils, longer growing season, and managed with only timber in mind. Federal forests are higher elevation, lower quality soils, shorter growing season, and managed for lots of things other than timber.

    As Eagle Eye points out, if we did not go back to the high timber production days under 8 years of Bush and 12 years of a Republican Congress that cared nothing for the environment, what makes Cascade Policy Institute think they are going to get a better deal than the Wyden plan?

  • dan

    Proper forest management is key. Forest fires are much more prevalent on federal mismanaged land than on private land and that causes a myriad of problems.

    In 2007 alone, wildfires burnt 750,000 acres of forest in Oregon which produced about 4.5 million pounds of particulate matter which can cause many bad health effects mainly respiratory problems.

    Emissions from Oregon forest fires in 2007 were equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from 11.1 million cars driven for a year and was as much or more than all human cuased emissions in the state combined.

    Proper management of the forest would be a boon to local economies suffering over 20% unemployment, lower human health risks, and shut up some r enviros about global warming emissions.

    • contrarian

      Doghair thickets on private timber land burn as hot or hotter than forests on federal lands. But most private forest land in oregon is in the Coast range, which is not as prone to burning as are federal forests in southern or eastern Oregon. The Siuslaw National Forest in the Coast range has had no fires of any size in the past several decades.

      Forest fires do generate carbon, but when the forests grow back they re-sequester the same carbon, so nothing is added to atmospheric CO2 unless the forest is not allowed to grow back.

      “Proper management” is in the eye of the beholder. In the past the Forest Service all but gave timber away to private companies. Yes this created jobs, but heavily subsidized ones. They still do that in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska by the way.

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