Public Forests: Opportunity Knocks, Will The Northwest Answer?

A region that soon could lead the nation in joblessness and wildfire ought to be open to change on federal forests

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Public Forests: Opportunity Knocks, Will The Northwest Answer?

by The Editorial Board
Sunday April 26, 2009,

Caption: Northwest forest policy has led to more forests choked with small trees, and more catastrophic wildfires.

A region that soon could lead the nation in joblessness and wildfire ought to be open to change on federal forests

Sen. Ron Wyden has a new timber plan for Northwest forests. So everybody join in now:

No way. Bad idea. Won't work. Dead on arrival.

That's how we do it here, right? Never mind that Northwest forests are choked with dead and dying trees, and that some years many more acres of public forests go up in flames than are thinned by logging. Never mind the unemployment rate pushing 20 percent in counties home to large federal forests. Never mind that the last few sawmills in the region are struggling to get enough wood to hang on 'til better days come. Why change?

Because what this region is doing, what it's been doing for almost 20 years, is dumb and destructive. The long fight over public lands logging has sickened the forests, damaged the economy and badly hurt Oregon communities.

Yet few people seem ready for change. The latest reminder came when Sen. Wyden sent his chief of staff, Josh Kardon, to outline a new draft of his timber plan to the recent annual meeting of the American Forest Resources Council, the leading wood products organization in the region. Kardon had barely finished his speech before council president Tom Partin handed out a prepared news release criticizing the draft bill. At almost the same time, the environmental group Oregon Wild e-mailed a news release to reporters headlined, "New Wyden forest plan falls short." Why wait?

Perhaps you care to hear the details of Wyden's plan before you make up your mind. Similar to a proposal by U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio a couple years ago, Wyden seeks to resolve the long-running dispute over Northwest public forests by putting old-growth trees off limits while expediting logging for the smaller, second-growth trees crowding so much of the Northwest forests.

Specifically, the bill would set age limits for cutting trees -- 120 years old in the wetter forests west of the Cascades, 150 years for the drier forests east of the Cascades and 160 years for the so-called O&C Lands that provide significant revenue for timber counties. It would also put thinning and other fire prevention projects up to 25,000 acres on a fast-track environmental process, provided they have strong local support.

Yes, Wyden's bill raises questions that need careful consideration. The timber industry is right to question whether it would be practical to require loggers to determine whether trees are 120 years old, 105 years old or 125 years old. Environmental groups naturally have serious reservations about any plan that limits scientific or legal reviews.

But it is deeply discouraging to see the industry and the environmentalists greet Wyden's serious and promising proposal by retreating quickly to their respective corners. The industry shows pictures of puny 120-year-old trees and says that age limit is too low and would put too many trees off limits. Environmentalists say too much old growth would be cut under Wyden's plan and want the age limits pushed even lower.

These tired positions have done a twin killing on the public forests and Oregon's rural economy. As Kardon said in his speech, "We can argue about the fate of old growth for another decade and get nowhere, or we can take old growth off the table and more than double the harvest from Oregon forests for decades."

Clearly, the latter is a better path for the Northwest. Wyden, DeFazio and other lawmakers should ignore the reflexive criticism, keep negotiating old-growth protections and ultimately deliver a new forest plan to the Obama administration. The region must not go on like this, greeting every attempt at compromise with criticism and contempt, while public forests and Oregon jobs go up in smoke.

This article found on:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/04/public_forests_opportunity_kno.html

Additional Information

Web Site: http://www.oregonlive.com

Category: Forestry>Wildfire

Region: All US

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