Archive for November, 2011

Sometimes it just takes time for elected officials to come around, and in the Northwest, federal and state leaders are beginning to understand the importance of working forests. Now it remains to be seen whether this will translate into more harvest of state and federal timberland — in order to improve the health of those forests and revitalize rural economies — but there are promising signs.

As we wrote about earlier this month (here and here), political momentum appears to be building. Now the Oregonian editorial board has responded to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s call for a revamp of state and federal timber policy. The paper says it agrees with much of what Kitzhaber is proposing. The numbers, for one, don’t lie.

Harvest numbers prove (the governor’s) point: The federal government owns and manages nearly 60 percent of Oregon forest lands, but these lands produce only about 12 percent of the annual timber harvest. Oregon’s relatively tiny state forests, at 3 percent of forest lands, produce nearly as much timber.

Meanwhile, Oregon’s private and industrial forests, which total 19 percent of Oregon forest lands, produce 75 percent of the harvest.

The Oregonian says it will be difficult for now to get something out of Congress, but the state “can start by getting its own forests in order.” State leaders should move forward on a land allocation system, like Kitzhaber is proposing, that sets aside forests for harvest and forests for conservation, while continuing to lobby on a federal level.

…Kitzhaber, the entire congressional delegation and leaders of the timber industry and environmental groups must keep pressing for thoughtful, collaborative change in the management of federal forests. If Oregon is ever going to get the most out of its forests, the governor has to deliver a lot more than one great speech.

In Washington state, State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark is creating a panel of scientists and foresters to study how to stop a massive die-off of pine, fir and spruce trees in the eastern part of the state. Scientists agree that the outbreak of beetles and disease is due to the fact that the forests have been mismanaged over several decades.

Since land managers suppressed wildfires for so long, many trees in Eastern Washington’s dry forests are the same age, about a century old. That means they’re weak and susceptible to natural diseases and bug infestations — but there aren’t young, healthy trees around to stop or slow the annihilation.

The most likely fix? More logging. And in order to have an impact on the spread of beetles and disease, the harvest may have to be accomplished on a large scale the state hasn’t seen in a long time, according to David Peterson, a biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Research Station.

Peterson…said areas thick with mountain pine beetles may pose a different challenge. There, many smaller-diameter trees would need to be removed to provide more light and water to larger, healthier, bug-resistant trees.

But to be effective, “we’d need to take action very quickly and over a significantly large area, before we get massive outbreaks,” Peterson said. “And we’re used to focusing on small events on small time scales.”

If there was a theme at the Washington Forest Protection Association’s annual meeting in Olympia this week, it was that innovative solutions will be a critical part of the timber industry’s future. Public money is scarce and the old timber battles are over. That the old rules no longer apply was evident with the presence on stage of Martha Kongsgaard, whose husband Peter Goldman (director of the Washington Forest Law Center) has been a thorn in the side of the timber industry for years. Kongsgaard is the chair of the Puget Sound Partnership, a state organization tasked with cleaning up Puget Sound, and she offered valuable insight on how the industry and environmental groups can work together.

State Ecology Director Ted Sturdevant, speaking on the same panel as Kongsgaard, said that solutions like offering economic incentives for environmental protection and forest preservation are more likely because now “the old battles aren’t going to get us there.” Economic success for all parties is no longer possible with “command-and-control regulation,” said Gene Duvernoy, President of Forterra (formerly the Cascade Land Conservancy).

With declining state and federal budgets, even the concept of economic incentives is changing, according to Duvernoy. Instead of government offering the incentives with public money, the incentives need to be created in the private market, but often “those of us who try to create an incentive marketplace don’t understand the (timber) business,” he said.

State Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark, speaking on a later panel, spoke candidly about the failure in this year’s legislative session to pass large-scale reform of the agency he oversees, the Department of Natural Resources. Streamlining of DNR is high on the priority list for the timber industry.

The bill failed because of heavy lobbying from supporters of State Parks and Fish & Wildlife, which would have merged under the legislation and have huge constituencies, Goldmark said. “It has to be really compelling reform to get over (the supporters’) investment,” he said. “…It’s a heavy, heavy lift.”

State House Republican Leader Richard DeBolt said DNR streamlining is necessary because of inefficiencies in the timber permitting system. “There are too many people in the stream…I don’t think we can move our government slowly anymore…we need radical change.”

In relation to the total state budget, DNR reform is relatively small, and yet it feels like some of our political leaders have just thrown their hands in the air, said David Nunes, WFPA President and CEO of Olympic Resource Management. “If we can’t do small bits of the budget, what about the big parts?” he said. “It scares me as a citizen that we’re in that mode.”

It’s been heartening to see support recently from Northwest elected officials for revitalizing rural economies and rebuilding the timber industry after environmental lawsuits and the spotted owl. As we wrote about in September, one of the most pressing issues is the loss of federal payments to timber-dependent counties in Oregon and Washington. Some county governments, like Skamania County in Southwest Washington, are in so much danger that they may have to cut their budgets in half or shut down completely.

Just this week the Lane County Board of Commissioners in Eugene, Ore., voted to support U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio’s plan “to increase logging on 2.2 million acres of federal Bureau of Land Management forests…(by) splitting the land into environmental and timber trusts.” DeFazio’s plan is similar, at least broadly, to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s suggestion last week that state forests be permanently split up into land set aside for conservation and land for timber harvest.

Large-scale reform of federal and state timber policy is necessary because the last couple decades of policies have failed to bring Northwest rural communities back to life, said Faye Stewart, chairman of the Lane County Board of Commissioners.

Stewart, whose family ran the former Eugene-based lumber company Bohemia Inc., said during the meeting that the harvest of timber on private lands has never expanded to make up for the cut on public land that was curbed following the enforcement of environmental laws.

“We’ve just done without,” Stewart said. “The consequences of doing without is our communities drying up and withering away. There’s no jobs and infrastructure is disappearing.”

As logging on Oregon’s federal lands diminished two decades ago, the federal government shifted to the so-called timber payments program, and away from paying counties a share of logging revenues.

But the direct cash payments to counties have not saved communities or local governments, Stewart said.

In another issue that has received wide support from Northwest elected officials, a coalition of business and political leaders continues to try to overturn a Ninth Circuit Court decision on stormwater runoff from logging roads. (We wrote about the court decision here.)

In an op-ed this week in the Bellingham Herald, Chris Lipton, general manager for Washington Timberlands at Longview Timber Corp and Gregory A. Pallesen, vice president and political director of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, write that the Ninth Circuit decision wouldn’t just hurt rural communities or the timber industry — it could hurt the environment.

The truth is that it is quite likely that this court decision could result in fewer forests. Forest owners depend on a reasonable economic return to make their holdings affordable to manage and economically competitive with other land uses. If that delicate balance is threatened, as this ruling promises to do, many small forest owners will be forced to sell their land for development. Larger forest owners will be pushed to the brink as well. That hardly seems like a good outcome.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber spoke to his state’s Board of Forestry this week and had some bold ideas that you don’t often hear from governors, especially on timber issues. His proposal is relevant not just for Oregon but every Western state.

(Kitzhaber told the board) to step back from the “politically driven seesaw management” of the state’s timberland and adopt a balanced approach that can be extended to the much larger federal forests as well.

Kitzhaber, in a rare appearance by a governor before the board, said current management practices put state, federal and private forests in isolated silos, when they should be viewed as an interconnected landscape.

“We are mired in ongoing conflict — timber sale by timber sale, forest by forest — rather than engaging in a holistic strategy” that balances environmental, economic and community values, the governor said.

What this means in concrete terms are permanent boundaries within the forests, setting aside land for conservation and land for timber harvest, Kitzhaber said.

This approach does have drawbacks, according to Board Chairman John Blackwell.

Blackwell noted there’s still the risk of both sides – timber and conservation communities – being unhappy with the results. Conservation groups might not get as much land as they want in protected areas across the landscape, he said, and the timber industry could be concerned that once you start zoning conservation areas there will be a “creeping” effect that will gradually rope off more and more of the timber.

The governor seemed to offer carrots for both timber companies and environmental groups.

He suggested the board adopt strict performance standards to measure the success of forest policies and re-examine the longstanding model that produces timber by cutting forests in a way to encourage structures similar to old growth, rather than for maximum timber yield.

He also encouraged the board to act more aggressively to protect fish and wildlife habitat, particularly along salmon streams and on hillsides vulnerable to landslides, which will create conservation jobs and give everyone a better idea about what to expect from state forests.

Kitzhaber told the board to take a new look at its business model, taking into account the economic problems faced by timber counties, where plummeting federal timber revenues have left them struggling to survive.

Both timber companies and environmental groups said the proposal is worth exploring.

The Sierra Club, Wild Salmon Center and Association of Northwest Steelheaders issued a joint statement applauding the idea of establishing conservation areas.

Ray Wilkeson, president of the Oregon Forest Industries Council, said Kitzhaber’s ideas are worth a try both on state and federal land.

“If anybody can do it, it would be him,” Wilkeson said of Kitzhaber.