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Note: We will be broadcasting this show live from the Terminal Gravity Brewery in Enterprise, Oregon. Please come and join us! Doors open at 8:30am.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) is currently trying to move a bill through Congress that would overhaul forest management east of the Cascades. In December, we talked with some key players in the timber industry and environmental conservation who support the plan. The idea is to approach publicly owned forest land with an eye towards environmental protection and economic gain.
Contentions between loggers and environmentalists have a long, bitter history in the forests of eastern Oregon. Some have said Wyden's bill could mark a turning point in the divide. Stakeholders on both sides still have some concerns about the compromise, which has yet to make its way out of committee.
Cultivating environmentally healthy tree stands while encouraging economic growth is not an entirely new concept. There are several examples of this balance on privately owned timber land. Whether or not it could work on public land is an open question on the minds of many people who make their home and their living in Oregon's vast eastern territory. In Enterprise, forestry issues have been even more pronounced in the past couple of weeks, as federal agencies investigate the fire that engulfed the U.S. Forest Service headquarters there.
Do you work in the woods? Do you live near public forest land? Have you built a business around logging smaller trees or using biomass for energy? Do you manage private forest land? What would Wyden's bill mean to you?
GUESTS:
- David Schmidt: President and owner of Integrated Biomass Resources and board member of Wallowa Resources
- Bruce Dunn: Forester for RY Timber in Northeast Oregon and chair of Wallowa County's natural resources advisory committee
- Brian Kelly: Restoration coordinator for Hells Canyon Preservation Council
Tagged as: economy · environment · forest · logging · rural economy
Photo credit: Claire L. Evans / Creative Commons
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Sustainable timber harvest is related to how fast the trees grow. On the east side of the Cascades, many forests take much longer than the golden best 40 year cycle on the west side. At 40 years, a sustainable cut of replanted land is 2 to 2 1/2% a year. On the east side, an 80 year cycle make that number much, much lower. So any over cut, like we had in the 80's, echos for generations.
The second barrier to sustainable harvesting is that timber is a commodity in the eyes of its largest harvesters. In Scandanavia, it is a farm crop, where folks grow the best trees (gradually limbed up quite high so the timber is clear, so the few logs per acre per year bring in the best money, plus the forest land stays in duff, the necessary soil format for great tree growth.)
The cycles are out of whack because of past over cuts. And the echos will keep happening. Until small holders learn that they can make money making great wood, it will stay this way.
There are folks out ther promoting Sustainable Forestry, like "Forester Dan" in Yamhill County. (He invented tools and sold a company that makes handsaws that out perform chain saws in limbing trees, plus "arches" that allow small equipment to log what was once large equipment territory.)
What can be done? There is a solar kiln on Mt. Richmond in Yamhill County. Triming State forest and Federal lands is a great jobs program that reduces ladder fuels for fires and could lead to more products being "harvested" from a forest more often than just the commodity harvest of the trees and current "thinning." I know we are trimming trees and looking at alternatives, plus showing our children what we are doing, on our 239 acres of mostly fir and Valley Pondersosa in western Oregon.
The key issue is simple. Do we make rules just for large extraction type businesses or set up for small holders to grow the pie of jobs and work? If you depend on large firms for jobs, they go where wood is cheapest and that is not security for jobs "here." The equipment is there now for small holders. Our schools need to start teaching something besides monster company looging and manufacturing. It is a long term issue, not a quick fix that I look for.
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In the mid 1960s, I ate lunch with a logging crew in a creek bottom on the Lower Minam river drainage here in NE Oregon. They were sick at what they were having to do to make a living. Heads were hung down, and one man said, "There ought to be a law against what we are doing to this creek." That little creek muddied the waters of an otherwise pristine and clear Wilderness river each spring for many years following. The Oregon Forest Practices act came later, but was still a compromise of what we could afford, and what we knew were best practices.
We still face that dilemma i.e., we know how to log and manage forest lands better than we can afford to.
Our forests need attention. Logging that is highly SUPERVISED and appropriately SUBSIDIZED, is the only way to meet the standard that decades of research would suggest is responsible. It is going to cost money to do it right. -
Is consumer demand for "clear" wood destroying our forests? Can second growth be used for interior/finishing product? Is it just a question of adjusting consumer preference?
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It used to be that everything that was not what you call "clear", or CVG, Clear Vertical Grain, in building industry terms, was burned in those old wigwam burners.
In the 1970s I helped do a remodel on the old Bend Public Library and every stud we uncovered in those walls was CVG, and I was just thrilled and amazed to see what the old guys got to build with.
The new fast growth studs are not worth a damn, they're so knotty and twisty and they split when nailed, so now I recommend steel stud framing, which has the advantage of being straight and fireproof to boot.
And I recommed taking very old buildings apart and reusing those old CVG studs and beams for finish carpentry, instead of demolishing them and hauling them off to the landfill.
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These are very old problems and I suggest asking the people in Minnesota about what they did after it was clearcut and those lumber mills moved to Oregon.
And England logged all of their Great Oaks to build their warships, at 9,000 to 10,000 trees per ship, so study the history of what the English did after they clearcut their forests.
And Iceland clearcut their forests too, long ago, so study what the Icelanders did for their economy.
Very old problems, and lots of history of what the people did after their logging industries went down. So no need to reinvent the wheel, just learn from the past.
But google "the city of Ur" also, to see how bad it can be in the end.
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If we had a global forest practices act, and adequate referees, then the cost of a 2X4 would reflected the true cost of producing it sustainabley and responsibley. We don't have either of those things, and are not likely to get them.
The choice we are left with is for our society to either subsidize forest management, or turn loose those who have a conflict of interest (no matter what they tell you) with certain aspects of a healthy forest. We have been down that road. Finally enough people, including many loggers, said stop.Unfortunately, we can't get beyond the false choice of turning the loggers loose to compete in a global competition without any global rules, and stopping all logging, (and fires), which threatens to create catastrophic fires.
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As a woodworker that lives in the heart of timber country, how can enviromental entities such as The Hell Canyon Preservation Council justify their actions stopping natural resource extraction from our forests in light of the great expeniture of fossil fuels that is required to bring raw or processed wood products from other countries? My most recent "fir" plywood purchase was stamped "product of Canada".
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I share your concern about imported wood products. However, I believe that your concern about has more to do with trade policy, globalization, and the Canadian government's forest policy than with Hells Canyon Preservation Council's work in northeast Oregon. American wood product companies have complained about "unfair competition" from Canadian imports for years. I was informed yesterday that the Elgin plywood mill in northeast Oregon (20 miles from here) is currently running 3 shifts around the clock.
Hells Canyon Preservation Council is working to protect and restore our public lands and waters. This includes our efforts to prevent the most destructive aspects of specific logging projects on the local National Forests. Protection of our last remaining old growth forests and preventing new logging roads from being built are at the top of the list of our concerns. These protections are essential for native wildlife, fish, soils, and clean waters. Our work has not and will not stop all logging on these lands. However, we will continue to work to protect these forests from harm resulting from resource extraction activities.
Brian Kelly, Hells Canyon Preservation Council, La Grande
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Comments are now closed.
I'm from Wallowa County, have been here for nearly 20 years and live close to National Forest. I spend a lot of time on our public lands and have been concerned at the steady degradation of our forests due to crummy forest harvest practices and the proliferation of roads. This bill addresses, however imperfectly, these problems and more, and does so in a way that continues to provide an income for county residents while eliminating some of the most destructive harvesting methods. Traditional logging has done inestimable damage to our public forests. Private forestry, as practiced for instance on the Jackson/Goebbels tree farm West of Enterprise, has shown that profitable, responsible, sustainable forestry is entirely practical. Bob Jackson, one of the former owners of the tree farm, still lives in Joseph as does Leo's widow Marilyn. They should be interviewed for this show.