County Funds Timber Lobby

Lane County getting pressure to save thousands by not supporting logging lobby.

Lane County has given $700,000 to a timber industry lobbying group to push for radical increases in old-growth clearcuts in the name of all county citizens, according to the environmental group Oregon Wild.

Oregon Wild calculates that Lane County, supposedly desperately strapped for cash for more than a decade, has given almost $700,000 in membership dues and fees to the Association of O&C Counties (AOCC) overthe past 15 years. 

The AOCC clearcut lobbying is not in the financial or environmental interests of county citizens, Oregon Wild argues in letters to the Lane County Board of Commissioners, “but only in the interests of the timber industry.” The environmental group urges the county to withdraw its funding for the “timber industry lobbying group” and dissociate itself from its “radical” logging positions.

While the “public strongly supports protection of mature & old-growth” forests, Oregon Wild said the AOCC takes the “extreme” and unrealistic position of wanting to return to old-growth logging without environmental laws protecting drinking water, recreation, livability, salmon, owls and other endangered species. 

The AOCC called for going even beyond the Bush administration’s WOPR proposal to increase old-growth clearcutting seven-fold, Oregon Wild noted. The environmental group also noted AOCC’s recent “shocking proposal to sell off 1.2 million acres of ecologically valuable public forest lands.”

The extreme AOCC positions taken in the name of county citizens undermine the county’s relationships with Oregon’s governor and congressional delegation which mostly opposed the WOPR, Oregon Wild wrote. 

The AOCC call to boost county timber payments with more logging would result in lowered and more unstable federal funding, Oregon Wild wrote. “Under the Secure Rural Schools initiative Lane County received about $88 million but would have received only about $6 million from timber receipts.”