Cutting trees no solution to slump

Finding a solution to a lagging economy isn't as simple as more clear-cuts.

County funds might be in a slump and the economy is hurting, but it’s not because the Pacific Northwest isn’t logging its forests. Conservationists say that logging is not the answer to the Northwest’s economic woes.

The Pacific Northwest Research Station announced May 21 that for the first quarter of 2011, West Coast softwood timber exports were up 50.5 percent from the first quarter of 2010, according to Debra Warren, a research economist with the station.

The data from the Pacific Northwest Research Station shows that log exports from Oregon and Washington totaled 379.5 million board feet. Logs and lumber went primarily to China and Japan as well as to Taiwan, Indonesia and South Korea.

The Bureau of Land Management exceeded its volume of trees offered for sale in Oregon and California in 2010. According to agency data, the BLM was congressionally financed to offer 184 million board feet of wood, and it offered for sale 192 million board feet.

Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild says for perspective that 1 million board feet is equal to 200 log truck loads of wood, and 192 million board feet is equal to 400 miles of log trucks parked end-to-end. Heiken says the connection that many politicians make between increasing logging and putting money in county coffers is incorrect. “Nothing the BLM is doing puts money into the county’s coffers,” he says.

Heiken says, “If timber payments did fund the counties, even modest increases in the possible money they could get from timber sales is very small.” He adds, “The county funding does not come from timber sales; it hasn’t for 20 years.”

“There’s no way,” Heiken says, “we’re going back to the clearcutting of the late ’80s, driving salmon to extinction and making the public upset.”

He says, “If the goal of increased logging is seen as a way to create jobs, I would advise them to look elsewhere for the best economic development opportunities.”

Heiken says that the housing market is in a depression with recovery expected to be slow, and that the timber industry is a shrinking fraction of Oregon’s economy, because for 20 years other sectors of its economy have been growing relatively faster. In terms of job creation, the logging industry has replaced workers with machines, he says.

For the full report on log and lumber exports, go to http://wkly.ws/12i  — Camilla Mortensen