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Forest Management: BLM plan would triple harvests
Describes the Bureau of Land Management's Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) and how it affects Douglas County.
Jay Carlson has a management plan to sell. A plan
that could boost the main industry of Douglas County and also stream
revenue back toward public schools, services and roads.
The
plan is over 1,700 pages long and more than 10 pounds in weight. And
Carlson is willing to bet most people won’t read it from cover to
cover. So he’s condensed the forest management plan into an hour-long
Powerpoint production that he carries on his laptop computer and
presents to government officials, rotary club members, public
organizations, private industry groups — anyone willing to listen and
learn more about the proposed plan of the Bureau of Land Management.
Not
since the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan has a plan carried so much weight.
The BLM’s plan could more than triple the annual harvest of timber on
public forests and also cut habitat reserved for species listed as
threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The federal
government drafted the Western Oregon Plan Revisions — also known as
WOPR (”Whopper”) — to bring BLM lands back to permanent timber
production.
BLM lands in Douglas County make up 20 percent of the bureau’s 3.2 million acres.
Three
years ago the agency settled a lawsuit filed by the timber industry
that claimed the lands were not being managed in accordance with a 1937
act of Congress, and timber-dependent communities were hurting because
of it. Part of the settlement required a new management plan.
“We’ve obviously heard all kinds of stuff from all ends and colors of the political spectrum,” Carlson said last Monday, as he prepared to give a presentation to the Sutherlin City Council.
A DIFFERENT DIRECTION
For the past 13 years the Northwest Forest Plan has been the cornerstone of forestry management on public forests. Designed to protect at-risk species, it also permitted the annual cut of 205 million board feet of timber on the BLM’s 2.1 million acres of public forests. But the average cut reached only 134 million board feet.
The shortfall put the pinch on 18 Oregon counties reliant on 50 percent of BLM timber receipts.
In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act to provide a safety net to timber-dependent communities. The timber law expired last year but received a one-year extension this year before funding ran dry. Oregon lawmakers currently are working on a five-year extension that would gradually phase out funding.
None of the alternatives would produce timber receipts equal to payments made by the Secure Rural Schools Act, but Alternative 2 would produce the highest payments to counties at 94 percent of the O&C portion of the act.
The new management plan could be finalized by next year. However, Doug Robertson, a commissioner of Douglas County and also the president of the Association of O&C Counties, said it could take three years to be put in place after an expected battle by conservationists in court.
“In year three, four and five (of the proposed safety net extension), the counties are going to be in pretty poor shape unless they’ve done something to replace that safety net with activity on the forest lands,” Robertson said.
There are three alternatives proposed in the new management plan, and a no-action alternative. The alternative preferred by the BLM and the Association of O&C Counties, Alternative 2, would increase the acreage of harvested forests from 29 percent to 54 percent in the Roseburg district.
Three alternatives in the new plan would ramp up logging.
Robertson said there is about 80 billion board feet of timber throughout western Oregon, with a growth rate of 1.2 billion board feet each year.
“We feel that the 727 million feet per year that is prescribed in option 2 is, frankly, the low end of what’s sustainable on these lands in terms of harvest levels,” Robertson said.
At the same time, he said increased harvest levels would still maintain critical habitat for the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, both threatened species.
A DIFFERENT STAND
Francis Eatherington, conservation director for the Roseburg-based Umpqua Watersheds, said the management plan is a threat to salmon runs and threatened birds.
“Having these forests be timber-based as the dominant use, is as old fashioned as 1937,” Eatherington said, alluding to the O&C Act of the same year. “We know a lot more now than we did in 1937, and we know what’s sustainable. And it is not the BLM’s preferred alternative.”
Besides the prospect of buffer zones around salmon-bearing streams being halved by future timber sales, Eatherington said the BLM is also targeting old-growth timber. That aim is shortsighted, she said, when the forests are overstocked with small-diameter trees and are in need of thinning.
But thinning isn’t enough, Robertson said.
“It won’t replace the safety net in any means at all,” he said.
A mixture of regeneration harvests and commercial thinning is needed, Robertson said, to promote forest diversity and help species thrive.
Bob Ragon, executive director for the Douglas Timber Operators, said the management plan is needed as the county faces several budget cuts without a safety net extension.
Ragon said if timber receipts aren’t increased, the county would have to increase revenue by raising taxes, an option that has not proven attractive to the public.
As Alternative 2 is championed by the BLM and Robertson, Ragon said the DTO will eventually provide analysis for an even more aggressive alternative.
“They’re (BLM) planning to manage only half the forest,” he said. “We think there might be some opportunities to cut more while protecting owls and other species at the same time.”
JOB CREATION
The creation of 3,400 jobs statewide is projected by BLM’s preferred alternative of the plan.
However, opponents like Eatherington say that mills have been retooled with automated machinery and would struggle to fill many more positions.
Ragon said mills could easily add extra shifts, and more loggers would be needed in the forests as the local industry becomes less dependent on railroad imports from Washington.
Discussion in the coming months, however, will likely focus more on the merits of the plan than the particulars.
“I’ve never seen a planning process as exhaustive and well-documented as this one,” Robertson said.
Eatherington said the plan is familiar strategy.
“BLM is always going to err on the side of cut more, protect less,” she said. Read the original story