Logging proposal bad idea

Lane County Commissioner Pete Sorenson weighs in on the WOPR. Argues that it's time to get more creative when it comes to funding rural county services.

Most residents of Lane County take pride in the fact that right in our backyards we have storybook old-growth rainforests and crystal clear creeks that, in many cases, provide our municipal drinking water sources.

I’d bet they’d be shocked to know that the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency in charge of overseeing nearly 2.6 million acres of our public lands in Western Oregon, proposes to open 442,000 acres of currently protected old-growth reserves and 200,000 acres of streamside reserves to clear-cutting under a settlement agreement between the old-growth logging industry and the Bush administration. Many have probably heard about the Western Oregon Plan Revisions — the WOPR — by now.

Some county commissioners in Western Oregon, including my colleague Faye Stewart (guest viewpoint, Oct. 17), hold up the WOPR as a solution to our county funding crisis. This is a dangerous proposal that will fail. Here’s why:

Historically, 50 percent of timber sale receipts from BLM lands went to local county coffers to fund essential services. These payments were in lieu of the federal government paying property tax on its forestland holdings in our counties. By the 1980s old-growth logging ground to a halt due to court injunctions to address looming extinction. The old-growth frenzy was over for the time, and Congress rightly stepped in to appropriate annual funds to keep Western Oregon counties afloat.

The certainty of these safety net funds remains unclear beyond July 1. However, opening up old-growth and streamside reserves on public land is not a responsible solution, fiscally, socially or environmentally. The outcomes include community polarization, species being pushed closer to extinction, litigation, forest management gridlock and unpredictable county funding.

Even if the WOPR proceeds and counties get a quick fix, what happens in a decade or two when the old-growth base is liquidated as is projected in the WOPR analysis?

There is a better way forward that does not require selling off remaining older fragments of federal forestland. For nearly the past decade, the Forest Service in Western Oregon has concentrated the majority of its active management by thinning in young, same-age plantation stands. The results: a nearly litigation-free timber program, logs delivered to mills, employment opportunities, and restoration of public land that was degraded by past clear-cutting.

In 2003, the Siuslaw National Forest was presented the “Breaking the Gridlock Award” and the “Rise to the Future Award,” which honor Forest Service employees for gaining public support, building a community of trust and producing economic benefits to local and regional communities.

Nearby, the Willamette and Umpqua National Forests are advancing massive plantation thinning projects that are not mired in controversy, but more importantly, are creating new work forces, restoring degraded landscapes and generating capital within our county.

By targeting small diameter plantation stands with thinning, decommissioning harmful roads and other beneficial restoration, we will produce controversy-free timber, generate employment in the forest, and most importantly, advance forestry models to replicate elsewhere.

Although restoration thinning is socially appropriate and has widespread scientific support, its receipts will not deliver for counties the way old-growth logging did in its heyday. We as a county must get creative in generating revenue to fund essential services. Citizens have said clearly that they don’t want taxes increased.

Finally, the federal government does not pay property taxes to local governments on these federal lands. The federal government should make payments, and a bigger vision of how those payments are made could include carbon sequestration.

With global climate change in full swing, let’s begin to explore governments and polluting corporations paying to keep our older forest carbon banks vertical. I’ll work for a way for Lane County to get its fair share in an environmentally acceptable manner. But a radical increase in old-growth logging won’t be good for the forest or for Oregon.

Pete Sorenson represents south Eugene on the Lane County Board of Commissioners.