WOPR's ghost still haunts Western Oregon

How do we move forward in southwest Oregon forests? Ditch old-growth logging and focus on the restoration economy.

The WOPR, or Western Oregon Plan Revisions, was a Bush administration plan to ramp up old-growth logging on BLM forest land. Like many misguided environmental policies that originated during the Bush years, the WOPR could not withstand scientific scrutiny. Experts agreed that a huge increase in clear-cut logging would muddy important salmon streams, decimate habitat for threatened species, remove popular groves of old-growth forest, and emit massive amounts of global warming pollution.

Deeming the plan indefensible in court, the Obama administration withdrew the WOPR last July.

Unfortunately calls for increased logging on BLM lands haven't died with the WOPR. In a May 15 story in the Mail Tribune ("Answers on timber resources sought by legislators") members of Oregon's congressional delegation made the case to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that BLM needs to cut down more trees.

We've come to expect this sort of rhetoric from some politicians, especially when economic times are tough, and an election is on the horizon. For too long, we've treated publicly-owned forests as piggy banks — drawing down our savings without adequately protecting this precious resource for future generations. It's that sort of mentality that has left us with only a small fraction of our old-growth forests still standing.

What these tough times call for is real and lasting solutions. In fact, claims of federal forest "grid-lock" are greatly exaggerated. The BLM and the Forest Service are selling significant amounts of timber, most of it small diameter. There is a forest management model that works, and can provide wood products and jobs without the controversy of old-growth logging.

This balanced approach was pioneered in the Siuslaw National Forest in the Oregon Coast Range. Now managers at the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest are beginning to embrace a similar approach. By focusing management on previously logged stands—often dense plantations of young trees growing in former clearcuts—and staying out of mature and old-growth stands, these forests are able to provide a predictable and sustainable supply of wood to timber mills, and jobs to rural communities, while avoiding conflict and controversy.

Unfortunately, the Medford and Roseburg BLM districts are slow to learn and seem to be stuck in the past. Rather than embrace this broadly supported common-sense approach, they continue to design controversial projects that would cut our last mature and old-growth forests. To their credit, the Roseburg office has made small strides in this direction, and recently initiated a community-based collaborative process to help reduce conflict. Now, if they could only shift the conversation from logging old growth to restoring young stands.

If the Oregon congressional delegation wants to see the BLM produce more timber, they would be well served to ask Secretary Salazar to instruct the agency to stop logging mature and old-growth forests. Oregon's delegation could seize the current opportunity to enact strong, permanent protections for our last mature and old-growth forests and create sustainable jobs that will engage rural communities in stewardship of the forests that surround them. The Bush administration's WOPR took us in the wrong direction, relaunching old fights over old growth logging. We need to look ahead, and focus on areas of common ground.

Today, we know that restoration-based forest management designed for long term stewardship of our forests can provide jobs and small logs to rural mills without sacrificing our natural heritage. Sen. Ron Wyden is already pursuing legislation to promote this approach in eastern Oregon. Rep. Peter DeFazio has worked over the years to draft legislation to promote such management in western Oregon.

The timber industry will always play an important role in southwest Oregon, but its log supply will come primarily from private forest lands, while public forests will play a different but invaluable role in the economy, protecting our water, storing carbon, recovering imperiled species, providing small logs. Rather than demand a return to logging of mature and old-growth forests, we need our leaders to help us find common ground, and move forward with forest management that protects our natural heritage and provides sustainable jobs for rural communities.

Doug Heiken is conservation and restoration coordinator for Oregon Wild.