From Greenwire today. Mentions that “the Forest Service banned the cutting of old-growth ponderosa pine” in 1995. The ban was a prohibition on cutting trees larger than 21 inches DBH (the “Eastside Screens” — background here), so of course that didn’t ban all old-growth, just the ones bigger than 21 inches.
The article has a photo of the old Hines Lumber Co. mill, with part of the roof missing.
http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/01/26/stories/1060031154
OREGON STANDOFF:
Timber collapse fuels resentment of federal policy
The hulking mill at one time employed about a fourth of the county’s workforce with high-paying union salaries, but it shut down in 1995 after the Forest Service banned the cutting of old-growth ponderosa pine.
Its demise offers fodder for Ammon Bundy’s claims of federal overreach as he leads an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge into its fourth week.
While Bundy has mainly courted frustrated ranchers, he’s recently broadened his pitch to the timber industry. He said last week that federal forests in Harney have up to a decade’s worth of downed timber that could resuscitate the mill and get loggers back in the woods — if only the federal government would loosen its grip on the lands.
In Harney, a county of 7,000 that is about three-fourths federal lands, local sentiment weighs heavily against environmental regulation.
Yet few here believe Harney will ever see a return to the logging levels of old. And despite Bundy’s promise, almost no one holds hopes of reopening the mill.
“Obviously, there are opportunities to move the pendulum back our way,” said Jim Geisinger, executive vice president of Associated Oregon Loggers. “But I don’t think it will be at that mill.”
Historical records suggest federal environmental laws are only partly to blame for killing Harney’s timber industry. The Hines mill started suffering in the 1980s as a result of stiffer competition, inefficient operations, automation and labor strife.
The derelict mill south of town on U.S. Highway 20 is a rusted shell stripped of its machinery, and was never designed to process the small-diameter trees the Forest Service sells these days.
“The Hines mill operated in the mid-20th century cutting huge, old-growth ponderosa pine trees, the likes of which we won’t see again for a hundred or more years, if ever,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “Once these valuable trees were gone, the dry and arid land, located far from major markets, proved unable to compete with southeastern U.S. and other more highly productive lumber producers.”
Yet to many area residents, the mill remains a symbol of how federal environmental rules have squeezed the livelihoods of ranchers, miners and loggers. It’s a potent symbol for firebrands like Bundy who are pushing for roughly 640 million acres of federal lands to be transferred to local control, unfettered by laws like the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
“I don’t agree with what’s been going on with our government, the way they take care of our lands,” said Louis Smith of Crane, Ore., at a community forum in Burns earlier this month. “I worked in the timber industry here. I complained about when they had to take it away from us.”
According to Oregon’s Office of Economic Analysis, employment in Harney has been essentially flat for the past 40 years, even as Oregon’s employment has risen by 74 percent.
Statewide, nearly two-thirds of wood products employment has vanished since the 1970s. Yet Harney’s losses have been “significantly larger,” the office said.
Since 1978, Harney has lost 99 percent of timber industry jobs — only six logging jobs remain.
“That takes the industry’s share from more than 3 out of every 10 jobs back in the late 1970s to zero percent today,” the office said in a briefing.
It’s one reason that many residents here sympathize with Bundy’s anti-federal message, even if most disagree with the occupation.
Rise and fall
The first log rolled through the Hines mill in late January 1930, kicking off decades of prosperity.
Behind it in the woods north of town, loggers had cut an additional 20 million board feet of ponderosa pine — more wood than a foot-wide board stretching from Seattle to Miami. Federal and Hines-owned forests contained an additional 1.4 billion board feet of standing timber, according to the Burns Times-Herald.
A headline in the Jan. 31, 1963, paper read: “1962 Sees Hines Breaking Record.” The plant had churned out 134 million board feet of lumber, employment had doubled since it had opened and payroll had risen fivefold.
But hard times hit in 1980 when a Prineville sawmill outbid Hines for $6 million in timber from the Ochoco National Forest, marking what the Portland Oregonian described as “the latest in a succession of blows to Burns, one of the state’s hardest hit areas in the current recession.”
Mill employment was slashed to around 150, down from almost 1,000. Unemployment in Burns spiked above 25 percent, higher than anywhere in the state.
Among those laid off was Bob Wark, who was pictured in one newspaper with a rifle in hand looking to shoot an elk. “We need the meat for winter — and to cut down our food bills,” he said, according to the news clip.
Plans to partially reopen the mill were shelved due to “poor market conditions,” the Oregonian reported in 1980. In a letter to employees, the mill said it could not compete “unless we manage to operate much more efficiently than we have in the past.” Company officials asked the union to approve a three-year pay freeze.
The mill was purchased in 1983 and put back into operation as Snow Mountain Pine Co., but its resurgence was cut short by labor strikes in 1988.
It closed for good in 1995, laying off a workforce that had dwindled to 184.
Mill officials and the Times-Herald blamed onerous federal environmental restrictions.
“The injunctions, the appeals and the implementation of ‘screens’ on timber sales nearly brought logging to a halt this past year,” the Times-Herald reported. “And a sawmill can not operate without logs.”
Don Graves, a Snow Mountain official, was quoted as saying: “The local Forest Service personnel have been sympathetic and helpful, but the federal government’s policies are extremely restrictive.”
In a sign of local frustrations — and perhaps a harbinger of today’s refuge occupation — residents pushed to put federal lands under local control and to recall two of Harney’s top elected officials, the Bend Bulletin reported in 1995.
Mill officials said the Forest Service, facing pressure from environmental groups, had fallen short of its timber sale projections.
For example, the Malheur in 1989 had predicted it would sell 135 million board feet of timber annually for a decade. But by 1994, sales fell to 33.1 million board feet, with only 18 million going to saw timber, the Bulletin said.
Who is to blame?
Bob Ragon, who was assistant manager at Hines in the mid-1970s and is now executive director at Douglas Timber Operators in western Oregon, said the Hines mill suffered the same supply crunch as other Oregon mills that depended on federal forests.
Hines got 95 percent of its timber from the Ochoco and Malheur, he said.
“The federal government quit selling timber,” he said. “It’s quite elementary.”
He blames environmentalists, who, after halting the clearcutting of western Oregon forests to save the northern spotted owl, focused their attention on halting the harvest of large-diameter trees in eastern Oregon.
Jim Lyons, who served as President Clinton’s top forestry official and is now a top aide to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, in the mid-’90s pushed to “screen” all east-side timber sales for impacts to old growth, wildlife and rivers. Trees greater than 21 inches in diameter were generally placed off limits.
But the Hines mill’s struggles began far before the supply crunch, said Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
Annual timber sales in the 1980s were, on average, 50 million board feet more than in the previous four years, he said.
“Anyone who thinks the Hines mill closure had anything to do with declining Forest Service timber sale amounts needs to have their head examined,” he said.
Once the old-growth trees were gone, the Hines mill could not adapt, he added.
“The same thing happened to hundreds of lumber manufacturers throughout the interior Rocky Mountain West,” Stahl said. “They mined the old growth, shut the mills and moved their capital to faster-growing tree plantations elsewhere.”
Even without the environmental restrictions, modern technology still would have killed many timber jobs, the Oregon economic office said.
“The automation and mechanization in the logging process and in the mills, by itself, would and has resulted in a large employment decline,” it said.
Once again, this article provides a shining example of how so much of the of what we call journalism today is really nothing more than an exercise in false equivalence. The story line always looks the same. Journalist needs news. Journalist finds two people from opposite sides of the spectrum. Journalist gets a few quotes from opposing sides. Viola! Journalism!
In realityland, the facts are always more complex and there is usually one side that is right, and another that would rather create their own facts than actually face a complex reality. Had the reporter actually cared, he could have pressed Andy for more detail and I’m sure Andy would have obliged him with documented facts and figures showing the declining economic efficacy of continued harvest (not to mention all of the externalities). Could the other side of the story show such facts and figures? Or, is their argument better characterized as “shooting the messenger.” People rarely blame themselves when they do something stupid. I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have invented the word “scapegoat” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat) thousands of years ago were it not a basic human response to avoiding blaming ourselves for our sins.
“Even without the environmental restrictions, modern technology still would have killed many timber jobs, the Oregon economic office said. ‘The automation and mechanization in the logging process and in the mills, by itself, would and has resulted in a large employment decline,’ it said.”
Hijacking a wildlife refuge 30 years after the fact of the timber reforms of the 90’s is hardly justification for Bundy’s actions. If tomorrow I go out and take over an office for Wildlife Services and complain about gender inequality I would be forecably escorted off the property and summarily charged. If the law is not clear it is the comprehension level of the audience not the legal language of the law.
I agree, Anita. Here’s what I wrote in my Editor’s Notebook column in the February edition of The Forestry Source:
“Ours is a nation of laws, and in this case Bundy and his gang have broken one or more of those laws. They ought to be arrested and charged with crimes. I would say the same if a group of “environmentalists” occupied a US Forest Service office, citing their opposition to a timber sale, or if a bunch of loggers took over the same office to protest the low level of harvests. Either way, it would be law-breaking. “
Love that you put “environmentalists” in quotes Steve.
Me too, Matt. Actually, for the published version I took out “environmentalists” and added “a group of Earth First protesters” — didn’t want to offend anyone.
FWIW, I also wrote, “I hope the occupiers decide to give themselves up without a shot being fired.” I’m saddened to hear that one of them was killed. I hope the rest of the bunch leave before anyone else is hurt or killed.
FWIW…I think you meant “a group of Earth First! protesters”
Regarding Eric Anderson’s comment above …. Journalists need/require 15-second sound bites. Those who do not like forestry are very good at giving a journalist a dramatic picture that fits into that 15 seconds. Now, whether or not that picture is true or is 50 years old and done in accordance with out-dated, outlawed practices is immaterial. If journalists repeat it often enough, it becomes the “truth” in the minds of many. The problem with forestry is that a forest and forestry are far too complex to fit nice, 15-second sound bites and few journalists are not interested in 15 minute stories.
For a time, I collected quite a number of newspaper articles that pertained to environmental issues, particularly forests. As a rule, the first part of the article was about the issue – fair enough. Another part generally had quotes from one, oftentimes more, from the environmental perspective – fair enough. The problem I found was that, IF the forester’s perspective was even there (and it oftentimes was not), it was typically at the end of the article and seldom with a quote. These seemed to be in a 3 or 4 to 1 ratio – not so fair.
Journalism and reality are often very different creatures. Therefore, I read about the Malheur story with great skepticism!
You need to read Charles Wilkinson’s book, “Crossing the Next Meridian”. It provides an insight into the history of the settlement of the western public domain lands and the strong influence the timber, ranching and mining barons had on the drafting of laws and policies governing the public lands. He refers to them as the “Lords of Yesterday”. He goes on to explain how they were able to not only influences the laws and policies but, also establish significant subsidies to benefit their interests. These lands were never taken from private ownership but, rather placed under public management for the citizens of our country. Private use of these lands is a privilege granted through a special use permit and clearly conveys no legal rights. Use requires reimbursement to the American citizens for the privilege. The reimbursement is often far below what one would pay for the same privilege on private lands, thus a subsidy. The limits of our natural resources are becoming highly visible today and we, on the North American Continent, are currently demanding far more then can be sustained in the future. Professor William Rees, University of British Columbia, tells us each individual in the U.S. and Canada, require 20 acres to produce the energy and products required to support our standard of living yet, if you divide the worlds land base by today’s world population there is slightly less than 4 acres available per person. There are no more frontiers to discover on this planet and sound management is the only choice for the future! Current management will have to change from what we can take from our natural surroundings to proper management of our natural surroundings!
I agree that Wilkinson’s book is excellent. There is a simple principle at work for federal policy — if you intend to make money through your use of land or resources, you should pay for the privilege. This applies to logging, grazing, film making, ecotourism, etc. The actual amount paid has long been subject to political influence, though most agencies have made recurrent efforts to secure market value.
The decline of the timber industry is Harney County has many causes:
* only a tiny fraction of Harney County is forested;
* eastside forests are dry, slow growing, low productivity;
* the Harney County timber industry was only profitable when they were high grading and liquidating old growth forests;
* Harney County is remote and far from major markets and transportation newtoworks (e.g. I-5, I-84);
* mechanization and automation;
The mill was in Burns because of the railhead. Don’t forget the short line up to Seneca where the wood was. But the 21 inch rule is prima facie arbitrary and capricious, and the cutoff of supply rendered any mill superfluous.
The Bundy Bums or Bunch or Boneheads have given the gift of deflection to the usual suspects, who have had a field day screaming “radical” at anyone who wants to have a grown-up conversation about land utilization. It’s classic Celinda Lake, the idea is not to win an argument on merit, but to cast aspersions and associational negatives on your political opponent.
In this case, there’s no discussion of the Hammonds and their unjust sentencing. While neither of them are angels, in fact, these guys seem pretty cranky, we’re talking 140 acres of sage and juniper. On top of jail, they lost their grazing priority (dunno who is running the rights now) AND got whacked with 400,000 in fines through the civil courts. That’s already plenty of hurt, is it not?
The occupation is just stupid stuff, wrong people, wrong topic, wrong place, wrong time, and the only ones helped by this are the pro Green spin hacks who otherwise wouldn’t have a platform.
The only thing unjust about the Hammond’s sentencing is how they got off with only getting 5 years. They intentionally set two arson fires knowing that there were people in the area who would be endangered by those fires. They kept igniting after wildland firefighters were on scene boxing them in and putting them at great risk: http://wildfiretoday.com/2016/01/05/the-timeline-for-the-oregon-rancher-arsonists/
The spot fires that “endangered” others were along a road line and totaled one acre.
The 2001 fire smoked out a guy’s camp, and scared the wayward grandson (who clearly has issues) but there’s nothing about whether the camp burnt in the record. If the purpose was party hunting and poaching, then why was there not an investigation into whatever animal carcasses were inside the burn area, if any?
As I said, not angels by any means, but the dollar value of damage done might be two grand at most, never mind that prescribed fire is very often beneficial. Or that’s what I’m told by its acolytes.
I was struck by something else in the records, about a BLM guy not clearing the road for the younger Hammond until he was good and ready to move his engine. Was it necessary to block the road to remove the guilty juniper? Could he have cleared the way? Did Hammond ask nice and then get grumpy or what?
And I also had to howl at the claim the Hammond fires, and I paraphrase, set the BLM fire program back years. Are you kidding me? What about that fire in the canyon south of John Day? Or the Soda Springs fire last year, a quarter million acres in Idaho? So private citizens in contact with the realities of federal policy have NO REASON WHATSOEVER to be a little out of joint?