Full title, from The Oregonian, Feb. 7, 2025, produced by Columbia Insight. “Columbia Insight’s mission is to inform and inspire readers with original, balanced journalism about environmental issues affecting the Columbia River Basin. We publish stories that highlight the connection between the environment and all the people who call this place home.”
Excerpt:
Internal documents show the Forest Service discussing — both internally and with the timber industry — how its various legal and policy “tools” and emergency authorities related to its wildfire prevention programs could be and have been harnessed to increase sales of board feet of timber.
The documents discuss how “barriers” to achieving these “timber targets,” including civil litigation from environmental organizations, might be overcome through “streamlining” environmental oversight by using legal exemptions to the National Environmental Policy Act.
For the Forest Service and the timber industry, “streamlining” means removing some NEPA red tape. It’s a necessary step, they argue, on the way to creating a win-win scenario that will help prevent wildfires, increase board feet of timber, and, in the process, grow rural timber jobs.
Critically, many of the preferred wildfire crisis tools also allow the agency and its partners to hold onto the timber revenue rather than send it to the U.S. Treasury.
First good thing I have heard on a while from the USFS, maybe someone finally woke up!
Columbia Insight: “Next week: How the Forest Service is using of a legal exemption to address the wildfire crisis to log trees in the Mount Hood National Forest, and why this could mean the removal of old-growth trees.”
One might distill this long and well-written article into one sentence: The Forest Service is using legal authorities to accomplish its goals.
and engaging with partners to accomplish its goals
It’s easier to claim that you are balanced than to actually be balanced, and no one checks.
When traditional media fell apart due the internet crashing its business model, the slack was taken up by foundations and others who definitely look at things with a certain point of view.
If you look at CauseIQ
https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/columbia-insight,824504894/
the description of Columbia Insight is
“Publish educational stories on climate change, energy, water, fish, agriculture, forestry, wildfire. Estimated 15,000 readers per year. Estimated 20,000 readers per year. Estimated 30,000 readers per year. Publish educational journal.”
Sadly I can’t see all the contributors, revenues for the 150K- ish amount they received last year- without a subscription to Cause IQ at $299 a month. I couldn’t see the grantors on the 990s.
Columbia Insight’s web site has an “Our Funders” page.
https://columbiainsight.org/2018-form-990-ez/
In addition to individuals:
Foundations:
Autzen Foundation
The Burning Foundation
The Healy Foundation
The Institute for Nonprofit News
The Jubitz Family Foundation
Marie Lamfrom Foundation
Ripple Impact NW
Umpqua Bank
Interesting, CauseIQ gives these three (for free)
The Miami Foundation 2023-12 Program Support $17,000
The Burning Foundation 2023-12 Columbia Insight Environmental Journalism $10,000
Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust 10K
which leaves a lot for the others.
I guess I’d be more interested in what they said that triggered your bias claims, and why you think it’s wrong.
Who is this in reference to, John? Just curious….. I can’t always track how the “replies” relate on the orientation of comments….
I thought I was replying to Sharon’s 11:50 comment (but if you are supposed to follow the (very) faint line upward, it looks like it’s to something else).
OK, I lost track of aim…..🤣
Can you say a bit more on your opposition?
I was just wondering what Sharon thought might be untrue or misrepresented in the article, which I assume is why she chose to critique the source of the article.
I could do that line by line, but I won’t. First there’s the framing. It is true that the FS has timber targets and fuel treatment targets, so it seems rational to try to accomplish both at once. In fact, some agencies might be rewarded for efficiency for doing two things at once. This article makes it seem like a questionable thing.
Second is the idea that the FS might pick more “old growth and mature” trees to make a sale more viable. Well, if mills aren’t using old growth, then there’d be more “mature” trees, and of course if you are thinning the trees are mature, so that’s a bit of a tautology.
And the use of quotation marks by the “reporter”, e.g., “streamlining” and so on. See how I did that?
The “excerpt” stopped short of what I think is the “framing” (quoting you there):
“Critics say it’s unclear whether the Forest Service and other public agencies that oversee these treatments are applying the best available science or if their legal and policy tools and the wildfire crisis itself have instead incentivized the agencies to cut mature and old-growth trees, as well as bureaucratic corners, in their pursuit of both wildfire prevention and timber sales.”
It’s about accomplishing two things at once, but maybe at the expense of a third thing.
I hear that about the mills, but timber targets are still in board feet, which means incentives for both more trees and bigger trees. (I’d like to see something definitive saying there’s no market for big trees.) My overall reaction do this was “duh.” Of course they are going to try to use shortcuts provided by wildfire risks to get more volume faster. This article is about whether that is leading to undesired results, and I also wonder if their corner cutting amounts to something illegal (as it tends to do sometimes). The pressure for timber volume kind of plays into my skepticism about every project being labeled “restoration” or “fuel reduction,” and whether timber volume is driving projects in areas not suitable for timber production.
Then there’s also, “The Forest Service denied multiple requests for interviews from Columbia Insight for this report.” It’s hard to justify defending the FS position when they won’t defend it themselves. Especially when they have been accused of admitting what they are doing off the record: “I’ve seen the Forest Service time and again say that they have to go after some bigger, older trees in order to make the sale commercially viable in order to get the other restoration components complete,” says Persell.
“Then there’s also, “The Forest Service denied multiple requests for interviews from Columbia Insight for this report.” It’s hard to justify defending the FS position when they won’t defend it themselves.”
And yet, when I was asking about the Keystone Agreements, they didn’t answer either.. so this could be said about many different things.
Why would it be illegal to mix “larger” trees in?
I wasn’t referring to the size of trees being illegal. I was referring generically to decisions to do or not do things that have statutory requirements to not do or do them (which just about every court case is about).
That said, I wonder how legal it is for a project to have a purpose of timber volume on parts of the forest that are not suited for timber production. The article didn’t address this, but I hope all the discussions the FS had with timber industry were about managing suitable lands for fire protection.