Uncategorized

New Rocky Mountain Research Station publication of interest, “Of Woodpeckers and Harvests: Finding Compatibility Between
Habitat and Salvage Logging.” Not online yet, but linked here in our library.

The line from one of the researchers sums it up: “[T]“he logging treatments essentially accelerated the habitat conditions some woodpecker species prefer while not compromising the habitat needs of others.”

Here’s a press released from Western Watersheds Project:

Saint George, UTAH – Western Watersheds Project is suing the U.S. Forest Service in Utah for allowing ongoing overgrazing on Monroe Mountain by a handful of non-compliant permittees. The agency, faced with threats of armed resistance, has capitulated to rancher demands allowing excessive stocking rates, repeated trespass, and non-compliance with federal regulations.

“When the Forest Service tried to do the right thing and suspend these livestock grazing permits for multiple willful violations of the terms and conditions, the ranchers responded with threats of violence,” said John Persell, staff attorney with Western Watersheds Project. “That’s an ugly ultimatum, and it’s unfortunate that the Forest Service has to deal with these folks. But it’s unfair to the Americans who own these public lands to let them be continually degraded by scofflaws.”

The Forest Service has gone overboard in accommodating these bad actor permittees, working around the requirements for permit renewals by repeatedly offering “temporary” permits to the ranchers, unlawfully failing to respond to appeals of grazing decisions, ignoring requirements to incorporate sage-grouse protections into permits, and allowing increases in cattle numbers the agency never environmentally analyzed.

“When I visited these allotments last month with other members, we saw severe over-use of new aspen shoots and native bunchgrasses, as well as damage to riparian areas near springs,” said Laura Welp, an ecosystems specialist for Western Watersheds Project. “We could visibly see the degradation of these lands due to years of hands-off management by the Forest Service.”

In the spring of 2019, the agency’s Washington office intervened to order local Forest Service managers to waive basic permit terms requiring ear-tagging of cattle on public lands, and to allow the Monroe Mountain permittees onto the allotments despite ranchers’ attempts to re-write permit terms and conditions eliminating any land stewardship obligations.

“Allowing Cliven Bundy to get away with trespass grazing for over twenty years has surely sent a message to other fringe property rights ranchers that threats of violence work with federal agencies,” said John Persell. “However, the Forest Service is beholden to its own regulations and all of us as public land owners. This lawsuit will affirm the rule of law.”

A copy of the complaint can be found online here.

Here are some excerpts from the lawsuit:

This Reno newspaper story, “Tahoe-area snow enthusiasts on edge over possible changes to snowmobile access,” describes conflict between motorized and non-motorized recreation. But what caught my attention was that the recreation plan for the Lake Tahoe Basin “has been in the works since 2011.” 8 years, so far, to produce a plan? It might be 10 before it is finalized. How might the process be shortened?

Excerpt from an LA Times article reprinted here:

Fed up with Forest Service cuts, some California towns are plotting a recreation takeover

FYI, Smokies….

The Southwestern Region of the US Forest Service is hosting the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program (CFRP) 2020 Annual Workshop on December 17-18, 2019 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The workshop will be held at Hotel Albuquerque, 800 Rio Grande Blvd, NW Albuquerque, NM 87104, 1-505-428-1000.  The workshop is open to the public and there is no charge for attending.

Click here to register for the workshop.

The CFRP Annual Workshop brings together CFRP grant recipients, their partners and other stakeholders to share their experiences and discuss accomplishments, challenges, and strategies to overcome barriers to the implementation of collaborative forest restoration projects.  The workshop also provides an opportunity to explore ideas for future CFRP projects. CFRP grants can be used for forest restoration and small diameter tree utilization projects on or on any combination of federal, tribal, state, county and municipal and land grant lands in New Mexico.  To be eligible, grant applicants must use a collaborative process that includes a diverse and balanced group of stakeholders and appropriate government representatives to design, implement and monitor their project.  The 2020 CFRP Request for Applications and the agenda for the December 17-18, 2019 Annual Workshop will be posted on the CFRP website in mid-November at http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/r3/cfrp.

Rooms have been set aside on December 16th and 17th, 2019 at the rate of $96.00 plus taxes per night (single/double occupancy) at Hotel Albuquerque 1-866-505-7829. To receive the group rate, guests must state that they would like to be placed within the “US Forest Service” block of rooms, or they may refer to the Block Code 1912USFS. Below is a link for online bookings.  The link may be used over the actual room block dates only and the date of arrival and departure should be selected.

 USFS 1912USFS

Please note the reservation cut-off date will be:  November 18, 2019.  After this date, any remaining rooms within the block will be released into the hotel’s general inventory.

For more information on the 2020 Collaborative Forest Restoration Program Annual Workshop, please contact Ian Fox at 505-842-3425.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s wildfire tweets not grounded in facts

The president in recent tweets blamed California and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for the fires because of state forest management practices and said California’s fires were too expensive and worse than in other states. In fact, the fires were not raging mostly in forests. The bulk of California’s forests are also federally managed, and other parts of the U.S. are burning even more.

Four university professors who study fires and the environment faulted the president’s tweets Sunday to varying degrees.

TRUMP: “Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing – and then he (Newsom) comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states.”

THE FACTS: Not true. There are far fewer acres burned in California than other places, like Alaska.

So far this year, slightly more than 266,000 acres (108,000 hectares) of California have burned in more than 7,700 fires. That’s fewer than in recent years for California, but the fires command attention because they are close to people.

While Alaska has had only 700 fires, it has lost 2.57 million acres (1.04 million hectares) to wildfires this year, more than nine times as much as California, according to statistics from the National Interagency Fire Center.

The Great Basin, Southern and Southwestern regions have all had more than 440,000 acres (180,000 hectares) burned this year, far more than California.

“Fire is increasing everywhere because of climate change, but the impacts on people are more directly observable in California because of its population and wealth,” said LeRoy Westerling, a fire expert at the University of California, Merced.

California did have the most acres burned in 2018, but Montana and Nevada had more acres burned in 2017 and Oklahoma had the most acreage burned in 2016, while Alaska and Washington had more in 2015, according to fire center statistics.

___

TRUMP: “The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met he must ‘clean’ his forest floors, regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers.”

THE FACTS: Trump is sidestepping responsibility. Of the 33 million acres (13.3 million hectares) of forest land in California, 57% is owned and managed by the federal government, 40% by private landowners and 3% by the state, according to Newsom’s office, Forest Unlimited and the University of California’s Forest Research and Outreach center.

Many of the fires burning the past week or so are not in forests but shrub, agricultural areas and grasslands, so forest management is not an issue, University of Alberta fire expert Mike Flannigan said in an email.

Westerling showed pictures of the areas before the fire, illustrating mostly grass and shrub. It is not a forest, and clearing debris would be of little use there.

“Are there things California should be doing to reduce the risks?” asked Chris Field, director of the Stanford Wood Institute for the Environment. “Yes. I agree with the president that fuel reduction and fire breaks are important.

“But they are just the beginning. We also need to upgrade homes and businesses to make them more fire resistant, improve defensible spaces around buildings, and limit ignitions, including from downed power lines.”

The recent Tick and Maria fires in Southern California were mainly in chaparral and grassland. In such habitats, Field said, “widespread fuel reduction doesn’t provide a benefit, but defensible spaces and modern building codes can be hugely helpful.”

While California is increasing its spending for reducing fuels for fire by about $200 million for five years, federal officials are crying for money, Westerling said.

The National Forest Service’s California office says it needs $300 million more a year to meet its goal of restoring 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) per year, up from 200,000 acres annually.

___

TRUMP: “Also, open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the North. Don’t pour it out into the Pacific Ocean. Should be done immediately. California desperately needs water, and you can have it now!”

THE FACTS: Trump’s point is irrelevant to battling wildfires.

“Fire suppression is not limited in any way by the availability of water,” Westerling said. “How does President Trump propose that these waters be used to reduce fire risk? Is he proposing to build a statewide sprinkler system with federal money?”

The following press release was issued by the Republic, Washington-based Kettle Range Conservation Group on October 23, 2019. It can be viewed here.

For Immediate Release: October 23, 2019

Colville National Forest Plan is a Public Disgrace: 17 Years of Collaboration is Ignored

On October 21, U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Glen Casamassa signed the Record of Decision finalizing the revised Forest Plan for Colville National Forest. The plan signals a significant increase in logging – including a large areas of clearcutting – as much as 25,000 acres per year across the 1.1 million acre Colville Forest and above prior recommendations. The Colville’s 5-year logging levels are now projected at 100 to 150 million board feet per year or about two to three thousand log trucks filled each year. [MODERATOR NOTE: I believe 100 to 150 million board feet would require 20,000 to 30,000 log trucks. – mk]

“The visual impacts are going to be very, very significant and increasing each year from now for the next 20 years as hundreds of thousands of acres are logged,” said Timothy Coleman, executive director of Republic-based Kettle Range Conservation Group. “The visual landscape-scale degradation is already in full swing and visible now on Sherman and Boulder Pass, but it’s just the beginning.”

The Forest Plan Revision Process has dragged on for over 15 years and countless hours have been volunteered by the public to inform the Forest Service’s process. Two earlier draft Plan proposals recommended far less logging and far more wilderness acres be protected. The Final Plan is a complete reversal of those early plans.

“I have participated in countless Forest Service-led collaborative processes and I never once heard the public ask for more clearcut logging,” said Coleman. “One forest supervisor after another told us the Forest Service would use our comments to craft a plan we could feel good about. Well, in the final hour it was Colville Supervisor Rodney Smolden, who supervised plan creation, pulled the rug out from under all of us.”

Coleman is a 17 year veteran of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) considered to be the most successful forest collaborative in the country and working with the Colville National Forest has made it famous. The Colville has the highest timber volume production in the entire National Forest System.

“Seventeen years of my life has been wasted getting the public to believe the U.S. Forest Service had changed its history of clearcut logging and could be trusted to care for our public lands. NEWFC even had a collaborative agreement between the Timber Industry and environmental community to support 200,000 acres of wilderness management in the Forest – but Supervisor Smolden stabbed collaboration in the back. It’s almost uncanny release of the final plan was timed to coincide with Halloween – the trick really is on us,” Coleman said.

In the face of mass extinctions of wildlife caused by climate change and loss of forest and other critical habitat, it is absolutely unconscionable what Supervisor Smolden is proposing to do,” said Coleman. “I believe the Colville National Forest and the U.S. Forest Service will rue the day it went back on its word to support collaborative agreements and restore “healthy” forests. It’s just another ruse by the U.S. Forest Service adding to a long history of disservice to wildlife and public interests.”

NOTE: Tim Coleman has been active in the conservation of forest and water resources since 1971, nearly 50 years. Tim is a Vietnam-era Navy veteran. Tim and his wife built and live in a hand-crafted solar-powered log cabin north of Republic, Washington. Since 1993, Tim has served as director of the Kettle Range Conservation Group. Tim cofounded the Wild Washington Campaign that led to the passage of the Wild Sky Wilderness, and he is a cofounder of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition and the Columbia Highlands Initiative. In 1998 Tim received the Environmental Hero Award from the Washington Environmental Council.

David Beebe writes: Most of the last of the large tree rainforests of Amazonia are falling and/or on fire. Most of the last of the large tree rainforests of Southeast Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago are also long gone – permanently gone.

The Roadless Rule and all the remnant wild watersheds it protects are all we have left on the islands of the Tongass National Forest. We can never personally know the full extent of what, and for what, we have lost forever. We can never fully know where and how far the dominoes of irreparable harm such “management” has set in motion across the planet.

If the agency and its industry cynically hiding behind Smokey the Bear and Woodsy Owl; and,

If the Southeast Alaska Native Regional and Tribal Corporations hiding behind their stumps of ancestral cultural values; and,

If all the salaried nonprofit collaborationists hiding behind “conservation” “restoration” and “cultural” values; and,

If Alaska’s elected representatives in Washington DC and Alaska’s Governor all hiding behind a known, tried and failed social, environmental and economic policy —

If all these financially and ethically conflicted agents and cheerleaders of neoliberal colonial plantation “forest management” — “get their way,” a terrible injustice and grandest of thefts of the planet and its future generations will have also been allowed.

Exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule would be a mistake

The following piece, written by John Schoen and Matt Kirchhoff, appeared recently in the Anchorage Daily News. Both Schoen and Kirchhoff are retired wildlife ecologists living in Anchorage. They both have research experience working on the Tongass and collectively have more than 70 years of wildlife research and conservation work in Alaska.

The Trump and Dunleavy administrations’ plan to exempt Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from the national Roadless Rule is ecologically and economically unwise. The Tongass is our nation’s largest national forest and contains the greatest remaining area of old-growth temperate rain-forest in North America. The Tongass provides critical habitat for fish and wildlife, including all five species of salmon, deer, bear and other species uniquely adapted to this rainforest ecosystem, such as the Alexander Archipelago Wolf, the Queen Charlotte Goshawk, the Prince of Wales Flying Squirrel, the Marbled Murrelet, and the Prince of Wales Spruce Grouse. Not only does the Tongass support vibrant tourism and fishing industries as well as local subsistence use of fish and wildlife, it also stores more carbon than any other national forest, and plays an important role in moderating climate change.

Supporters of the timber industry point to the small percentage of land area logged as an indicator of the impact. This is misleading, because only one-third of the Tongass supports forests of potential commercial value, and only a small fraction of that is economically valuable. The timber industry has always targeted (high-graded) the largest and oldest trees, but those large-tree old-growth stands have always been rare on the Tongass. An analogy would be fishermen catching only a small percent-age of all the salmon, but catching nearly all the king salmon (the least abundant but most valuable species). Seven decades of high-grading has dramatically depleted the Tongass Forest’s largest (4-10 feet in diameter) old-growth trees. And those rare, old-growth stands provide some of the most valuable fish and wildlife habitats on the Tongass. If the new Prince of Wales timber sale moves forward and the Roadless Rule protections are removed, most of the remaining large-tree forest stands will be clear-cut and their habitat values for wildlife and salmon will be permanently lost. The ecological structure of old-growth forests are not renewable on 100-year timber harvest schedules.

There is strong scientific consensus on the ecological importance and rarity of old-growth forests. In 2003, former Forest Service chiefs Jack Ward Thomas and Mike Dombeck urged that “…harvest of old growth from the national forests should come to an end…” In 2015, seven scientific societies, representing a combined membership of over 30,000 scientists and natural resource professionals, sent a joint letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack requesting that the timber industry on the Tongass transition from old-growth logging to second-growth harvest as rapidly as possible. Today, the Tongass is the only national forest that still clear-cuts old growth. And it is past time to bring that practice to an end.

Exempting the Tongass from the Roadless Rule and further high-grading of the rarest, most valuable old growth will result in unsustainable forest management and risk significant impacts to fish and wildlife as well as jeopardize two of southeast Alaska’s significant economic drivers: fisheries and tourism. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Tongass Forest has lost $30 million on timber sales annually during the past two decades. For both ecological and economic reasons, this is why the Tongass should not be exempted from the Roadless Rule.

From The Atlantic:

The Forest Service Is About to Set a Giant Forest Fire—On Purpose

A man-made blaze on a remote Utah mountainside could provide valuable insights into the behavior of the powerful wildfires growing more and more common out West.

It will be among the fiercest controlled burns scientists have ever studied in the wild—“as close to a wildfire as you can expect,” says Roger Ottmar, the principal investigator for the Forest Service–led Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE). The goal? To collect data on every aspect of the fire at once, in order to improve the models scientists and land managers use to predict the impacts of fires. That will allow the agency to oversee more controlled burns on landscapes that need fire to thrive, and the data will also provide insight into the large, intense blazes that keep erupting across the West—the types of unruly fires that climate change and changing land-use patterns are making more common.

Oregonians lose hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year subsidizing the forest industry. Enough, says John Talberth, of the Center for Sustainable Economy. Read the full story by Emily Green of Street Roots News.

The Center for Sustainable Economy is calling attention to how taxpayers subsidize one of the greatest contributors to climate change in Oregon – to the tune of at least $750 million per year, according to its analysis.

The Portland-based think tank has determined big timber is topping the list of carbon emitters in the state, finding that industrial logging is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, researchers at Oregon State University and University of Idaho corroborated those findings.

While state officials have largely ignored these studies, the Oregon Global Warming Commission has been working with the Oregon Department of Forestry on a Forest Carbon Accounting Project aimed at calculating the net emission of carbon from logging once factors such as carbon stores in wood products are taken into account. Their final report is expected in June.

Internationally, nations including the U.S. have agreed to phase out environmentally harmful subsidies. This should include subsidies and tax breaks going to Oregon’s multibillion-dollar timber industry, which is emitting more carbon dioxide than the state’s transportation sector, argues John Talberth, senior economist at the Center for Sustainable Economy – especially considering the sale of Oregon timber is increasingly benefiting foreign investors.

Earlier this year, however, Oregon lawmakers went the opposite direction when they wrote additional tax breaks for the timber industry into their failed Clean Energy Jobs bill, House Bill 2020, in an unsuccessful effort to get support for the legislation from the industry.

During the same legislative session, the Center for Sustainable Economy pushed House Bill 2659, which would have made the receipt of timber subsidies contingent upon good land practices. The bill failed to get out of committee, but Talberth said he believes the bill “has a fighting chance” should it be introduced again in the short session next year.

In the meantime, Talberth’s organization, which advocates for utilizing Pacific Northwest forests for their carbon-sequestering abilities, has taken aim at the timber industry tax subsidy issue.

In May, the center put out a report, “Environmentally Harmful Subsidies in the U.S.,” finding that logging programs in national forests are costing U.S. taxpayers $1.8 billion per year.

Late last month, Talberth gave a presentation in a packed room at outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia’s downtown Portland office on how state and federal subsidies are affecting Oregon taxpayers.

We asked Talberth to break down how the timber industry is costing Oregon taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

John Talberth: There are three major categories. There are tax breaks – complete exemptions – from property taxes, for example, on standing timber, property tax exemptions for logging equipment, and property tax exemptions for logging roads.

Then there are special rates. Forestland owners pay property taxes at a very reduced rate compared to other landowners.

Then there is a whole category of direct assistance in the form of grants, technical assistance, low-interest loans, cost share assistance, industrial development bonds and money spent promoting wood products through the Oregon Forest Research Institute, one of the timber industry’s favorite propaganda machines.

And then there are the other types of subsidies, like below-cost timber sold off federal land.

We just recently did an analysis; those subsidies nationwide amount to about $2 billion a year.

So when you add it all up, and this is just a partial tally, we’re still in the process of putting out a report on this, it’s over $750 million a year, just in Oregon alone.

Emily Green: So this is a combination of subsidies on private land and federal land that is costing taxpayers in lost revenue and payouts.

Talberth: Correct.

Green: Do private timber companies operating in Oregon need these subsidies to be profitable, or is it unnecessary?

Talberth: I think it’s completely unnecessary. These are multibillion-dollar companies making record profits right now. Not every state subsidizes them, and they’re doing just fine.

I think a lot of these subsidies are doing nothing but shoring up profit margins at these companies that are already high enough. We don’t need to worry about infringing on their profit margins and them going out of business because these subsidies are chump change to them.

Green: There have been some changes to forestland ownership in recent years. I was wondering how that looks in Oregon. Are the companies that are profiting off our natural resources here, are they mostly locally owned at this point?

Talberth: They’re not. One of the most alarming aspects of forest ownership trends over the last 15 years is the loss of locally owned, vertically integrated companies to these international investors.

Right now, the majority of industrial forestlands in Oregon are owned by Wall Street investment organizations and companies, and a growing share of those are foreign investors and foreign companies.

In terms of foreign corporation ownership growth in the United States, the most rapidly increasing share is productive forestland. This is a big concern from a number of standpoints, including the environmental destruction that’s happening on the ground from these companies that are short-sighted, but also in terms of food security and water security. And it’s not just forestland; it’s farmland as well. These companies are moving in and grabbing up U.S. forestland and farmland, and we should all be concerned about that. Not just from an environmental standpoint, but from a social justice standpoint and from a community stability standpoint.

Green: Do you have any idea at this point of what percentage is foreign-owned or which countries are most aggressive in this land acquisition?

Talberth: The USDA Farm Service Agency has pretty detailed accounting of forest ownership in the United States, and we’ve just begun to unpack all that data. But, I know that Canada is a very large investor in U.S. forestland.

(Canada holds 191,635 acres of land in Oregon, according to the Farm Service Agency’s 2017 report. In all, 818,049 acres of agricultural land in Oregon are foreign held, including 555,134 acres of forest.)

Green: At Street Roots, we frequently cover affordable-housing issues, and one thing we’ve heard over and over again, especially in rural Oregon, is that building affordable housing isn’t penciling out because of the high cost of building materials, and part of that is lumber costs. At the same time, we’re in this lumber-rich state, but we’re shipping a lot of our raw logs elsewhere to be milled.

Talberth: We don’t have the quantitative data, but obviously this is just basic market dynamics – if the wood is going to the highest bidder and the highest bidder over the past decade or so has been increasingly foreign markets, Asian markets – and they reached their all-time high about a year and half ago – and it was largely due to the demand from foreign countries.

And this is one of the big problems of having an increasing share of forestlands in the state owned by international investors. They’re looking to use forestland in the U.S. for the export market, and that’s why we have log shortages at our local mills – because a lot of it’s being exported.

Green: Your organization released a report in May that, in part, highlighted how the national logging program is losing taxpayers $1.8 billion per year. How is that possible, if we’re harvesting all these logs off our federal forestlands, shouldn’t that be bringing in a profit?

Talberth: We believe the federal government is under a statutory obligation, and we have yet to press this in court, to make sure that its needs are being managed in a manner that maximizes social and economic benefits to the local communities, and that includes, when it does sell timber, getting a fair return on that timber, not losing money and subsidizing the timber industry.

It ought to be getting all of the cost that the pubic is incurring back, and instead, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are selling logs to private mills at a drastically reduced rate that doesn’t even come close to offsetting any of the agency costs.

This is a form of environmentally harmful subsidy that nations around the world have agreed needs to be combatted, and yet, our Forest Service and BLM are prime culprits when it comes to environmentally harmful logging practices.

Green: Are these agreements something the U.S. ever signed on to?

Talberth: Yes, absolutely. The U.S. is party to international agreements like the one brokered at the Rio+20 Earth Summit and participates in programs administered by agencies and institutions such as the Organization for Co-operation and Development and International Monetary Fund that seek to phase out environmentally harmful subsidies. Despite this, subsidies for harmful logging practices are expanding in scale and scope.

Green: The Trump administration wants to increase logging by about 40% on national forestlands. By increasing logging that much, is there any potential for that to begin to make our national forests profitable to taxpayers?

Talberth: First of all, we object to the very idea of using federal forestlands for private profit at all. These are the only places in the country where the public has rights to recreation, to clean water, to wildlife. There are industrial forestlands that are managed exclusively for timber, so it doesn’t make any sense at all to have a commercial timber sale program on public lands at all. But if that program is going to happen, then at bare minimum, the public has a right to getting a fair return from those investments, and we’re not even close.

Green: During your presentation at Patagonia, you said there was a way to “log, but leave the forest behind.” Can you explain how that works and also, wouldn’t this kind of forestry increase building costs even more?

Talberth: In terms of the role of forests in Oregon’s climate agenda and the U.S. climate agenda, we believe two things need to happen. One is the federal public lands and state public lands – even lands managed by counties – should be managed as carbon reserves. We should phase out logging on those lands and let them grow to capture and store carbon.

On private lands, we believe we need to make a transition from industrial forest practices to climate-smart alternatives. Climate-smart alternatives are ways to log a forest and leave canopy behind. So, individual tree selection and patch-cutting techniques – there is a technique called variable density thinning that has been demonstrated – all these techniques are ways to get wood out of the forest but leave the canopy intact and obviate the need for chemical spraying and plantations and replanting – just let the forest regenerate itself.

In the short run, it means we get less volume from the forest, but that’s OK because we’re wasting enormous quantities of wood. But in the long run, these techniques have the potential to actually maximize a landowner’s revenue and add some value to the forest.

Once these forests get bigger and older, and these big trees become the norm instead of small plantation trees, the wood that comes off these lands is actually of higher quality and of higher volume than the wood coming off plantations on an acre-by-acre basis.

Green: Some last-minute subsidies were added to HB 2020 to benefit the timber industry. Is that something you expect to see again if they consider this bill in the short session next year?

Talberth: I think that the political strategy of appeasement, of trying to buy the timber industry’s support, backfired so severely and so catastrophically that legislators will be foolish to try to do that again.

I think legislators just need to focus on the scientific facts and the scientific reality that we cannot continue to have these industrial forest practices in our state, that we need a rapid transition to climate smart alternatives, and that means directly regulating the timber industry as part of any climate bill that’s adopted.

Green: They were doing these giveaways to the timber industry, but the timber industry was completely exempted from the bill to begin with.

Talberth: Yeah, they were completely exempted, and then as a sweetener, they threw these last-minute subsidies to make sure that wood supply wouldn’t be restricted and that transporting logs wouldn’t be more expensive, and yet they still got burned.

Green: Coming back to that $750 million figure that these subsidies are costing Oregon taxpayers: If the state was able to move to some sort of system where the land was incentivized for carbon storage as opposed to timber harvesting, would we be seeing a savings to Oregon taxpayers in any way?

Talberth: There would be a savings. Right now, a lot of these tax breaks and subsidies just need to be rescinded – for instance, the below-cost timbers sales or the tax exemptions for logging roads and logging equipment.

But a portion of the tax revenue that counties would receive as the result of rescinding all these harmful tax breaks should be set aside to reinvest in promoting these climate smart practices, because in the short term – the next couple of decades – we’re going to need to subsidize these practices to help nurture the new generation of forestland owners who know how to do these practices. That is going to cost some money, but it’s well worth it. Getting these practices up and running so that our forests become a major, natural carbon sink – rather than a big source of emissions – is one of the most important investments Oregon can make.