OREGON
A8 — THE OBSERVER
TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2022
Three timber compromise bills gather
bipartisan approval in Oregon Legislature
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
SALEM — A trio of bills that
seek to end Oregon’s “timber
wars” have won bipartisan support
from state lawmakers, who con-
fi rmed the previously negotiated
compromises by wide margins.
Senate Bill 1501, which
enshrines into law new logging
standards agreed upon by timber
and environmental groups, passed
the Senate 22-5 and the House
43-15 in the waning days of this
year’s legislative session, which
ended March 4.
A companion bill that pro-
vides tax credits to small forest-
land owners who abide by stricter
logging regulations, Senate Bill
1502, was approved unanimously
in both chambers.
The Legislature also voted
overwhelmingly in favor of
Senate Bill 1546, which would
implement a new management
strategy for the Elliott State
Forest. The 90,000-acre prop-
erty would remain under state
ownership while managed by
Oregon State University for forest
research and timber harvest.
The three bills must now be
signed by Gov. Kate Brown to
become law.
Over the past four decades,
Oregon’s legislative, execu-
tive and judicial branches hav-
en’t been able to resolve the
festering dispute between the
timber industry and environ-
mental groups over forest man-
agement, said Rep. Ken Helm,
D-Beaverton.
“Our institutions were not
well-suited to doing that,” Helm
said.
The recent timber bills are
“diff erent animals” because they
were brokered by stakeholders
ahead of the legislative session,
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press, File
Felled trees are moved in preparation for being cut into log lengths and loaded onto a truck. Three bills that affi rm compromises
between the timber industry and environmental groups were approved by Oregon lawmakers in the fi nal days of the legislative
session that ended Friday, March 4, 2022.
which may serve as a model for
resolving other longstanding
problems, he said.
“Senate Bill 1501 embodies
a monumental, if not historic,
agreement for protections for our
environment and for certainty for
our timber economy,” Helm said.
Representatives of timber and
environmental groups struck the
Private Forest Accord deal in 2021
after a year of talks mediated by
the governor’s offi ce, which con-
vened the panel to avoid the pros-
pect of competing ballot measures
on forestry regulations.
The history behind SB 1501
didn’t sit well for lawmakers
such as Rep. Christine Goodwin,
R-Roseburg, who said she’d vote
against the bill to protest the
“blackmail” of the timber industry.
“I am opposed to the pressures
imposed on our timber industry
to accept these compromises,”
she said. “I’m opposed to the
intimidation to accept this accord
or else it could be much worse for
the timber industry.”
The 44-page bill expands
no-harvest buff ers around
streams, implements stricter
requirements for road-building,
prioritizes non-lethal control of
beavers and creates a new mod-
eling system to avoid and mitigate
the eff ects of landslides.
The legislation is expected to
set the stage for a federal Habitat
Conservation Plan for the state’s
private forests, which would
shield landowners from liability
under the Endangered Species
Act when harvesting trees.
Several forest product compa-
nies and the Oregon Small Wood-
lands Association signed onto
the Private Forest Accord with
the understanding that it would
provide more regulatory cer-
tainty and reduce the likelihood
of disruptive lawsuits and ballot
initiatives.
The agreement is costly for
the timber industry, not only
fi nancially but also in terms of
its unity, since some companies
remain opposed to the new reg-
ulations, said Chris Edwards,
president of the Oregon Forest &
Industries Council.
However, there is too much at
stake for the timber industry to
roll the dice and move forward
without the deal, he said during a
legislative hearing on SB 1501.
“At its core, the Private Forest
Accord is about protecting a
future for forestry in Oregon,”
Edwards said. “It’s also about
turning the page on the timber
wars of the past.”
Critics argue it complicates
forest management, excludes
excessive amounts of land from
logging and was developed
without suffi cient transparency
and public input.
Many members of the Oregon
Farm Bureau who own forest-
lands believe the agreement is
unworkable, said Lauren Smith,
the organization’s director of gov-
ernment aff airs.
“With the new harvest buff ers
in place, some of our members
risk losing up to 50% of their har-
vestable timber and have stated
they’re likely to sell their wood-
lands to larger owners or sell the
minimum parcel sizes for home
sites,” she said.
Under the agreement, small for-
estland owners are subject to less
rigorous logging restrictions in rec-
ognition of their tendency to grow
trees on a longer rotation cycle.
Small woodlands owners who
choose to manage their proper-
ties under the stricter standards
for larger landowners would be
eligible for tax credits under SB
1502, which passed the Senate and
House without an opposing vote.
Landowners with fewer than
5,000 acres who log less than 2
million board-feet a year would
commit to leaving riparian trees
unharvested for 50 years in
exchange for tax credits, said
Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland.
“Senate Bill 1502 will provide
fi nancial support for smaller for-
estland owners aff ected by the
agreement,” she said.
Climatologists: Drought to worsen in Oregon, Idaho this year
Drought covers
74% of the Pacific
Northwest
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
The Associated Press
PORTLAND — Cli-
mate scientists in the U.S.
Pacifi c Northwest warned
Thursday, March 3, that
much of Oregon and parts
of Idaho can expect even
tougher drought conditions
this summer than in the
previous two years, which
already featured dwindling
reservoirs, explosive wild-
fi res and deep cuts to agri-
cultural irrigation.
At a news conference
hosted by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, water
and climate experts from
Oregon, Washington and
Idaho said parts of the region
should prepare now for
severe drought, wildfi res and
record-low stream fl ows that
will hurt salmon and other
fragile species.
Drought covers 74%
of the Pacifi c North-
west and nearly 20% is
in extreme or exceptional
drought, according to the
U.S. Drought Monitor. An
unusual ridge of high pres-
sure off the U.S. West Coast
scuttled storms in Jan-
uary and February that the
region normally counts on
to replenish water levels and
build up a snowpack that
feeds streams and rivers in
later months, the experts
said.
“This year we’re doing
quite a bit worse than we
were last year at this time, so
one of the points is to make
everyone aware that we’re
going into some tough times
in Oregon this summer,” said
Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state
climatologist. “Right now,
we’re very worried about this
region, about the adversity of
impacts we’re going to expe-
rience this year.”
The predictions are in line
with dire warnings about
climate change-induced
drought and extreme heat
across the American West.
A 22-year megadrought
deepened so much last year
that the broader region is
now in the driest spell in at
least 1,200 years — a worst-
case climate change scenario
playing out in real time, a
study found last month. The
study calculated that 42%
of this megadrought can be
attributed to human-caused
climate change.
In the Pacifi c Northwest,
the worst impacts from the
drought this summer will be
felt in Oregon, which missed
out on critical winter storms
would normally moisten cen-
tral and southern Oregon and
southern Idaho. Scientists
are debating the cause of the
shift in the weather pattern
and some believe a warming
northern Pacifi c Ocean could
be part of the cause, said
O’Neill.
“Climate change may be
changing this storm track,
but there is yet no consensus
on how it is aff ecting the
Pacifi c Northwest,” he said.
The National Interagency
Fire Center recently desig-
nated all of central Oregon
as “above normal” for fi re
danger starting in May —
one of the earliest starts of
fi re season in the state ever.
Most of central and eastern
Oregon is in exceptional or
extreme drought, according
to the U.S. Drought Mon-
itor, and parts of eastern
Washington and western and
southern Idaho are in severe
drought.
Seven counties in central
Oregon are experiencing the
driest two-year period since
the start of record-keeping
127 years ago. Overall,
Oregon is experiencing its
third-driest two-year period
since 1895, the experts said.
Most reservoirs in Oregon
are 10% to 30% lower than
where they were at this time
last year and some are at his-
toric lows, signaling serious
problems for irrigators who
rely on them to water their
crops.
Southern Idaho is also
experiencing severe drought
and a major reservoir in
the Boise Basin has below
average water supply, said
David Hoekema of the
Idaho Department of Water
Resources.
“It takes more than just an
average year to recover and
it doesn’t appear that we’re
going to have an average
year,” he said. “At this point,
we expect southern Idaho to
continue in drought … and
we could also see drought
intensify.”
Some of Oregon’s driest
areas are already running
into trouble.
After a water crisis last
summer that left dozens of
homes with no water, more
domestic wells in southern
Oregon’s Klamath Basin
are running dry. State water
monitors have measured a
troubling drop in the under-
ground aquifer that wasn’t
replenished by winter precip-
itation, said Ivan Gall, fi eld
services division adminis-
trator for the Oregon Water
Resources Department.
His agency has received
complaints of 16 domestic
wells that have run dry
since Jan. 1 and is scram-
bling to fi gure out how many
more wells might go dry
this summer in a cascading
crisis, he said. Farming
season in the agricultural
powerhouse began Tuesday.
Last summer, farmers and
ranchers in the basin didn’t
receive any water from a
massive federally owned
irrigation project because of
drought conditions and irri-
gators instead pumped much
more water than usual from
the underground aquifer to
stay afl oat, Gall said.
The tension over water
gained national attention
when, for a brief period,
anti-government activists
camped out at the irrigation
canal and threatened to open
the water valves in violation
of federal law.
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