Opinion
A4
Thursday, August 11, 2022
OUR VIEW
State gives
Oregonians
whiplash on
wildfi re map
he Oregon Department of Forestry said
it knew from the start that it did not have
enough time to do public outreach for the
new state wildfi re map.
Why wasn’t it upfront with Oregonians?
The state released the map on June 30. It noti-
fi ed more than 80,000 property owners that their
properties were considered at high or extreme
risk for burning. Most of those owners could face
new requirements for removing vegetation around
any homes and new building codes.
And now the map has been pulled. The
notices to property owners are withdrawn and
any appeals to the state that concerned property
owners have made are canceled. That’s because
the map is likely going to be changed.
Could this have been implemented more
poorly? It would have taken some work.
Property owners may feel like they have whip-
lash courtesy of their government. Surprised by
the announcement. Surprised to learn what they
might have to do. Surprised to learn that the state
has not fi nalized what they would have to do.
And then surprised as they gather information to
appeal the classifi cation of their property that the
state cancels any appeals.
It’s not how Oregonians want their government
to treat them.
It’s unfortunate because Gov. Kate Brown and
the Oregon Legislature got serious about wildfi re
with the legislation that led to the creation of this
map — Senate Bill 762. The law required so much
important action to reduce wildfi re risk — utilities
needed to have wildfi re plans, the state needed to
look at building codes and the wildfi re risk map.
Those are all things the state should be looking
at. It’s how the state did them that is the problem.
The core of the bill was the wildfi re risk map
and new requirements for property owners. The
state didn’t do a big ad campaign to notify Orego-
nians this was going on. It didn’t announce that it
knew public outreach was insuffi cient because the
deadline dictated for the map by the legislation
came so fast.
When Doug Grafe, the wildfi re programs director
in the governor’s offi ce, gave a presentation in early
June to a Senate committee about wildfi re and
SB 762, he didn’t have slides highlighting the pos-
sible problems. He talked about how much Oregon
was doing on wildfi re. He joked he was a bit over-
whelmed by the eight grant programs and six sets of
rules and codes in progress.
“I’m reaching my peak ability to keep up, hon-
estly, with all the goings on,” he said.
If he is in charge and was having trouble
keeping up, it’s no wonder Oregonians are, too.
To be fair to Grafe, he did know property
owners were going to be concerned. Grafe
and Mark Bennett, chair of the wildfi re pro-
grams advisory council, both acknowledged that
in response to questions from the committee.
Should that concern, though, of how a state pro-
gram would impact Oregonians — no matter how
well intentioned — have been the focus of the
presentation?
The best thing that can be said about the
way the map was implemented is that it raised
a ruckus. If Oregonians didn’t know what was
going on before, many more surely do now. But
it’s going to undermine confi dence in the map and
the ability of the state to implement programs.
T
Logging interests now dominate
forest collaborative organizations
PAULA
HOOD
OTHER VIEWS
ark Webb, director of the
Blue Mountains Forest
Partners collaborative,
recently attacked a colleague who
dared to shed light on what’s actu-
ally happening across public lands in
eastern Oregon.
Forest collaborative groups, such
as the BMFP, were initially created
to bring together diverse interests,
such as loggers and environmen-
talists, to restore forests. Unfortu-
nately, collaboratives no longer work
toward common ground and are
increasingly dominated by extractive
interests. Collaborative groups have
ample fi nancial incentives to pro-
mote logging, with millions of dol-
lars in government subsidies going
to collaborative members, staff and
intermediary groups.
Regrettably, there is a tremen-
dous disconnect between what the
U.S. Forest Service and collabora-
tives put forth to the public and what
is actually happening on the ground.
Despite Webb’s claims that the Wal-
lowa-Whitman National Forest no
longer logs old growth, there are
centuries-old fresh stumps that say
otherwise. I know there are hun-
dreds more acres of old-growth at
risk in the Big Mosquito project on
the Malheur. I’ve read documents
that show the Umatilla is proposing
logging up to 27,000 acres of pris-
M
tine forests. I’ve been in meetings
where the agency admitted they are
developing proposals to log roadless
forests while side-stepping standard
environmental review.
Collaboratives don’t want to hear
inconvenient truths about climate
change and carbon storage, or pro-
tecting clean water and wildlife. I
spent years working in good faith
at the BMFP. Unfortunately, it was
all too clear that there is no place
at the collaborative table for people
who aren’t on board with logging
more and bigger trees at an ever-in-
creasing pace and scale, while scrap-
ping previously agreed upon envi-
ronmental sideboards.
Folks can split hairs about how
and why big trees continue to be
cut down in timber sale after timber
sale on National Forests in eastern
Oregon. The fact of the matter is that
they are being cut down. Ultimately,
whether big trees are cut down to
clear cable corridors for steep slope
logging, because they’re desig-
nated “hazards” or to simply get the
cut out — at the end of the day, it
doesn’t change the fact that those big
trees are gone.
Collaboratives may have good
intentions, but results matter. That’s
why I raised alarm bells when I
found dozens of big old trees cut
down in the Big Mosquito Large
Landscape Restoration Project in
Malheur National Forest. In justi-
fying the Trump administration’s
eff orts to weaken protections for big
trees, the U.S. Forest Service and
the BMFP collaborative said that
Big Mosquito was a model for what
Paula Hood is co-director of Blue Mountains
Biodiversity Project, a Fossil-based nonprofit
that works to protect and restore the ecosystems
of the Blue Mountains and eastern Oregon
Cascades. This column originally appeared on
the Oregon Capital Chronicle website.
STATE REPRESENTATIVES
GOVERNOR
Kate Brown
160 State Capitol
900 Court St.
Salem, OR 97301-4047
503-378-4582
Bobby Levy, District 58
900 Court St. NE, H-376
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1458
Rep.BobbyLevy@state.or.us
STATE SENATOR
Greg Smith, District 57
900 Court St. NE, H-482
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1457
Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-415
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
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we could look forward to across the
region. With so little of our mature
and old forests remaining, how much
more can we aff ord to lose?
Big trees greater than 20 inches
in diameter comprise only about
3% of trees in our region, because
most were logged over the past 150
years. They’re the foundations of
mature and old forests, and critically
important for wildlife, stream habi-
tats and clean water.
The reality we’re seeing on the
ground is that logging is commonly
heavy-handed and destructive. The
U.S. Forest Service and collabo-
ratives repeatedly gloss over and
ignore the damage logging does
to mature and old forests, wildlife,
water quality and fi sh.
Restoring our forests requires
protecting what we have left. It
doesn’t involve logging steep slopes,
cutting down big old trees and
arguing semantics while the world
gets hotter.
My colleague Rob Klavins was
right — the logging of 18 big trees
near Bend was a big deal. However, in
places obscure to many Oregonians,
these things are happening on a much
larger scale and without scrutiny.
As we face a climate and biodi-
versity crisis, we can’t aff ord to take
a single step in the wrong direction
just to get along.
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