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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 19, 2016)
News Street Roots • August 19-25, 2016 FORESTS, from page 4 "I've witnessed some very interesting, some very heated arguments among industry members. There are some that will say, 'Why should we be funding someone to find stuff out that is going to diminish our ability to harvest?' And there are others that are just adamant that's what we do as foresters; that's our responsibility." manage for this by spacing trees irregularly or thinning early on in the growing process, . he said, others do not. DOUG MAGUIRE, But regardless of spacing, the cookie PROFESSOR OF FOREST MANAGEMENT AT OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY'S COLLEGE OF FORESTRY cutter height and characteristics of the trees creates limitations that deny many woodland creatures the diversity they need to survive. Gonzales, who leads Oregon Wild’s nesting sites - and she’s doing it with “A lot of species that nest in the older, Forest and Watershed campaign, said funding from the timber industry. aged forests need multilayer canopies another way tree plantations differ from “The timber industry, including Oregon because that provides protection to them,” native forests is that their interiors are Forest and Industries Council, lobbied the said Kim Nelson, a research and wildlife warmer. He said this has contributed to the Oregon Legislature, saying they wanted biologist at OSU. warming of Oregon’s streams, which last marbled murrelet research done so that Nelson has been studying the marbled year killed millions of fish. some of these questions that they want to murrelet, a seabird that flies inland to nest, An OSU study released earlier this year know, about how to better provide for the since the 1980s. The murrelet was listed as compared the microclimates of old-growth murrelet, are answered,” she said. abundant in the 1900s, she said, but today forests to plantation forests in the Oregon The timber industry, through a self- is listed as threatened under the Cascades, finding that tree plantation imposed tax on lumber, funds a lot of Endangered Species Act - a status that interiors can be up to 4.5 degrees research at OSU’s College of Forestry, gives it habitat protections on private lands Fahrenheit warmer. Maguire said. in Washington and California, but not in One of the study’s authors, OSU A benefit of this, he said, is third-party, Oregon. pfofessor Matt Betts, told the college’s neutral research that’s publishable in peer- She said the decline of the murrelet, department of News and Research reviewed journals. along with other bird species such as the Communications: “To the untrained eye, . Conflicting opinions among timber spotted owl and woodpeckers, is attributed plantations might look similar to old-growth interests regarding research funding serve to habitat loss from forestry. forests in terms of the aspects that are well as an example of how deeply the industry’s Jason Gonzales at Oregon Wild said coho known to influence temperature, values are split. salmon and hundreds of smaller and “less particularly canopy cover. So the magnitude “I’ve witnessed some very interesting, charismatic” species such as salamanders, of the cooling effect of old-growth structure some very heated arguments among frogs, lichens and other fauna are also is somewhat surprising.” industry members,” Maguire said. “There threatened as ä direct result of forestry Gonzales said watershed warming is a are some that will say, ‘Why should we be practices in the Pacific Northwest. “major problem all over the state, funding someone to find stuff out that is But Nelson pointed out that some especially in far western Oregon - going to diminish our ability to harvest?’ private landowners are voluntarily trying to throughout the coastal areas of lakes, with And there are others that are just adamant employ practices that are consistent with algae blooms that are dangerous, rivers that’s what we do as foresters; that’s our wildlife needs. that are warm and fish that are dying.” responsibility.” She’s studying what buffers around murrelet territory should look like and whether the birds can be attracted to new Page 5 The carbon question In the era of climate change, one potential problem with clear-cut logging jumps out: It involves removing entire patches of Pacific Northwest forests, which are shown to have tremendous potential for carbon dioxide sequestration. A study authored by faculty at OSU’s Department of Forest Science and University of Washington’s College of Forest Resources in 2002 found old growth forests in the western portion of the Pacific Northwest store more carbon dioxide per acre than any other forests in the world. Some of that carbon is absorbed in the lush understory - the thick blanket of shrubs, ferns and other plants that covers the forest floor but gets cleared away after a clear cut and experiences limited growth in densely packed tree plantations. One group of researchers argues the state needs to start accounting for the timber industry’s long-ignored contribution to climate change. In a November 2015 report, the Center for Sustainable Economy and GEOS Institute in Ashland pegged the timber industry as the second-largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon, surpassed only by transportation. See FORESTS, page 10 I PHOTO BY JOE GLODE A clear-cut mewed at milepost 23 along Oregon Highway 26, west of Portland.
