VIEWPOINT
LET TERS
BY BOB EMMONS
A SURVIVOR SPEAKS
Nearby Clearcuts
FIGHTING AGAINST THE LOGGING AND
AERIAL SPRAYING OF OUR FORESTS
T
o clear the land for settlement, early pio-
neers grabbed an axe and did work that
demanded time and energy enough to
break a sweat. Later, two men could work
a crosscut saw through old growth in half
the time and half the sweat it took a man with an axe.
When the internal combustion engine was adapted
to saws, one man could drop a tree in a matter of min-
utes. Now one person in an enclosed, heated and air-
conditioned compartment operates a machine that cuts
through a 3-foot-diameter fir in a matter of seconds,
uses the same machine to strip, cut to length and stack
the log and moves on to what formerly would take at
least half a dozen men with chainsaws to accomplish in
a day. A still photo of this latest weaponry fails to do
it justice; to see one in action check out “The Ultimate
Wood Cutting Vehicle” on YouTube.
To stay apace, commercial timbering moved from
single species, 80-year felling cycles to 60 and now to
40 in less than 50 years, and fast growing hybrids and
even clones are quickly shaving more years off the cy-
cle. As a result, trees subject to this regimen never have
a chance to become forests, robbing understory and
underground plants, organisms, animals and insects of
habitat, and with every accelerated clearcut increasing
global warming.
But that’s just the outline of the story. Accessing
trees that will be cut requires roads usually made by
heavy equipment that disturbs the soil and provides
ideal conditions for the invasive, non-native species
that such machinery often introduces and spreads.
Aerial spraying of pesticides eliminates or stunts
the competition of invasive vegetation and of non-
commercially viable trees such as maples, oaks and
madrones. These poisons drift from helicopters or
wash into streams, creeks and rivers, affecting humans,
pets, domestic livestock and wild animals. The land is
replanted with a monoculture — typically Douglas fir
— and the cycle begins anew.
Incredibly, this ecological trauma is a common
practice legitimized by Oregon’s Forest Practices Act
and a host of political and bureaucratic enablers. The
McDougal brothers, Greg Demers and a plethora of
other opportunists are easy to dislike for their callous
pursuit of filthy lucre. But it’s important to understand
that they cannot operate without city, county or state
approval.
Not so long ago, clearcuts were hidden from the
public by roadside buffers. But gradually discretion
and deceit gave way to open greed, and the public by
and large became inured to stumps and logging roads
as common features in their viewsheds.
Though the McDougal brothers have ravaged the
landscapes of Lane County for decades, recent logging
on the west edge of Lane Community College drew at-
tention because of its proximity to the college, because
it became a political and environmental issue for a high
school ecology class — members of which testified at
a local land use hearing — and because the significant
bite it took out of heavily wooded slopes is highly vis-
ible to the many cars passing by it on 30th Avenue.
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March 1, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com
To the quick cutting and slash-burning regime, the
McDougals, Weyerhaeuser and their ilk add the more
serious and long-lasting impacts of housing sprawl,
bringing residents and their infrastructure farther into
the country and driving wildlife out.
The property near LCC is typical of how the system
operates: Hired consultants apply for county legal lot
verifications, often based on old and sometimes illeg-
ible deeds that pop up in ostensibly single tax lots. Af-
ter the county’s approval they submit a new application
with the approved lots property line adjusted for maxi-
mum financial benefit to the developers. It’s a common
and deadly paradigm: Buy cheaply, clearcut the trees
when the market is high and sell what remains as lots
for high-end housing.
When the state Legislature authorized commercial
(F-1) and residential impacted forestland (F-2) zon-
ing in the early 1980s, allowing in F-2 one house on
a minimum 80 acres, surely they didn’t anticipate the
property division commonplace in Lane County today.
Now with so-called “template dwellings” approved on
just a few forested acres and old deeds providing the
pretext for further land divisions, instead of one large
tract with one house, one well, one septic system, one
driveway and one utility line, Lane County is permit-
ting multiple houses, wells, septics and infrastructure
on smaller lots created within the same acreage. Most
of these manipulated lots retain their F-2 zoning and
their tax deferrals even though, practically speaking,
these pieces have lost most of their value as productive
timberland.
Considering that Oregon is one of the fastest grow-
ing states in the nation, we can expect to see more of
Lane County’s rural landscape urbanized by weak,
anachronistic land use laws and enforcement and of-
ten questionable Land Management Division (LMD)
policies and practices. In defense, LandWatch Lane
County, a nonprofit working for over two decades to
protect Lane County’s countryside from sprawl, has
been forced to file numerous costly appeals, includ-
ing a challenge to the legality of four of the six lots
the county’s hearing official recently approved on the
McDougal clearcut near LCC. Through this volunteer
organization, vulnerable wildlife depend on vigilant
and supportive neighbors to avert the saws and subdi-
visions intending to move in next door.
Before such land use transactions, however, the
Forest Practices Act and its defenders, the State Forest-
ry Board and politicians of all stripes, provide the vali-
dation and backup for practices that should have gone
the way of lead paint and DDT. Even former governor
Tom McCall left the timber industry to its own devices.
Notwithstanding, prolonged, persistent and loud
public outcry by contacting political representatives,
writing letters and editorials and direct confrontation
has been and will be effective, as it was in the multi-
faceted, long-term fight to stop field burning. State and
national representatives must hear that clearcutting and
aerial spraying of pesticides are Oregon’s past, not its
future.
Robert Emmons is president of LandWatch Lane County.
Each shooting hits too close to home.
Every time there’s a Las Vegas, Parkland,
Sandy Hook, I am 16 again. I am walking
to the Thurston cafeteria. I am late today.
The morning’s fight with my mom delayed
me, saving my life.
As I’m walking, students run out of the
entrance like a flock of gulls scared off our
football field by a menace.
“Run if you want to live, Chalan,” a
senior yells. The men are wearing tuxedos.
Today is the Men of Excellence breakfast,
celebrating the strong, young men of our
school.
The juxtaposition of finely dressed
students fleeing has me thinking that this
is a game. Because, back then, what else
could it be?
I relive this: the news vans, helicopters,
sirens, searching crowds for friends so I
can hug them, feel them alive.
Every time a mass shooting happens,
I remember trying to call my mom.
Landlines were more normal. Lines are
busy. It’s hours before I reach my mom,
telling her I’m okay. I didn’t die in school
today.
For 20 years I have read it’s a mental
health issue, video games, movies,
parenting, drugs. Other countries have all
of those and don’t have murdered children.
They have strict gun control. They
don’t have the NRA buying politicians like
Trump, Rubio and Ryan.
To the rhetoric, I say enough. To
complacency and conspiracy, enough.
Enough placating other arguments.
I want stricter gun regulation and I want
it 20 fucking years ago.
But today will do.
Chalan N. Moon
Eugene
ONE DOWN, 4,999 TO GO
As a Kansas voter, I really need to know
how to sign the petition to add Bob Keefer
and Rick Levin to our ballot. Please.
Scott Bradley
Wichita, Kansas
NOT FUNNY, BOB
We should keep our sense of humor
during this Reality Show Presidency, but
Bob Keefer running for governor of Kansas
is decidedly un-funny. It is careless, and
echoes the ignorance of privilege that is
at the core of this country’s political and
social crisis.
The kids in Kansas are taking a
political stand against a government that
doesn’t represent them and using existing
legislature to initiate change. It isn’t
supportive to co-opt their statement, Bob,
and use it as a personal joke. If those kids
in Kansas are running in earnest? Well,
Bob, you just made sure no one will take
them seriously. Thanks for helping the
cause, Bob, #sarcasm.
What’s more, candidacy filings are
processed by government administrators
and officers whose job it is to actually
govern, and who are paid by local taxpayer
money. Your joke, Bob, actually cost
the state of Kansas and its citizens real
resources, resources best used to process
actual and concerned candidates with well-
considered platforms and vested interests.