A3
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019
Oregon’s forestry department on an unsustainable path
volumes were compounded
by a deep slump in timber
prices, and the division’s
reserves dropped from nearly
$40 million in 2008 to $4.9
million in mid 2015, present-
ing the very real prospect of
insolvency.
Leaders hollowed out
their offi ces, slashing staff by
30%. They reduced spending
across the board and froze
the recreation program alto-
gether. They reduced spend-
ing so much in other areas
— including research, moni-
toring and young forest man-
agement — staff warned
they would no longer be
able to meet their statutory
mandates.
Meanwhile, agency lead-
ers directed foresters to
focus on sales that gener-
ated maximum revenues and
to increase harvest levels to
245 million board feet a year,
the highest sustainable level
under its current policy.
The division’s annual
operating plan for 2019 lays
it out: “Currently revenues
generated from timber sales
are not covering all costs for
state forests,” adding that
sales that “don’t cover all
costs, or don’t contribute rev-
enue to the division should be
avoided.”
Translation: Target high-
profi t sales. Minimize road
work. Limit thinning. Focus
on accessible cleacuts.
Not every timber sale
is the same. The age of the
stand, the mix of species, its
location and relative accessi-
bility all affect the prices that
timber companies are willing
to bid.
Agency leaders insist
they’re not cutting more
trees to patch the budget. The
annual volume of timber the
division puts up for sale has
averaged 227 million board
feet a year in the west side
forests covered by the forest
management plan, said Liz
Dent, chief of the state forest
division.
Daugherty, the state for-
ester, agrees. “Cutting more
timber isn’t going to solve
our problem,” he said. “I’ve
been saying that since I
became state forester.”
Yet harvest volumes have
increased. In those same west
side forests, they spiked to
252 million board feet in
2017, 295 million in 2018
By TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian
Oregon’s state forests are
supposed to be managed to
deliver a balance of benefi ts,
from sustainable timber har-
vests to habitat for fi sh and
wildlife, from clean air and
drinking water to well-man-
aged recreation spaces.
But the Oregon Depart-
ment of Forestry is failing on
almost every front.
The reasons are numer-
ous, but stem from structural
issues exacerbated during
the last decade by ineffective
management at the agency,
ineffectual oversight by its
seven-member board and
inaction by the governor and
legislators.
The agency’s state for-
est division budget is almost
entirely dependent on tim-
ber sales, a volatile reve-
nue stream that it can’t con-
trol and is subject to market
swings, political agendas and
legal challenges. The division
gets no money from taxpay-
ers, but is asked to provide
services that cost millions of
dollars annually and generate
little or no revenue. Mean-
while, two-thirds of the tim-
ber sales it does generate go
directly to 15 counties and
the taxing districts where the
logging takes place.
Since the 2008 reces-
sion, agency managers have
warned that budget formula
no longer works, leaving
them operating at the edge of
a fi nancial precipice.
In response, they’ve axed
staff, frozen programs and cut
more trees. They’ve reduced
the amount of forests set aside
for conservation. They’ve
deferred investments nec-
essary to ensure future for-
est health and productiv-
Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian
This area in the Clatsop State Forest recently became part of the 30% of the public land the Oregon Department of Forestry is
protecting as ‘complex forest.’
for the Oregon Board of For-
estry, members complained
of being stonewalled by staff
on requests for basic fi nancial
and scientifi c information.
Members of the oversight
board said State Forester
Peter Daugherty had failed
to fully inform them of crit-
ical fi nancial problems. And
they said relations among
board members had become
dysfunctional.
Cindy Williams, a fi sh
biologist from Medford who
has served on the board for
seven years, said it had been
a tension fi lled year that left
her feeling she had to “bull-
doze my way into the conver-
sation” to raise concerns.
“Something fundamen-
‘I’M BEING TOLD BY STAFF THAT
WE’RE GOING TO FALL OFF A
FINANCIAL CLIFF. WHERE IS THE
CLIFF AND HOW LONG IS IT
GOING TO TAKE GET THERE?
WHAT ARE THE CAUSES?
UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES,
WHAT LEVERS CAN WE PULL?’
Brenda McComb | a retired forestry professor
from Oregon State University
ity. And they’ve skimmed
the cream off their available
“inventory,” targeting acces-
sible clearcuts of large, high-
value trees to quickly gener-
ate more profi table sales.
Those aren’t sustainable
tactics, much less the durable
long-term strategy to increase
both fi nancial and conserva-
tion outcomes that the divi-
sion has been directed to
develop since 2013, but has
so far failed to deliver.
It’s unclear that such a
balance can be achieved.
Tradeoffs are inevitable.
That’s why the current strat-
egy — laid out in a document
called the forest management
plan — has become a zero-
sum game, pitting rural coun-
ties, their schools and jobs
against conservation, recre-
ation and clean water.
The policy mess will be
showcased in a trial starting
this week. Fourteen of Ore-
gon’s 15 “forest trust land”
counties are suing the agency,
arguing they’ve been short-
changed $1.4 billion in log-
ging revenues. Bankrolled
by private timber companies,
the counties claim the state
breached its contract with
them by failing to maximize
harvests on state forests since
2001. Many observers expect
the agency will lose.
Conservationists and envi-
ronmental groups are deeply
unhappy with the agency, too.
They’re convinced the state
is already cutting at unsus-
tainable levels to backfi ll its
budget and is serially manip-
ulating what it’s promised to
protect so it can keep up the
pace. They contend the log-
ging on state forests threaten
endangered salmon runs,
wildlife habitats and clean
water. To stop that, they’re
suing to block 68 proposed
timber sales.
And pressures are build-
ing within agency leadership.
At an Oct. 9 planning retreat
Sketchy swaps
tal in the board attitude has
changed,” she said, “and we
need to address it.”
Valuing state forests
The state forest division’s
mandate is to manage its pub-
lic land for the “greatest per-
manent value” to the state of
Oregon. Yet the exact mean-
ing of “value” — and to
whom it should go — is a
controversial question.
It’s also unclear how much
Oregon’s state forests have to
give.
Many Oregonians rely
on state forests as a place to
hunt, fi sh, hike and camp —
activities that cost the divi-
sion millions of dollars a year
to manage, but generate little
revenue to offset its growing
costs.
Oregonians also cherish
wildlife habitats within for-
ests like the Clatsop.
But the Clatsop is also the
money-basket of the state for-
ests. To improve the agency’s
bottom line, forestry offi cials
have systematically reduced
SUN
their commitment to con-
serve parts of it, from 50% of
the land base in 2003, to 40%
in 2009 and to 30% in 2011.
The need to squeeze
money from forests is fueled
in part by a promise made
nearly 80 years ago with Ore-
gon’s 15 so-called “trust land
counties.” In exchange for
taking over hundreds of thou-
sands of burned-over, logged
and unproductive acres of
county-owned
forestland,
the state agreed to rehabili-
tate them, protect them from
fi re and share the proceeds
of future logging. Those rev-
enues are critical for cash-
strapped rural counties and
support everything from pub-
lic safety to education. And
the forest products indus-
try, despite its rapid decline
over the last four decades,
still provides those counties
with some of their best pay-
ing jobs.
Daugherty, Oregon’s state
forester since 2016 and an
agency employee since 2007,
acknowledges the dilemma.
“There’s a fi nite amount
of state forests, and they can
only produce a given suite
of goods and services,” he
said. “There are certainly
tradeoffs.”
OCT 27
3:00pm
Doors open at 2:15
Pre-Show 2:30:
Astoria Tuba Quartet
Bob Van Dyk picks his
way up a hillside in the Clat-
sop State Forest. He pushes
through the undergrowth,
grabbing ferns and shrubs
for handholds as he clambers
over downed trees.
Fifty yards in, he stops
next to a towering Douglas
Fir with a trunk nearly 10 feet
around.
“We’re in one of the very
rare patches in the North
Coast of forest that has some
genuine old growth char-
acteristics,” said Van Dyk,
policy director at the Wild
Salmon Center, pointing out
the mix of tree species and
sizes, the abundance of stand-
ing snags and downed wood.
The state forest division
once designated the area as
protected, allowing only thin-
ning of some younger trees.
Now, it’s been opened up
for clearcutting.
This particular tract was
part of a 6,000-acre land swap
the forestry board approved
last year in its ongoing effort
to keep the division from
going broke.
With little explanation,
agency offi cials removed
Clatsop College
Performing
Arts Center
Admission $15
Students $8
Celebrate 40 years of the NCSB
North Coast Symphonic Band
Guest Conductor Michael McClure
2,600 acres of older tracts
with large trees from conser-
vation status that protected
them from intensive logging
and dropped them into the
agency’s cut bucket, mak-
ing them available for sale
and harvest. The agency then
gave another 3,550 acres
protected status. The strat-
egy helped the division pres-
ent the move as a net gain in
acres being managed to pro-
mote prime wildlife habi-
tat, protect salmon-bearing
streams and provide clean,
reliable drinking water.
But
conservationists
describe it as a shell game.
They say most of those newly
protected acres were smaller
tracts of young trees with
seemingly minimal conserva-
tion value or narrow strips of
trees along streams that were
already protected.
An extreme example sits a
few miles away, near the town
of Jewell. It’s a gravel park-
ing area with an abandoned
Barcalounger and piles of
trash. It bears no resemblance
to older forest structure. Nor
does the nearby open fi eld
riddled with gopher holes.
But both are now part
of the 30% of the forest the
agency has set aside to cre-
ate “complex forest.” In real-
ity, the division is making no
progress toward that goal.
The percentage of state for-
ests that are complex today is
going down, and now stands
at 10%.
The swap gave heartburn
to agency biologists, who
raised concerns internally
that it would break up exist-
ing habitat. Environmental
groups fumed that the swap
wasn’t accompanied by any
detailed rationale. Yet the
board approved the move,
and many of the sections of
forest were put up for sale
this year.
“They basically opened
up some of the fattest, juici-
est most accessible stands of
trees they have to clearcut-
ting,” Van Dyk said. “Our
overarching concern is that
this is unsustainable.”
An agency on the brink
Oregon’s state forest divi-
sion is a public program,
but it doesn’t get any public
money. Instead, it’s almost
completely reliant on reve-
nues from cutting trees. And
right off the top, the agency
must transfer nearly two-
thirds of those proceeds to the
trust land counties.
The agency manages the
state’s forests with what’s
left, no matter its expense
level.
It’s a fi nancial straitjacket
that the counties and timber
companies, who have con-
siderable infl uence over for-
estry issues in Salem, have
no interest in loosening. They
have successfully opposed
recent agency requests for
general fund money to cover
the growing costs of its recre-
ation program, for example,
insisting the agency should
simply cut more trees.
Without outside money,
the division rides the same
economic rollercoaster as the
wood products industry. The
collapse of the housing mar-
ket in the 2008 recession,
followed by falling timber
prices, put the agency’s bud-
get into freefall.
“I don’t think anyone
knew how deep and how long
the recession would last,”
said Liz Dent, the state forest
division chief.
For the division, it lasted
six years. Declining harvest
See Forestry, Page A5
Memorial Celebration
of life for
Patrick
Welch
October 26th
2:00pm
Coastline Church
(formerly the Olney School)
(formerly the Olney School)
Clatsop Retirement Village is the place to trick-and-treat with
many friendly faces and bowls of candies sweet Young children
are invited to travel from floor to floor And places to visit will
be marked clearly on each door No need to fret about the traffic
or the weather Traveling about the CRV building is warmer,
drier, and safer Little Goblins are welcomed from six until eight.
It will be lots of fun! Don’t come late!
6–8 PM HALLOWEEN
947 Olney Ave., Astoria