Appeasement Doesn’t Work: Wyden O&C Bill Analysis, Pt 2

In Part 1, The “Ecological Forestry” Mandate, we reviewed the scope and purpose of the O&C lands, and assessed how the Wyden bill would impact timber production and local economies.

Reduction in Forest Roads on All O&C Lands

Another provision in Wyden’s bill that affects the Forestry emphasis areas is the mandate to reduce the total quantity of road miles “to the maximum extent practicable.” This mandate specifically applies both to the Forestry emphasis areas and the Conservation emphasis areas. It is to be achieved by decommissioning existing roads and mandating that any new roads built for a specific project are removed when the project is complete.

Read more at the Oregon Catalyst
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

“Ecological Forestry” Mandate: Wyden O&C Bill Analysis, Pt 1

When talking about the O&C lands, it’s important to understand three things. The first is that the O&C lands represent a very small fraction of the federal forest lands in Oregon. Oregon has about 30 million acres of forest lands, approximately 20 million acres of which are managed by the federal government. The O&C lands comprise only 2.1 million acres, about 10% of the federal forest lands in Oregon.

Read more at the Oregon Catalyst
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Dr. Michael Newton honored by Oregon Farm Bureau

Mike Newton of Oregon State University was honored with a 2013 Oregon Farm Bureau Distinguished Service Award last month at the 81st annual meeting of the OFB in Bend, Oregon. Specifically, Dr. Newton was recognized for Exemplary Service & Contributions to Family, Forestry & Agriculture’s Success. Read more at the Gazette-Times (Jan. 6) Movers & Shakers, Take a Bow.

Congratulations Mike! Read More......

Lost opportunities in rural Oregon?

THE OREGONIAN, 7/8/2009 by Tom Partin, Guest writer (Hat tip: John Bell) - I was born in Prineville and grew up in rural eastern Oregon in the 1950s. Prineville at the time had four active sawmills and several secondary wood manufacturers. Unemployment was low and jobs were readily available. Rural Oregonians and the forest products industry weren't looked upon as second-class citizens. We were proud of our work and what we contributed to the wealth of the state. We had the opportunity for an education, a career and advancement if we had the desire and worked hard.

But after nearly 60 years of believing that rural Oregonians still had those opportunities, I no longer think it's true. Something's changed in Oregon, and maybe in the country, regarding opportunities for the independent people living in rural communities. Those people have become some of the most forgotten and discriminated against in our society.

Many of Oregon's rural communities were built around and thrived with the timber industry, which started to expand and prosper after World War II. The federal government in effect made a contract with rural Oregon: It would manage our national forests and federal lands, and in lieu of paying property taxes those forests would help provide jobs and pay a portion of the timber receipts back to rural counties in the form of road and school funds. It was a win/win/win -- for our forests, our rural communities and for Oregon.

Those rural communities flourished for most of the 20th century. Timber was big business. In fact it was the state's largest industry. Rural Oregon was proud of its role in the state and contributed to economic health just like its urban counterparts.
But beginning in the 1990s, federal forest policies began changing. Planned harvest from public timberland was greatly reduced -- by more than 80 percent. But even those intended harvest levels were never reached, and elected officials have done little to help deliver on that promise of sustainable harvests from federal forests. There have been many missed opportunities the past 15 years that could have restored harvest levels and helped struggling rural communities. But partisan politics and misinformation have prevented any meaningful actions in the forests and idled dozens of sawmills.

The seemingly well-meaning forest management legislation that has been proposed in recent years has been misguided. Instead of opening up areas for expedited harvests that would contribute to healthy forests, these laws would merely take another slice out of forest management options by limiting the ages of trees that can be harvested and by putting more forestland off-limits. The limitations would also curtail a segment of the industry infrastructure that relies on some larger trees from federal forests, thus further breaking down the contract with rural America that our government once honored.

Rural Oregon residents, the federal forests and the forest products industry are much like a garden that needs to be tended. If you cut off the spigot of management dollars and treatment, as has happened for the past decade and a half, they will decline and die. We need our government and legislators to understand that only a healthy forest-products industry will deliver rural Oregon towns from double-digit unemployment -- not promises based on tourism or other such panaceas. Our forests need to be managed, not just set aside to burn. They need the spigots of active management turned back on to allow them to flourish along with the forest products industry. And our rural citizens need the opportunity to once again have family-wage jobs and opportunities and hope for the future.

Tom Partin of Lake Oswego is president of the American Forest Resource Council Read More......

Ben Stout: A life of science, service — and golf

Albany Democrat-Herald, August 4, 2007, Hasso Hering wrote,

Even though he was retired, Benjamin B. Stout, a scientist who was more interested in data than political labels, spent the last 19 years of his life trying to inform the public debate in Oregon about forests and fish.

Stout, an Albany resident since 1988, died July 29 at the age of 83.

During his time in the mid-valley he, among other things:

• Served as an unpaid volunteer adviser on natural resources to state Rep. Liz VanLeeuwen, a Republican from Halsey, even though he was a registered Democrat.
  
• Took part in the Salmon 2100 Project and wrote a chapter in its book about the prospects for the species’ survival in the Pacific Northwest.
  
• Wrote countless letters to his local paper and others on issued concerning fish, forestry and education.

VanLeeuwen, who served 18 years through 1998 in the Oregon House, remembers that the Democrat-Herald called her one day in the 1990s and asked: “Liz, who is writing this stuff for you.”

It was Stout, who had contacted VanLeeuwen early in the decade offering to help her with forestry issues during the period when the federal government was working on shutting down logging on the national forests to protect the northern spotted owl.

“If there is an award for a wise and true scientist and educator, Dr. Ben Stout of Albany gets the honor,” VanLeeuwen wrote in an e-mail. “How I will miss him.”

Collecting and analyzing data was Stout’s habit. He found that fish runs in many Northwest rivers fluctuate in unison, and he concluded that ocean conditions were the cause.

When a newspaper columnist condemned the Snake River dams as “blockages to survival” of salmon, Stout went to the data and reported, in a letter to the Sunday D-H and Gazette-Times, that the number of fish passing through the first and fourth dams were about the same, debunking the blockage idea.

To these excursions into policy debates, the native of West Virginia brought a long life in science and education.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in forestry at West Virginia University in 1947, a master’s in forestry from Harvard University in 1950 and a Ph.D. in forest ecology from Rutgers University in 1967.

He managed Harvard’s Black Rock research forest and later served as professor of silviculture at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he became associate provost of biological sciences (1959 — 1978). He was the dean of the School of Forestry at the University of Montana in Missoula from 1978 through 1985.

Then, for three years before his retirement and move to Albany in 1988, he directed an acid-deposition research program for the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement.

He was named a fellow in the Society of American Foresters, the only forester on record to share this honor with his daughter, also a fellow in the Society.

Stout was a member of the Spring Hill Country Club. His family says that for years he considered a round of golf truly successful only if he scored at or below his age. Last April 19 he hit the 12th hole-in-one of his golfing career.

He is survived by his wife, Elaine Harker Stout, whom he married in 1989 in Albany, three children and their families, and two grandchildren.

A celebration of Ben Stout’s life was will be held 2-5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12, at Spring Hill Country Club in Albany.

Liz, we are sorry that you've lost such a good friend. Our sympathy to Mr. Stout's family. Read More......