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