By ZACH URNESS/Salem Statesman Journal
CORVALLIS — Former candidate for Oregon governor Betsy Johnson and a convoy of about 100 loggers, timber owners and students on Wednesday blasted an increasingly controversial plan for 600,000 acres of state forests they say would lead to a decline in logging, revenue for communities and jobs in the state’s timber industry.
Their wrath is centered on what’s known as a Habitat Conservation Plan, currently being crafted by the Oregon Department of Forestry to help manage Oregon’s state forests for the next seven decades.
Timber groups say they were originally told the plan would allow harvest of 225 to 250 million board feet of timber annually — close to the most recent 10 year average. However, projected harvest levels of 165 to 182.5 million board feet for 2024 and 2025, incorporating elements of the plan, have sounded alarm bells across Oregon’s forestry sector.
“Communities in Northwest Oregon have gone from incredulous to furious over how this HCP has been handled,” Johnson said at the Oregon Board of Forestry meeting in Corvallis. “Rural Oregonians do feel like this plan is being shoved down their throats.”
Multiple timber business owners said the plan would decimate their industry while students from Sweet Home High School worried about future careers in logging.
“The proposed state forest HCP will likely destroy my family businesses,” said Harold Kottre, owner of Kottre Tree Farms.
The plan has become a flashpoint and has worked its way into the state Legislature. Twenty-five Oregon senators and representatives signed a letter sent Tuesday to Gov. Tina Kotek urging revisions to the plan.
“Given the vast and long-lasting ramifications of the HCP on rural communities, we strongly urge reconsideration of ODF’s proposals,” the letter said.
So far, the Board of Forestry has declined. At a previous meeting on Feb. 15, a motion to ask the state Department of Forestry to create an alternative plan that would include higher harvest levels failed 4 to 3.
ODF declined to comment on the letter to Kotek — and the HCP wasn’t actually on the agenda Wednesday — but ODF previously told the Statesman Journal the long-term logging levels wouldn’t necessarily stay as low as cited for 2024 and 2025.
“The data (they) cited applies to the next two fiscal years, which set target harvest volumes across the stated time,” said Jason Cox, a spokesman for ODF. “While they do incorporate conservation measures included in the proposed Habitat Conservation Plan, these represent a two-year snapshot in time, not the anticipated average harvest volume over the 70-year term of the HCP.”
Environmental groups noted the plan is intended to help conserve Oregon wildlife and forest health and bring the state into compliance with the federal Endangered Species Act.
“The habitat protections and harvest levels outlined in the HCP would apply to public lands that are to be managed for the benefit of all Oregonians, not just a subsection of Oregonians,“ Grace Brahler, of Cascadia Wildlands, said at the meeting. “The HCP will provide the department with regulatory certainty, guaranteeing that logging will continue into the future.
“The status quo of take avoidance and mass extraction have not worked. Please don’t kick the can down the road to future generations who are inheriting a climate and biodiversity crisis they took no part in causing. Please take the comprehensive approach now to conserve what habitat still remains.”
Oakley Brooks, communications director for the Wild Salmon Center, said in an email: “For everybody who showed up today in the timber industry, which is an important part of the North Coast economy, there is an equal number of people who depend on clean water and forest health in the Tillamook (area) for their livelihoods.”
- This story appeared March 8, 2023 in the Salem Statesman Journal