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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. For those of us of a certain age, the phrase "Timber Wars" harkens back to the 1980s and '90s, when environmentalists and the timber industry engaged in a pitched battle over Oregon forests. Today, due to some actions by the White House and potential action in Congress, we may be entering a new phase of the timber wars. Today on the show, you'll hear from both sides in a debate on what to do with Oregon forests and Bureau of Land Management land. At issue is a plan to harvest more timber, but it's also an issue of forest sustainability. In short, it's a delicate balancing act. First, you'll hear from a conservation group that wants to continue to ban logging. Then you'll hear from an industry group that says we can both protect and harvest. Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild's conservation director. Steve, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
Steve Pedery: Thanks for having me.
Dunne: I understand there are several pieces of legislation, as well as what the White House is doing with regard to Oregon forests. I wanted to hear Oregon Wild's stance on what's happening, perhaps both Oregon Rep. Cliff Bentz's bill and the Trump administration's action regarding old-growth forests and BLM land. Give us an overview of, as you see it, the threats to Oregon forests.
Pedery: It's an unfortunate time. Here in Oregon, we've really had a sea change in how we view forests and public lands over the last 40 years. We recognize that they have many values beyond timber: clean drinking water, habitat for fish and wildlife. They're really the engines that fuel a lot of Oregon's tourism and recreation economy. What we've seen in the first year of this administration is really a focus exclusively on maximizing logging, going back to the kind of old-school logging we saw in the 1980s. The clear-cutting epidemic led to the spotted owl crisis and the Northwest Forest Plan in the first place. These latest announcements deal with western Oregon Bureau of Land Management lands. These are public lands, owned by every American. They're found in western Oregon, with a larger concentration from Eugene south. They're really lower in elevation than most of the Forest Service lands that many of us are familiar with, and critically important for fish and wildlife. They have some of the last low-elevation old-growth stands found in western Oregon, so they're really important from an environmental perspective and also from a recreation perspective. Some really treasured places: Valley of the Giants, Mary's Peak, and down in southern Oregon, part of the Wild Rogue area. These are really beloved Oregon icons, and it's unfortunate that this administration really just sees them as a timber basket to be cracked open to reward the companies that supported them.
Dunne: So from what I'm hearing, it's basically the federal government as well as some members of Congress saying: strip away protections and go back to what it used to be. Is that kind of the crux of it?
Pedery: Exactly. Most of us in Oregon think the idea of logging 200-year-old trees sounds ridiculous, a bit like saying we're going to restart commercial whaling on the Oregon coast. Unfortunately, that is what this administration and Congressman Bentz are proposing. They really look at those clear-cutting days in the 1980s as something they want to go back to. It would certainly make some nice profits for timber corporations that are capable of processing those logs, but once that forest is gone, it's gone forever. There aren't a lot of places in America where we're managing forests on a 200-year rotation.
Dunne: You brought up a point about how important tourism and recreation in our forests are to the Oregon economy. Has there been any talk about balancing that with, again from the federal perspective, this idea of logging major areas that were at one point off-limits? Have they talked at all about the potential loss of revenue from tourism and other things that have become a major part of our economy?
Pedery: Not really. That's the disheartening thing about this. Even if you're not an environmentalist, even if you don't care very much about endangered species or old growth as an American icon, you should care about the jobs that recreation and outdoor tourism bring to Oregon. People come here to go rafting on the Rogue, to go hiking on Mount Hood. They inject money into those gateway communities they travel through to get there. When you take the view that the only value public lands or forests have is what can be taken from them and sent to a sawmill, you're really ignoring the modern economy of not just Oregon but most of the western states. Think about a state like Colorado or Montana. People aren't going there to go hiking at a clear cut.
Dunne: Can you give us an idea of how much logging is already happening under the Trump administration, and then if Rep. Bentz's bill passes, how much more would happen?
Pedery: To speak to the broader question: logging has continued on public lands in Oregon and around the West since the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted back in 1994. It shifted to a more sustainable model, particularly on Forest Service lands, where we were largely logging younger stands, trees under 80 years old, and managing forests to try to get them back to something more like natural conditions. That's what existed before clear-cutting came along and converted a lot of the land into tree farms, and before fire suppression came along and started leading to a lot of overstocked stands. This latest announcement focuses on BLM lands in western Oregon. These lands have been a political hot potato for a long time. The logging industry looks at them and sees the old growth on them as a piggy bank they'd like to crack open, and they've been trying to do so since the 1990s. There are about 2.5 million acres of public land we're talking about, and about a million acres of that has some old growth on it. There has been logging of old-growth stands. It happened under the Biden administration and has accelerated under the Trump administration. I don't want to leave the audience with the idea that old growth was fully protected prior to this announcement. What's different about this announcement is that there's not even a pretense that we're doing this for fire suppression or forest health. The framework that agency staff and the BLM are being given is "timber dominance," logging as the dominant use of these lands. The BLM has something called Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, places on public lands that have been identified as so special that you really don't want to develop them, log them, or put roads through them. One of the things in this proposal is just eliminating that as a category of land and having all of these places put back into the timber base. Over the last 40 years, these areas have been established to try to protect some of the last best places we have on BLM lands, and just a blanket edict that we're not going to protect them anymore speaks, I think, to the mindset behind this proposal. It is not a balanced effort to boost timber production while protecting the environment. It's really about establishing logging as the dominant use of public lands.
Dunne: Steve, my last question for you: I imagine most of my audience remembers, but for folks younger who may not, remind us how the change came about during the timber wars of the '80s and early '90s to try and get rid of the worst offenses of clear-cutting.
Pedery: I liken it to commercial whaling, and that's not an understatement. In the '80s, we were clear-cutting thousands and thousands of acres of old-growth forests every week across the Pacific Northwest, and we were rapidly running out of stands to log. That really led to a realization, first by scientists who were tracking the health of salmon runs and other wildlife populations that were crashing as their habitat was being destroyed. Then there were social implications, too: the impacts on fishing communities, the impacts that steep-slope clear-cutting was having on towns and homes downslope from mudslides, and what that was doing to drinking water in communities around the Northwest. That really led to a social backlash. A lot of Oregonians, a lot of people in Washington state and Northern California just didn't want to see this happen anymore. That led to mass protests at a scale I don't think we've seen in the Pacific Northwest since. In the early '90s, there was an effort to resolve those pressures, and the Northwest Forest Plan was part of that, really trying to get these public lands managed for the long-term best interests of the public. I underscore that these belong to everyone. These are not timber companies' lands. Saving the old growth that was left, trying to recover salmon and steelhead runs, ending some of the worst clear-cutting practices: those were put in place to address that public backlash. One of the things that has struck me over the years is how much Oregonians just take for granted that no one logs old growth anymore. When I talk to someone at a social event who doesn't know what I do for a living and we have a conversation about the environment in Oregon, the idea of logging a 200-year-old tree is like killing a gray whale. Who would do that? Unfortunately, I think one of the answers is there are some folks in the White House who have some thoughts on that.
Dunne: He's Steve Pedery, Oregon Wild's conservation director. Steve, really appreciate you coming on and talking with us. Now we hear from the other side of this debate about opening up Oregon forests for logging. Travis Joseph, the president and CEO of the American Forest Resource Council. Travis, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
Travis Joseph: Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this important topic.
Dunne: Why don't you tell folks what the bill your organization is supporting, Rep. Bentz's bill, would do?
Joseph: Congressman Bentz's bill is really an affirmation of current law under the O&C Act. The O&C Act of 1937 directs the Bureau of Land Management to manage about 2.5 million acres of federal forests on essentially a sustained-yield basis, meaning the BLM would manage these forests in perpetuity, keeping them as forests while producing timber volume to support local milling capacity and infrastructure, while also generating revenue for local communities and counties to support essential services. The congressman's bill affirms that meaning of the O&C Act while also providing some technical corrections and clarifications to modernize the act. We think it makes a lot of sense. From our perspective, we don't really see any partisan opposition to clarifying the law and clarifying outcomes that we think all Oregonians want: healthy forests and healthy communities.
Dunne: I know some people might be concerned about whether you can do both: preserve forests but also have a robust, perhaps more robust, timber industry in Oregon than we've seen in the past few decades.
Joseph: I love that question. I think that's one of the biggest misunderstandings about forestry and natural resources management: that it's a zero-sum game, that somehow if you manage federal forests and produce timber volume as one outcome, you have to sacrifice other outcomes. That's just not true. I recognize that might be good politics for some, but that's not how natural resource management works, and that's what we do in Oregon. We have some of the strongest forestry laws and labor laws in the United States, in the world, here in the Pacific Northwest. From our perspective, if you do good management of your forest, it's going to deliver all the other outcomes that we all support: clean air, clean water, good-paying jobs, recreational opportunities, and public access. It's really frustrating and disappointing to see a lot of narratives out there in the press right now suggesting that if you increase management and logging, you have to sacrifice all of the values that Oregonians hold dear about their public lands. That's just not true.
Dunne: I know some people perhaps recall the image of clear-cutting, and certainly people who've been around a long time might remember what I think were called the timber wars of the '80s. Talk about where your organization sees forest management going, so that perhaps, like you said, both sides of the political aisle or both sides of the divide over forest management can find agreement.
Joseph: I think that's where we should start: with what outcomes do we want? What are we solving for on our federal lands, specifically the O&C lands, and how do we measure that progress, making sure that we're moving forward on a sustainable management paradigm that works for wildlife, our forests and our communities? If you start there with Oregonians, you'll find that there is commonality about what those objectives should be. One of them is additional timber supply to support Oregon's milling infrastructure, jobs and revenues. Yes, that's true. But it can also support wildfire mitigation and community protection. You can use silviculture and modern management techniques to help accelerate wildlife habitat, protect water quality and help reduce smoke in the air. I'm not naive. I know that this is an incredibly politically charged time. There's a lot of disagreement. I think our federal forests are one thing that can bring us together. I really do. Oregonians love their forests. They should. My members do. So how do we think about and change the current trajectory? We don't want to go back to the '90s. We have no interest in fighting some sort of new war. Let's work together to figure out how we achieve better forest resiliency, forest health and community health. Those aren't just big-picture ideas. Those are real. We can accomplish that.
Dunne: You just mentioned wildfires and resiliency. Oregonians care very much about their forests and are very concerned about wildfires. I know one of the points your organization brings up a lot is managing forests for better wildfire resiliency. Talk about that.
Joseph: Our forests are overstocked and unhealthy. They're beyond what foresters call carrying capacity. In some ways, and it's hard to wrap your mind around sometimes if you're not engaged with these issues regularly, we actually have more trees on our federal lands than the land can support. Combined with climatic conditions and lots of different stressors on public lands, you can create really dangerous conditions. We can manage our forests by reducing densities and vegetation competition. We can help protect our older forests. We can create mosaics of healthy, dynamic ecosystems. But that takes intention and science-based, active forest management. Since the '90s and the Northwest Forest Plan, we've really moved away from active forest management to passive management. About 80% of our federal forest lands, and this applies to the O&C lands and Forest Service lands alike, are set aside in reserves that do not allow for continued, sustainable active management. Our idea, based on science and what the data tells us, is that we need to take a more proactive approach across the landscape. People confuse that to mean we're talking about clear-cut logging on federal lands. We're not. We just need to have all the tools in our toolbox to achieve those environmental, economic, social and cultural outcomes that we all agree on.
Dunne: Does Rep. Bentz's bill fit in with other actions the White House has taken regarding opening up federal lands for logging?
Joseph: That's a good question. Some of the details of how it works together are complicated, but essentially Congressman Bentz's bill is consistent with the ongoing administrative process recently announced by the Trump administration about revising the resource management plans for the O&C lands. Congressman Bentz's bill clarifies the intent of the O&C Act, as I mentioned. It has technical components. It clarifies that the state of Oregon and BLM should be working together on fire suppression. It ensures that the 18 O&C counties in western Oregon are considered cooperating agencies as they work with the administration on that resource management plan revision. But the bill doesn't prescribe an outcome. It doesn't prescribe a timber outcome, and neither does the announcement recently made by the Trump administration. To be clear with your listeners, what was announced is a plan to have a plan. Essentially, they came out and said they're going to revise the existing resource management plans for the O&C lands and want public feedback, due by March 23, as they work on the specifics. But right now, there are no specifics about what changes or outcomes that would lead to.
Dunne: Travis, my last question: where is Rep. Bentz's bill in the legislative process, and what are the next steps?
Joseph: The first step is introduction, which he's done. It's been referred to the House Natural Resources Committee, of which he's a member. I would expect that he'll probably request a legislative hearing on the bill, which could happen as early as this summer. The Oregon congressional delegation will also likely be thinking about other ideas or concepts for the O&C lands. It's really important to remember that former Congressman Peter DeFazio also introduced bipartisan legislation on these O&C lands about a decade ago and was able to get it through the House of Representatives. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley also introduced legislation on the O&C lands around the same time. That didn't quite get enough traction to move through the Senate, but the Oregon delegation has a history of trying to find a bipartisan legislative solution to the O&C lands, and we're eager to work with them to find opportunities to move those concepts forward.
Dunne: He's Travis Joseph, the president and CEO of the American Forest Resource Council. Travis, really appreciate you taking some time to talk with the audience.
Joseph: Thanks for the opportunity to talk to your listeners. Really appreciate it.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of "Oregon on the Record" are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Monday on the show, you'll hear about a proposal to build a new mountain bike park in Eugene. I'm Michael Dunne, host of "Oregon on the Record." Thanks for listening.
