Guest Opinion

By Chip Dennerlein and Tonya Graham

Doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome is not the way to fix a problem.  It usually makes the problem worse.  That’s exactly what would happen if funding for county services was once again linked to old-growth logging as some have suggested.

The potential loss of federal payments to counties in southern Oregon should be a concern to everyone who lives here. In recent years, the “safety net” funds supported roads, education, libraries, and public safety in southern Oregon.

Going “back in time” to replace this funding by ramping up old-growth logging on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service will bankrupt our forests at the expense of wild salmon runs and clean water. An increase in old-school logging would fail to provide Jackson and Josephine counties with a predictable long-term revenue stream and reignite the timber wars of the 1980s.

It is not surprising that those who would like to log our remaining old-growth forests would have us believe that everything would be fine if only we would just support a significant increase in old-growth logging. But this idea is fundamentally flawed, because we would soon run out of old-growth forests to log. Within a decade both our local forests and our local budgets would be bankrupt, leaving future generations to foot the bill.

Replacing county payments with timber revenues would require clearcuts at levels that haven’t been seen for decades – logging that was not sustainable then and could never be sustained today – politically, economically or ecologically.  To put things in perspective, today’s county payments from the federal government are based on a time when two square miles of Oregon’s old-growth forests were clearcut every week.

We agree that much work needs to be done in the woods. Many forests need to be thinned, logging roads need to be either maintained or removed and the timber industry needs to continue its transition to commercial use of younger trees.

A new forestry is emerging in southern Oregon and it is exciting for both conservationists and the people who make their living in the woods.  The Siskiyou National Forest is proposing to thin over 60 square miles of overly stocked tree plantations in the Coastal Healthy Forests project.  This type of forestry enjoys widespread support because it gets logs to the mills quickly and offers a long-term, sustainable solution that doesn’t depend on overcutting forests.

Oregonians value our remaining natural forests for many reasons. In western Oregon, BLM lands contain nearly 1-million acres of old-growth and over 250,000 acres of pristine roadless areas, including the Zane Grey roadless area along the Wild & Scenic Rogue River now threatened by BLM logging projects. More than forty thousand people own property that borders BLM land. Many others have property adjoining the National Forests.

But it’s not just these neighbors that will be affected.  Federal forests are used by southern Oregonians extensively for outdoor recreation – from hiking to fishing, to hunting and horseback riding – and they generate millions for the Oregon economy.

We can never hope to fund 21^st Century education by returning to 20^th Century logging. There is no need to further degrade our quality of life, and the natural values and opportunities we enjoy.  Instead, all parties have an equal share in working toward a long-term solution that doesn’t trade away our natural heritage.  Congress authorized county payments to serve as a short-term source of funding. The legislation was never intended to become the major permanent revenue source for local government.

Conservationists were at the table advocating for the county payments legislation in the 90s and we are here once again to work on long-term solutions that do not depend on logging old-growth forests to fund county services.  The timber industry has a role to play by promoting and demonstrating socially and ecologically sustainable forestry practices.

Representatives DeFazio and Walden, and Senators Wyden and Smith have the right idea by working together to reauthorize county payments – and they almost got the job done.  Southern Oregon counties still need a level of financial assistance from the federal government, at least over the near term.  But at the same time, southern Oregonians must seek a long-term solution that will make our grandchildren proud.

Let’s all work to get the safety net funding program reauthorized ­– and then to create workable solutions that can sustain the quality of our local services and our forests – the values that make southern Oregon a great place to live.

Chip Dennerlein is the Executive Director of the Siskiyou Project and Tonya Graham is the Executive Director of Operations for the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy.