The state Board of Forestry on Tuesday directed the Oregon Department of Forestry to finalize a so-called habitat conservation plan for the 730,000 acres of state forests it manages and enter into a federal consultation process to get the plan approved.
The controversial plan would have the state make firm environmental protections on public forests, setting aside about half the land base as conservation areas where intensive logging would no longer take place for a period of 70 years. If approved by federal agencies and ratified by the board, the plan would shield the state from lawsuits under the endangered species act if logging in the other areas killed or harmed the habitat of existing listed species or those that may be listed in the future.
The agency took three years to develop the draft plan. If it’s finalized this spring and submitted to the feds, it likely wouldn’t receive final approval until 2022, at which point its implementation would be subject to another vote by the state board.
From the start, the approach has been supported by the environmental community and lambasted by timber companies and counties dependent on revenues generated by timber harvests on state forests.
Conservation groups have been frustrated by the lack of enforceable conservation commitments on state forests and alarmed by the agency’s manipulation of existing, voluntary protections in order to generate larger harvests and plug holes in its state forest budget. The agency’s state forest division is entirely dependent on harvest revenues to cover its escalating costs.
Meanwhile, timber companies and most counties that benefit from the harvests say they’ve been shortchanged by the agency for the last two decades as harvest levels fell well short of the levels they were promised when the current forest management plan was created.
And last year a jury agreed. The 13 counties and more than 150 local taxing districts won a related $1 billion lawsuit in Linn County, where a jury found that the agency had failed to maximize timber harvests and related payments to counties, which is how the jury interpreted the state’s statutory mandate that the forests be managed for the “greatest permanent value.”
The state is appealing that verdict. It maintains that greatest permanent value is a multiple use mandate that also requires it manage the state forests for endangered species, clean water, recreation and carbon storage, among other values.
Timber companies and some of the counties fear that the habitat conservation plan will simply reinforce the status quo for the next 70 years, undermining well-paying sawmill jobs and vital payments to counties that help support myriad public services.
But from the department’s perspective, the plan would minimize impacts on federally listed species, protect it from related lawsuits and create operational certainty over the 70 year-term of the federal permit the plan would provide.
The plan would set aside 43% of state forest lands – or 275,000 acres — in more than 200 habitat conservation areas ranging in size from less than 50 acres to more than 50,000 acres, driven by existing endangered species and land ownership patterns. Almost 80% of that habitat would be in North Coast forests like the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests, which comprise a similar percentage of the overall state forest acreage. The remainder would be in the Willamette Valley and Southern Oregon. Another 7% of state forests would be protected in riparian areas such as stream setbacks.
The plan wouldn’t completely preclude logging in those areas, such as thinning to remove diseased trees or unmarketable hardwoods for example. But clearcuts, which are the bulk of the agency’s logging practices, would not be permitted.
The remainder of the state lands would be set aside for active management and logging. The agency estimates the plan would generate annual harvest volumes averaging 225 million board feet over the next seven decades. Compared to its existing forest management plan — and an updated version of it under development – the agency’s analyses suggests the habitat conservation plan would generate the greatest harvest volumes, the lowest agency costs, the best conservation outcomes and the highest harvest revenues for counties.
The board took public testimony from conservation groups, loggers timber companies and counties that receive harvest revenues among others. The feedback aligned with those groups’ previous input on the plan, with industry groups and counties opposed and pushing for timber harvest volumes as the dominant goal, while environmental groups supported the plan, with some reservations.
Dave Yamamoto, Tillamook County Commissioner and chair of a group representing counties that receive state forest harvest revenues, said the current modeling of harvest numbers and revenue projections are not acceptable and insufficient to support the forestry department’s budget. He said the plan gives little thought to the industry’s family wage jobs with full benefits or the schools, 911 districts, sheriff patrols and other public services supported by the harvest revenues that will suffer “when timber revenues crater.”
“This allocation of land will be permanent and fixed for at least the 70-year term of the HCP, he said. “This produces stability and certainty for wildlife habitat interests. On the other hand, timber harvest, and all of the economic and social benefits that it brings to our communities, is treated as simply a residual output…it is what you are left with after dedicating over 50% of the land base to habitat.”
In written testimony, Steve Zika, the chief executive of Hampton Lumber, called the forestry department’s work on the plan a “defective process” that provided an inadequate level of detail on its assumptions and data underpinning the projected harvest numbers. He said he was highly skeptical the department could produce the modeled volumes, as the areas open for harvest are handicapped by diseased trees and vast tracts of overgrown and unmarketable alder. At the meeting Tuesday he asked the board to reject the plan.
Bob Van Dyk, policy director in Oregon and California for the Wild Salmon Center, said the groups he represents supported moving forward with the plan. He said the conservation areas, drawn in cooperation with federal scientists, promise to protect most of the high-quality habitat for species of concern, and that the commitments were long-term and could not be moved at the discretion of agency staff.
“The durability of the commitment is welcome.”
The board voted unanimously – with one member absent — to move forward developing the plan and submitting it to federal agencies next spring.
