When timber companies and environmental groups reached agreement on a new management regime for Oregon’s private forests last year, observers wondered if this signaled an end to our decades-long timber wars.
So, it seemed in the months that followed. Despite invocations of the good old days in Oregon’s logging communities by gubernatorial candidates Christine Drazan and Betsy Johnson, disputes over timber policies that dominated state politics since the 1990s barely registered in the 2022 election season.
This is not to say that the federal, state and private forests, which make up close to half of Oregon’s land, are fading from the public’s view. Just the opposite. The old debate over jobs vs. the environment may be losing its resonance. But Oregonians are looking to our forests with new concerns – about the importance of forested watersheds for clean drinking water and the threats that poorly-managed forests pose for out-of-control wildfires and choking smoke events in a climate roiled by global warming.
These new concerns were evident in the responses gathered by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center in a statewide survey on forest issues conducted after last November’s election.
Oregonians now rate managing our forests to protect water quality far above the need to sustain the economic benefits of our timber industry and slightly ahead of the preservation of habitat for fish and wildlife.
More than two-thirds of respondents rated water quality as their first or second priority for managing state (71%) and private (70%) forest lands, compared to less than a third who rated economics as their top two priorities for state (22%) and private (29%) forests.
This explains the success of environmental groups is shifting their focus to forested watersheds to drive reforms of the kind achieved in last year’s Private Forest Accord.
Another key to their success was connecting the need to protect the sources of our drinking water to the goal of preserving habitat for endangered and iconic wildlife. A majority of Oregonians rated habitat preservation second only to water quality as a top priority for managing state (57%) and private (51%) forest lands.
Connecting these issues proved to be a “twofer” for updating Oregon’s half-century-old forest practices regime. Preserving streamside habitats protects our drinking water sources and vice versa — a feedback loop whose benefits came to be seen as both biological and political.
But there’s another feedback loop that is darkening the horizons of our forests now – evident in the out-of-control wildfires that not only threaten communities adjacent to our forests but blanket even distant cities with air-fouling smoke events.
In response to these threats, Oregonians see the need for both coping and preventive measures. Strong majorities support requiring homes in areas of extreme fire risk to be built with fire-resistant materials (80%) and using prescribed burns in Oregon’s drier forests to make them less prone to severe fires (72%).
And, when it comes to addressing the role of climate change in accelerating and magnifying these threats, the OVBC survey detects an emerging understanding of the connection between forest health and resilience and the safety and livability of our communities.
Oregonians’ interest in “carbon sequestration” -- the process by which trees grab and store carbon from the atmosphere -- generally lags well behind their level of support for protecting forest watersheds and habitat. But, with a little explanation, the survey found that respondents are inclined to support not just forest thinning to reduce fuels (62% very or somewhat acceptable) but also retaining older trees at the time of harvest (74%). And 53% support using public funds to help small landowners log their trees less often in order to store more carbon.
Notably, the survey found that Oregonians still support our working forests. Those who believe we should be harvesting fewer trees (43%) are slightly outnumbered by those who think we’re harvesting “the right amount” or “not quite often enough’ (49%). Maybe we’re settling into a compromise, if not a consensus, on that score.
But the issues that matter most to Oregonians about our forestlands are changing. Water, wildlife and wildfire have the public’s attention now, as will the climate disruptions that will continue to intensify these concerns.
Environmentalists and forest managers who address these concerns will be able to fashion the best of all possible twofers: Better managed forests responsive to the threats of climate change will mean safer and healthier environments in both our urban and rural communities.
OVBC columnist Tim Nesbitt is former union leader, chief of staff to Gov. Ted Kulongoski and a regular contributor to area publications
