| Environmental Principles and Priorities: Oregon's Forests |
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| What are the key issues? |
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Oregon’s forestlands are truly unique in their diversity, productivity and expansiveness, and in the Coast Range, the combination of soils, sites and climate support some of the most productive forests in the world. Oregon’s early economy was built on seemingly inexhaustible forest resources, which at the same time were a dominant feature of the Oregon landscape, producing cool clean water streams, abundant salmon runs and suites of terrestrial species as diverse as anywhere.
Today, much has changed. While once the dominant sector of our economy, the forest sector now represents about 10 percent (See Figures in OFRI 2004 report) of Oregon’s economy. Unpredictable supplies of federal timber, declining private timber supply, and global competition challenge our forest industry, with the resultant loss of mill infrastructure and jobs. As mills and transportation infrastructure disappear, and with supply uncertain due to the constraints of unresolved policy debates, companies are leaving Oregon and disposing of their lands, putting both jobs and forests in jeopardy.
Oregon’s forests built our economy and created our national identity, and they remain as important to our future as they were to our past. We must focus on stabilizing – and growing – our forest economy so that we can continue to foster a diversified economy, create living-wage jobs, and protect the long-term health of the forests themselves.
What are the threats to our forests? They include:
- Poor forest health in drier forest types, which leads to risk of uncharacteristically hot and large wildfires that not only affect forestland, but threaten homes and communities and the quality of the air we breathe;
- Inadequate post-fire restoration on federal lands;
- Inability on the part of the federal government to implement the Northwest Forest Plan that was designed to recover endangered species, create a stable and reasonable supply of wood products and conserve the unique values we seek from wilderness and roadless areas;
- Climate change;
- Conversion of forestland to non-forest uses; and
- Ownership changes in which private forests are either undermanaged or managed for short-term capital gains rather than sustainable yield and multiple benefits.
Where are the opportunities? They include:
- Addressing the problems of Federal land forest policy;
- Protect rare roadless national forest land;
- Restore forest landscapes damaged by fire, disease, insects and overharvest; and
- Management of state-owned, federal-owned and privately-owned forestland.
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