Residential use in forest lands can help the forest manager better administer the operation. But such uses can also conflict with operations on adjacent lands, complicate fire-fighting efforts, and interfere with wildlife habitat.

 

Regulations pertaining to approval of new dwellings on forest lands received major amendments in 1993. According to data supplied by counties, the following figures show how many new permanent dwellings were approved statewide per year in forest zones.

 

The land use program requires that counties inventory their forest land and designate it for forest use. These lands must then be placed in a zone which limits nonforest uses and encourages forest uses (see generalized map ). In these zones, dwellings and commercial uses are limited, while forest operations are allowed.

 

 

´Old Standard´ dwellings include those justified as necessary for management of a resource use (farm or forest) or as non-resource related.

 

´Current standard´ dwellings include those on large parcels, on parcels without a house that have been in the same ownership since 1985 (often called ´lot-of-record´ dwellings), and on parcels near other concentrations of dwellings (usually referred to as ´template test dwellings´ or ´template dwellings´).

 

The transition between the two sets of regulations occurred during the 1993-1994 reporting period, so both types of approvals are represented in that year.

 

Since one of the negative aspects of residential development on forest land is fire danger, the Oregon Legislature adopted standards for fire safety along with the revised dwelling approval criteria. LCDC later adopted administrative rules that further enhanced fire safety requirements. The elements of the requirements include:

To obtain more good information, check out the Firewise website.

 

Utility facilities, some minor forest-product processing, parks and campgrounds, hunting and fishing operations, reservoirs, and mineral and aggregate mining are among the other uses potentially allowed on forest land. Uses such as motels, restaurants, gas stations and stores are not allowed.

 

More detailed information about Oregon´s and DLCD´s forest land protection mechanisms is included in: