The Register-Guard Guest Viewpoint: Clear-cutting public lands not the answer

The Register-Guard
By Shawn Donnille and Julie Bailey

Lane County’s clean air, towering forests, clear rivers, organic farms and social awareness were all components of the exceptional quality of life that helped lure Mountain Rose Herbs to move its expanding business venture here in 2001. The natural attractions and sheer beauty of the county have helped us build a motivated and proud work force, which has propelled us into the forefront of the country’s herbal products industry.

Since setting up here, though, it has been hard to ignore the rampant clear-cutting and chemical spraying taking place on private industrial forest lands adjacent to our rural properties and our organic farms.

While we’ve come to understand that there are limited environmental safeguards for these private corporate forest lands just outside of town, we always had assumed the public Bureau of Land Management forest lands that are interspersed with the industrial lands had a high degree of protection.

That is why were shocked to hear that Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican, are seriously considering turning half of Oregon’s 2.4 million acres of BLM lands into a timber trust to be logged aggressively so as to fund our struggling counties.

As the country’s leading organic herb and spice supplier, with several farms located in the foothills of the Willamette Valley, we wonder how this clear-cutting scheme to fund our counties will affect our business and way of life.

Will herbicides now be sprayed on these public lands, potentially affecting our adjacent suppliers and the critters that call them home?

Will the rumbling of log trucks, chain saws and helicopters replace the serenity and beauty that inspired us to relocate here?

As the owners of a large business and as employers of 140 full-time employees, we believe it is incumbent upon elected leaders such as DeFazio and Walden to be more forward-thinking than taking us back to the old recipe of using money reaped from the clear-cutting of public lands to fund our libraries, public safety and other essential county services.

There was a reason that Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden delinked timber receipts on public forest lands from supporting county services: to stave off the looming extinction crisis for a host of species due to the overcutting of our public forestlands.

Instead, Congress appropriated money annually to assist with necessary services. But that money has dried up, and we desperately need a new and innovative way forward.

To be fair, DeFazio and others are under intense political pressure to solve the county funding crisis. The expiration of federal payments to counties will force difficult choices, particularly in Western Oregon. County leaders will have to make deep cuts in law enforcement and other services, or support politically problematic options such as raising property taxes to rates comparable to other regions of the country.

Before DeFazio and Walden proceed with plans to turn up to 1 million acres of our public lands into an aggressively managed timber trust, we’d suggest they start with an open and transparent process in which stakeholders such as Mountain Rose Herbs, community members, county commissioners and forest scientists could weigh in. Because there is much at stake.

From what we can tell, decades of work to protect clean water and keep a host of native Northwest species from blinking off the map could be undone. It seems fair to ask that this forest concept be vetted publicly and have hearings, as occurs with most other federal legislation that has such extreme ramifications.

We would encourage DeFazio and Walden to proceed on a different track, such as advancing legislation in the House, as Wyden and Sen. Jeff Merkley have done in the Senate, to reauthorize county payments for another few years while the federal, state and county governments work together to find a lasting solution that will solve our ongoing county funding challenges permanently.

A fresh look at the state’s timber harvest tax for corporate timberland owners and outdated property tax rates in a number of struggling counties is a suggested place to start.

Absent this approach, it appears we will be mired in controversy, surrounded by an increase in aggressive logging operations at a time when the demand for lumber is at a record low, and stuck with a return to a county funding mechanism that hasn’t worked in the past.

Shawn Donnille and Julie Bailey are owners of Mountain Rose Herbs, an herbal products company based in Eugene.

From what we can tell, decades of work to protect clean water and keep a host of native Northwest species from blinking off the map could be undone.

Copyright © 2012 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA