A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Chase Allgood / News-TImes
Gaston logger Jerry Bean finally cut into a Douglas fir earlier this summer when he landed a project in the Tillamook State Forest.
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The afternoon sun peeks through the branches of the fir canopy at Reehers Camp in the Tillamook State Forest while Bean, a Gaston logger, looks up at one of his next projects. It is dry and the air is filled with dust kicked up by a passing log truck. Luckily, the towering trees provide some relief from the heat.
In the next couple weeks Bean will begin work cutting down Douglas firs and clearing space for a new road and culvert here.
The road, an important throughway for trucks and equipment, has needed a replacement since a flood washed it out in the mid-1990s. Since the recession hit, the sound of chainsaws have been rare in Oregon forests as the price of timber has plummeted to historic lows and sawmill activity has slowed to a near standstill over the last year.
It’s already late July, but this small project is Bean’s first cut of the year.
“Industry over the last year has been more than just slow,” Bean said. “People aren’t in a position to stay in business when there’s no logging at all.”
While the timber industry spirals downward, the state Board of Forestry is moving forward with plans to increase cutting in Oregon’s state-owned forests.
The hope is that by cutting more trees, hard-hit rural counties such as Clatsop and Tillamook will get an infusion of jobs.
But environmentalists say the number of new jobs will be negligible and that the forest is worth more as a destination than as a source for two-by-fours.
How do you put a price tag on Oregon’s state forests?
That’s the question that the Board of Forestry wrestled with in June when it voted to increase cutting.
The new plan will open up to 70 percent of Oregon’s state forests to clear cuts. The previous management plan, approved in 2001, allowed 50 percent of state forestlands to be managed like a tree farm with the remaining 50 percent reserved for older “complex growth.” Now, only 30 percent will be managed with a lower emphasis on cutting.
Environmentalists charge that increasing the cut will endanger fragile fish and wildlife habitats.
Cash-strapped timber counties say it will provide more timber revenue to supplement their thinning budgets and create family-wage jobs. And now, Oregon’s 11.9 percent unemployment rate is throwing fuel on the debate between jobs and the environment.
In an economic study presented to the board, the state Department of Forestry predicted that increasing cut levels on state land will generate 620 new jobs in rural western Oregon.
But Phil Ruder, professor of economics at Pacific University, warns that the state overestimated the number of new jobs and underestimates the real economic value of forest recreation.
“There is no connection between the level of timber harvests and timber jobs,” Ruder said.
Instead, Ruder said the market drives the number of paychecks written for cutting trees, and the state’s jobs study didn’t account for supply and demand. And in an economic environment where some timber industry leaders are worried that the business of cutting Oregon’s trees will never fully recover, that’s a potentially fatal flaw, he said.
Timber is measured at the state level in millions of board feet (enough to fill about 222 log trucks).
Gary Lettman, the state’s forestry economist, said that about a dozen jobs are created for every additional million board feet of timber cut.
By increasing the cut by 50 million board feet, Lettman said, the new plan would create 256 mill jobs and 185 “indirect” jobs, such as loggers and truck drivers. Another 180 jobs would be created by the money the newly employed millworkers and loggers spend.
But Ruder’s skeptical about that projection.
“Historically, that’s not the case,” he said.
To check the accuracy of the state’s analysis, he applied ODF’s model to past cutting activity and compared the results with the actual job numbers for that time period. Using data from the Oregon Employment Department, Ruder found that total timber harvests in Tillamook and Clatsop Counties increased from 272 million board feet to 554 million board feet between 1990 and 2006.
Over the same time period, 28 additional jobs in lumber, plywood and other wood products were created near the state forest land in Tillamook and Clatsop Counties.
According to Ruder, ODF’s models would have predicted an increase of 1,400 jobs over the same time.
But Lettman said disagreement over job predictions is normal. The complicated math makes room for varying opinions.
There are two methods of calculating the jobs created by timber harvests. The first, econometrics, accounts for the dynamic nature of the economy, such as changing trends in supply and demand. The second method is an “input-output” model, which establishes a direct correlation between harvests and jobs, and does not incorporate the natural ups and downs of the economy.
Using an input-output model, however, quickly provides much more detailed guesses at where the jobs will be created: whether at the mill or in the forest.
Lettman said he didn’t use the econometrics model because the Department of Forestry was short on time to prepare the report, but that the final job predictions would be about the same using either model.
Ruder disagrees.
“They’re wrong,” he said. “There’s no controversy.”
He says there is a fundamental flaw in the forestry department’s math. It assumes that every additional board foot of timber contributes a board-foot’s worth of jobs to local communities. The state’s numbers ignore the historically low demand for wood products and the way state timber sales could negatively affect private timber sales.
In other words, a log cut on state land could mean a tree left uncut on private land.
“Even though it’s wrong, it’s very intuitive,” he said about the forestry department’s analysis. “It turns out people don’t need a number to be right. They just need a number.”
Logging jobs or
lodging jobs
It’s not a fun time to be in the business of selling houses. But Forest Grove Realtor John Stagnitti keeps his mind off the financial worries by heading to the Wilson River in the Tillamook State Forest.
Born in New York, Stagnitti has fished his entire life and has passed his love of the water on to his two children. Since moving out to Forest Grove nine years ago, he has tried to go on fishing trips at least once a week.
“Fishing is not about catching,” he said. “It’s about the time spent together.
“On a personal level, it connects me to my family.”
But now with the newly revised forestry plan, Stagnitti
fears that one of his favorite natural getaways is at risk of being lost to clear cuts and stream erosion.
He’s not alone. Environmentalist groups two weeks ago filed a petition with the Board of Forestry, charging that the increased cuts will threaten crucial habitat for fish and wildlife.
According to a study by the Department of Forestry, increasing timber harvests would in fact lower the probability of preserving watershed function – a bureaucratic way of acknowledging the environmental impacts of the plan.
“It’s a treasure. People fall in love with it,” said Stagnitti, who often takes clients on fishing trips on the Wilson River. But, he said, with “too much sediment and slides, you just don’t go.”
However, Oregon State Forester Marvin Brown says the Department of Forestry does not think the new plan will devastate sensitive natural areas. The science of forestry, he said, is complex.
“Gravity is a scientific truth,” Brown said. “When you drop your pencil, it’s going to hit the ground.”
But sustainability and the protection of wild areas aren’t so black-and-white, Brown said. “When you say you want watershed health, you describe the values people want,” he noted
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