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And the state forest is shared by everyone in the state.
About 30 miles east of John Stagnitti’s favorite fishing hole, Jerry Bean is busy preparing for his upcoming cut.
Bean and his loggers wake up before daylight to start working and must finish by the early afternoon before temperatures skyrocket. The threat of brush fire looms in this business during fire season in Oregon.
Bean’s family business is small by industry standards, with about eight managers under his direction, but all of them come from a heritage in timber. Bean counts his youngest son, Matt, as one of his employees, too.
Keeping the business in the family is Bean’s main motivation in his work.
“That’s the only reason I do it,” he said.
But the troubled economy has hit his business hard, along with the rest of the timber products industry. “Based on my conversation with folks who have been doing it (logging) for a lifetime, this is the worst they’ve seen it,” he said.
Yet, despite permission to cut on more public land, Bean does not think the new plan will help timber companies out.
“It doesn’t matter if they're going to increase cuts. No one’s going to buy the logs,” he said.
As a result, timber prices are at historic lows. According to Bean, Douglas fir prices have been more than halved, dropping from $700 per thousand board feet to around $300 over a year.
That has been a sticking point for many environmentalists opposed to the new forestry plan.
“It means absolutely nothing for revenue. You could sell the entire forest but it’s still worth nothing,” said Jeff Hickman of the Sierra Club.
Hickman may be exaggerating a bit, but state forest timber cuts have never represented a very large slice of the pie in Oregon.
State-owned timberlands only represent 3 percent of Oregon’s forests, most of which are concentrated in the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests, according to the Department of Forestry. Fifty-nine percent of the state’s forestlands are federally owned, while private timber companies (35 percent) and Native American reservations control the rest.
In 2008, the state posted some of its lowest timber harvest levels in history. In total, 3.44 billion board feet of timber were cut in 2008, equaling a 9 percent decline from 2007. Of those 3.44 billion board feet, only 278 million (or 8.1 percent) came from state owned lands, with the rest coming from private and federal forests and Native American reservations.
But even if the harvests on state land are a drop in the bucket for the timber industry, they’re vitally important to Tillamook and Clatsop Counties, whose fates have been linked to the timber industry since the Great Depression.
Between 1933 and 1951, four giant wildfires tore through the northern Coast Range and devastated thousands of acres of forestland. Known as the Tillamook Burn, the fires left county leaders puzzled. Should the forests be replanted? Sold off?
Replanting turned out to be too expensive for the cash-strapped counties, and the local governments deeded the land over to the state on the condition that they would receive a portion of the timber revenue in return. Today, 64 percent of state timber revenues go to the counties while the remaining 36 percent supports the Department of Forestry.
In 2008, Tillamook County received $13.5 million from state timber revenues, accounting for roughly 21 percent of its total budget. In nearby Clatsop County, state timber cuts brought in $17.9 million to county coffers, making up 29 percent of the county budget. In comparison, Washington County, home to two of Oregon’s biggest employers, Intel and Nike, has the third most state timber land after Tillamook and Clatsop. In 2008, timber cuts only contributed $7.7 million to the county wallet. That’s 1 percent of the county’s total budget.
County representatives still believe increasing state timber harvests will help loggers like Bean – and have a positive impact on county budgets and local economies.
“As county commissioners, we’re looking at family-wage jobs and revenue that it brings into county government to maintain services,” Tillamook County Commissioner Tim Josi said. “We’ve undergone severe (budget) cuts, and next year’s going to be worse.”
Ruder, the Pacific economist, does not dispute that increasing timber harvests will eventually benefit county coffers when the timber market turns around. He and others, however, believe that healthy forests that provide recreational opportunities also stimulate the economy.
“Recreation is an economic value. It provides a value to human beings that they desire,” said Bob Van Dyk, a Pacific University professor and consultant to the Wild Salmon Center, an environmental nonprofit. Van Dyk specializes in environmental policy and has followed Oregon forestry policy over the years.
However, quantifying the value of a forest’s recreational opportunities is tough. Economists struggle to say how many jobs are created by recreation, how much money the industry brings in and how much of that revenue the county sees.
Those are the numbers the counties really care about.
Washington County Commissioner Andy Duyck didn’t have to search around for an answer when asked if he valued the recreation industry.
“I don’t,” he said.
Duyck represents Washington County on the Forest Trust Lands Advisory Committee, an organization of the 15 Oregon counties that contain state forest lands.
Recreation spending “doesn’t contribute money to the right places,” Duyck said.
Rural counties have higher proportions of retirees and absentee property owners, and because they have a lower tax base, they depend more on a resource-driven economy, he said.
“We should also remember that timber is a traded-sector commodity. The same cannot be said about recreation,” Duyck said.
But Jon Stagnitti was at the June Board of Forestry meeting and hoped to plead the case that recreation matters.
Stagnitti had planned to talk about the economic value of the Wilson River fishing area and Tillamook Forest. He had made a list of all of his expenses over a year of fishing and camping trips.
By his numbers, he has taken 12 trips in the last year, spending $50 each time on gas, bait and food. (“I try to eat at local restaurants,” he said.) Add that to the two $200 guided trips he took and the money he spent on a series of trips to the Tillamook Bay, and Stagnitti spends about $1,400 per year on outdoor fun in that area.
“In addition, I end up introducing other people to fishing. Licenses, gear, drift boats – whatever I do is multiplied,” he said.
But testimonies were cut short at the end of the meeting, and six people – including Stagnitti – were not allowed to speak. “My concern is that they are managing (the forest) basically for a single use – instead of looking at all the users of the forest – and ignoring everything else," Stagnitti said.
Economic value
A recent study commissioned by the Department of Fish and Wildlife suggests that recreation does have a real economic value for rural counties.
According to the report, hunting, shell fishing, fishing and wildlife viewing expenditures generated around $68.7 million in Tillamook County last year. The same activities brought in more than $79 million in Clatsop County.
Ruder and local environmentalists see these figures as proof that preserving natural ecosystems and recreational opportunities will pay economic dividends.
It’s not only a question of dollars and cents. Van Dyk and Ruder cite Oregon’s outdoor recreation opportunities as a major factor in the state’s rapid population growth, which in turn attracts businesses to locate here as well.
Recreational jobs play a role in local economies, too.
According to the Oregon Employment Department, 11.6 percent of Tillamook County jobs are in the timber products business. Scenic transportation, amusement and recreational jobs account for around 6 percent of Tillamook County jobs. In Clatsop County, another major timber area in Oregon, 4.5 percent of jobs are in the timber products business while 9.1 percent of employees work in the recreation industry.
But Marvin Brown and Tim Josi say jobs leading nature tours or river trips aren’t enough to sustain a local economy.
“Broadly, rural parts of Oregon have just a few ways to create jobs for people to live there,” Brown said. “If you look at the average wage for somebody in the wood industry, it’s substantially higher than someone in tourism industry.”
According to the Oregon Employment Department, workers in the timber-related businesses earn around $36,000 statewide. Employees in recreation and tourism industries earn approximately $25,000.
“If you get rid of family wage jobs in timber industry, you can’t expect family wages in recreation,” Josi said.
Going to court
The Board of Forestry has until the end of September to respond to the complaint Van Dyk and other environmentalists levied against it July 31. But the board will not address the petition Sept. 9, suggesting it won’t re-evaluate its decision. Now, the environmental groups might have to take the board to court.
But if the latest Oregon battle between jobs and the environment is a long way from settled, one thing’s clear: loggers like Jerry Bean are going to be hurting until timber prices bounce back. And he is not optimistic.
“Too many people got hurt by the (housing) bubble,” Bean said. “I think it will take a very, very long time.”
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