In the late 1930s, Clatsop County became the first county in Oregon to deed forestland to the state. It did so under the promise that land would be managed to benefit the local community.
Oregon’s ensuing management has been a national model for sustainable forestry.
But now, the Oregon Board of Forestry has proposed cutting nearly 35% of the timber harvest in our state forests. Under the proposal — the draft habitat conservation plan — harvest levels could drop from 73 million board-feet to 48 million to 52 million board-feet annually in the Astoria district alone.
Taxes from these working forests contribute more than $19 million annually back into local Clatsop County communities. The habitat conservation plan threatens a 33% — $8.5 million — cut of those revenues with no plan to backfill it, devastating police, fire, schools, elections and other critical local government services and jobs.
The plan would quite literally defund the police in Clatsop County. Between Clatsop County Rural Law Enforcement District and the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office, 12 positions could be cut, eliminating 24/7 patrol and increasing response times.
Notably, $4.5 million would be robbed from local K-12 schools, depriving school districts of funds for classroom supplies, funding for teacher salaries and after-school activities.
Clatsop County has among the highest rates of homelessness in the state. Stripping local government of needed revenue to address the issue is the exact opposite of what the state should be doing.
The habitat conservation plan would also kill North Coast jobs. For every dollar paid for a Department of Forestry timber sale, another $1.20 is generated harvesting, transporting and processing logs to wood products. According to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, 11 jobs are created for every million board-feet of timber harvested. The plan could instantly kill up to 275 family-wage jobs using that math, and put local businesses that serve those forestry workers at risk.
The plan impacts the local communities around the state that have state forests in their backyard, but given the size of the Clatsop and Tillamook state forests, nowhere suffers more than the North Coast. If this plan gets implemented, it’s hard to imagine how the North Coast would sustain itself without severe state welfare.
The Board of Forestry’s proposal could have better balanced our community’s ecological and economic needs. But in a special meeting on Feb. 15, they rejected a proposal to do that. I, and other coastal and rural representatives, sent a letter to the governor about our concerns and requested her to intervene.
This plan will devastate the North Coast, specifically Clatsop County and Astoria. I have been working with local officials and industry to understand the impacts that the plan would have. In the coming days, I will introduce priority legislation to require the Department of Forestry to analyze various alternative management strategies and their projected impacts on the community and to report on how their rule-making would impact our local economy.
Government and the public should fully understand their impact on local communities. This legislation would do that. My first priority as your state representative is to protect the North Coast from harmful policies from Salem and Portland-centric policymakers.
The Department of Forestry should go back to the drawing board and come back with a plan that sets up the North Coast for long-term, sustainable success.
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