From Oregon Public Radio, By Ley Garnett
BEND, OR (Oregon Considered) - The Bush administration's emphasis on thinning forests to prevent wildfires means that thousands of small trees are on the chopping block throughout Oregon and the Northwest. But the timber industry is mostly geared towards harvesting larger trees and governments can't afford to finance the infrastructure needed for a transition. So who's going to pay for the work?
Tomorrow a forum in Bend will try to tackle the issue. As Ley Garnett reports, the meeting is designed to create a steady commercial market for small trees in central Oregon.
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At a recent meeting in Bend stakeholders in the forest management debate gathered to discuss the potential of what's known as "small diameter" wood.
Scott Aycock: "A key goal or a key finding that we came to was that if we were going to stimulate small diameter utilization in this region, we needed to address small diameter supply."
Scott Aycock is a program manager with the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council representing Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook counties.
Scott Aycock: "The really key thing to me is that we've created a platform for all the players in the region to actively participate in wildfire risk reduction, ecosystem restoration and the provision of sustainable jobs and income related to that within this region."
Aycock was speaking to officials from local, state and federal governments who deal with forest issues. Lance Clark represented Governor Ted Kulongoski.
Lance Clark: "We're dealing with very wicked natural resource problems, I mean extremely complicated, the science is tough, the overlapping jurisdictions of state, federal and local agencies and how do you deal with all this?"
Clark said central Oregon could reap economic benefits from forest thinning if it can establish a steady market of wood by products.
Lance Clark: "If you can create consistent sustainable supply of small diameter timber, the entrepreneurs are going to come, the investment's going to come, the training's going to follow and we're going to have jobs created and it's going to really help local economies in this part of the state."
Leslie Weldon: "You call it supply, we call it a problem on the forest."
Leslie Weldon is the supervisor of the Deschutes National Forest.
Leslie Weldon: "Basically we have thousands and thousands of acres that are in a condition that they are at high risk for really catastrophic wildfire to go through. Those are adjacent to your communities. They're in municipal watersheds here. They're located next to critical recreation resources and they can affect our water and wildlife."
This meeting attracted 23 stakeholders who all signed an agreement to support forest thinning projects and find a way to use the trimmings.
A lot of the material will go to the Warm Springs Indian Reservation to fuel a power plant. Larry Potts is a forest manager for the tribes.
Larry Potts: "Over the last 30 years we've had some disagreements. At times we've had some bloody fights. But that's the past, that's the history. This is the new day. This is the future."
In this instance the new future includes environmental groups with a history of fighting logging projects. Tim Lillebo signed the agreement for the Oregon Natural Resources Council.
Tim Lillebo: "I think it's real important we decided not to cut big old growth fire resistant trees. We decided to cut the little ones that we mistakenly let grow in after we stopped fires and that sort of thing. So I think it's a great deal and I'm just hoping we can get a whole bunch of different groups behind it."
But it was a timber industry retiree, Gary Auxier, who seemed to sum up the agreement best of all.
Gary Auxier: "I've spent 40 years in forest products so I know how the forest products industry feels about the environmentalists and I know they feel the same way about us. We hate each other. Then we throw the government in and both sides of them hate all the government agencies. And we've agreed on something and are making things happen. My question now is: what's this problem they're having in the Middle East?"
At tomorrow's forum the Forest Service is expected to announce that a $5 million research grant is available to develop biomass products from forest thinning projects.
