The Department of Forestry is marking the implementation of High Value Conservation Areas with a series of open houses. These events are to celebrate and understand this classification and to explore the areas themselves. There will be self-guided tours, Google Earth maps, and ODF staff to answer questions.
These are great opportunities to pack the room and show support for Conservation Areas on State Forest lands. Make clear to the Department of Forestry that we value these areas and want them to stay!
March 17: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Forest Grove ODF District Office, 801 Gales Creek Rd, Forest Grove
March 20: 6:00 – 8:00 pm, Astoria ODF District Office, 92219 HWY 202, Astoria
March 22: 10:00 am – Noon, Tillamook ODF District Office, 5005 3rd St, Tillamook
The first step to a new plan for our North Coast State Forests concluded last Monday when a stakeholder group sent several proposals to the Board of Forestry for further consideration. In total, five plans were presented by group members. Representatives of mill owners who want more timber from state forests pushed especially alarming ideas. One places timber production over all other values, another proposal treats 70% of the forest like a tree farm, and another proposal even asks to sell our public land to the highest bidder! These industrial proposals will degrade fish and wildlife habitat and pollute clean water.
Oregon’s Forest Practices Act: Weakest stream protections of any West Coast state (PRIVATE LAND. photo by F. Eatherington)
Tillamook County Commissioner Tim Josi did not provide a plan of his own, but endorsed all three of the timber-focused proposals and called for more clearcuts instead of thinning. The Commissioner also rejected proposals to diversify funding for the Department of Forestry. Josi insisted that the Agency should remain dependent on logging as its only means of funding.
Tim Josi wants more clear cutting of our public forests to subsidize his low county tax rates. (PRIVATE LAND. photo by F. Eatherington)
The North Coast State Forest Coalition strongly endorses the pursuit of a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the state forests. An HCP would provide predictability and certainty for timber revenue by preventing lawsuits, and would secure habitat for endangered and threatened species.
Even as some sawmill interests attempt to wipe conservation areas off the map, the Oregon Department of Forestry is planning a series of open houses to explain and celebrate new High Value Conservation Areas. These events will include self-guided tours, Google Earth maps, and ODF staff answering questions, so mark your calendar:
March 17: 6-8pm, Forest Grove ODF District Office, 801 Gales Creek Rd, Forest Grove
March 20: 6-8pm, Astoria ODF District Office, 92219 Hwy 202, Astoria
March 22: 10am-noon, Tillamook District Office, 5005 3rd Street, Tillamook
To find out more about our effort to protect the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, email Chris Smith. Also, visit our Facebook page!
A group of Oregonians from Astoria, Banks, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Portland, and Jewell recently went about exploring part of the Wolf Creek Terrestrial Habitat Anchor in the Tillamook State Forest. The 4,203 acres of this area are soon to be formally classified as “High Value Conservation Area,” a designation which thousands of our supporters worked hard to create. Our hike took us through some diverse management areas, plenty of promising and recovering wildlife habitat, and the headwaters of the Salmonberry River.
We were exceptionally fortunate to be joined by Jim Thayer, whose knowledge of the Oregon Coast Range is nearly unmatched. His website, foresthiker.com, offers great trail descriptions, historical anecdotes, pieces of Indian lore, and some beautiful pictures. Jim is also the author of Portland Forest Hikes: Twenty Close-In Wilderness Walks.
Our walk began just west of the Salmonberry headwaters in an area that had been logged in the last 10 years–a thinning operation that will hopefully help to achieve more complex forest structure by opening portions of the canopy without the tree-farm tactic of thickly replanting of seedlings. Overall, the amount of thinning in the Conservation Area was eye-opening and the North Coast State Forest Coalition will be vigilantly monitoring future timber sales to ensure that logging operations in this area are ecologically positive.
Thinned forest in the Wolf Creek area
Though the latter part of our trek was spent bushwhacking, the massive network of logging roads and the very old elk-made pathways throughout the forest greatly expedited our cross-country travel. In the future, it would be great to see more recreational trails in the area (and fewer roads).
After some easy going on the elk trails, we took lunch after crossing a tributary creek of the Salmonberry. Along with some promising looking Steelhead spawning ground, the lunch spot offered a look into the Tillamook State Forest’s history and future: an old growth nurse stump which was likely a victim of the Tillamook burn or the salvage logging that followed, with a young tree blossoming out of the mossy top:
2014 will be a hugely important year for the future of the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests. It’s possible that, by the end of the year, the Board of Forestry will have a new Forest Management Plan to consider implementing in Northwest Oregon. The process that will dictate what an alternative plan looks like currently revolves around a stakeholder group that includes two of our Coalition leaders. However, later in the year, we will call on you to ensure that the Board understands that conservation values need to be improved in any new plan. There will be important opportunities to testify before the Board and provide public comments to the Department of Forestry as soon as this February, so if you don’t yet receive North Coast State Forest Coalition action alerts, sign up here!
Along with crucial advocacy opportunities, we welcome you to join us as we explore, document, and promote the newly classified High Value Conservation Areas on the North Coast. These areas feature wildlife and fish habitat and some of the rare older-growth left in these State Forests. Unfortunately, though the Board of Forestry approved these areas in June of 2013, the Department of Forestry has done nothing to promote these commitments, despite direction from the Board to make the areas visible.
Sometimes it’s easy to think of Oregon’s forests as distant and removed–places meant for weekend escapes. The realities of how much our forests mean for our day-to-day lives can be striking. When we’re grilling salmon, breathing clean air, building additions to our homes, we’re using forest products. One of the most important forest products in Oregon is clean drinking water.
Most of the faucets, taps, and spigots in northwest Oregon have connections to the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests. Having a publicly-owned, temperate rainforest in our State is unique to Oregon, and this landscape provides drinking water to over 400,000 people. However, mismanagement of these lands threatens the quality of that water, our health, and our quality of life. Herbicides, silt, and high temperatures can all be attributed to inadequate stream buffers and an over-ambitious timber harvest program. While logging is an important part of Oregon’s economy, culture, and history, overdoing it compromises the other amazing benefits we receive from our State Forest lands. Our State Forests need a balanced management plan!
Roughly 75% of Washington County residents get their drinking water from the Tualatin Valley Watershed, which begins in the Tillamook State Forest and flows into the Willamette Valley. Hillsboro, Oregon’s 5th most populous city receives its water from Barney Reservoir on State Forest land. Other recipients of State Forest-influenced water include Beaverton, Forest Grove, Banks, Tigard, Tualatin, North Plains, and soon Sherwood. Communities in Tillamook County and Clatsop County, deeply tied to the forest product economy, also rely on these forests. Cities including Tillamook, Seaside, Garibaldi, Bay City, Manzanita, and Nehalem also collect water downstream of State Forest watersheds.
Post clear-cut herbicide application can lead to carcinogens entering water sources. Timber harvests on steep slopes produce water-blocking landslides and can dirty waterways with sediment. Small stream buffers mean an inadequate amount of shade and woody debris in our rivers and streams. An expansive, expensive, and ill-maintained logging road system means silt and water flow disruption. These are just some of the water quality problems stemming from a timber-centric management plan.
In order to provide Oregonians with the Greatest Permanent Value, our State Forests need to be managed with an eye towards all of their inherent qualities, not just timber. Clean water requires adequate stream buffers, protection for steep slopes, and special consideration for important reservoirs. In short, our State Forest landscape needs permanent Conservation Areas that provide water quality assurances, support healthy fish and wildlife habitat, and allow us to recreate in places of spectacular natural beauty.
On July 16th, a group of adventurous hikers trekked into the Bastard Creek Terrestrial Anchor in the Tillamook State Forest near Nehalem. The 5,021 acre area provides critical habitat for marbled murrellet and wild salmon. Without path or plan, we embarked to see what this area had to offer in terms of wildlife, flora, sounds, sights, and challenges. Here are some images of our jaunt:
Map of the Bastard Creek Terrestrial Anchor. Our adventure was in the northwest corner.
Forest Ecologist Trygve Steen filled the expedition with knowledge. Here he cores a 110-year-old Western Hemlock.Greg Jacob clambers over blown down trees.
The Bastard Creek area is newly classified “High Value Conservation Area” but its future is uncertain. The Board of Forestry is re-examining their Forest Management Plan and there is no guarantee that Conservation Areas will gain the long-term protection that is needed to support healthy fish and wildlife habitat and clean drinking water.
Oregon’s largest known tree is owned by you and me!
The “Arcadia Cedar,” Oregon’s largest known tree, is on publicly owned State Forest land just off of Highway 101 south of Cannon Beach. Hug Point, the parcel containing the giant, along with other rare examples of north coast old growth, has been identified as a “high priority” to be traded from public ownership in a Land Acquisition and Exchange Plan. The reason for its priority status is the parcel’s “favorable position relative to Lewis and Clark Oregon Timber LLC’s ownership and road pattern.” This kind of old-growth stand is extremely rare on Oregon’s north coast, thanks to decades of logging and the logging-induced Tillamook Burn fires.
The Department of Forestry’s readiness to explore trading iconic, rare, culturally and ecologically important places like Hug Point to timber companies is more easily understood when one “follows the money.”
First, because the Department is funded almost exclusively through timber sales from the State Forests, it is inclined to make decisions with timber as a priority. ODF provides for itself by intensively harvesting our public land, so they resist efforts to ensure long-term conservation. This lack of diversity in the Agency’s funding creates a bias towards timber production over other values that the State Forests offer.
Second, the Department is strapped for funds. Inaccurate timber projections, down markets, and legislative raids on past timber proceeds have left ODF exploring new Forest Management Plans to improve their financial status.
Over the long term, we must thus stop ODF from trading or cutting critical environmental places, and we must also support those Board of Forestry leaders who are serious about diversifying funding for ODF, in order to reduce their bias to just cut more to pay the bills.
