Legislation could affect Oregon forests, C.O. jobs

A bill in Washington aims to open 1.5 million acres of federal land to timber harvest in Oregon.

The timber is on the west side of the state, but the effects could be far-reaching.

“In Prineville, specifically, we have a good foundational base for secondary wood manufacturing,” Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester said Wednesday. “What we don’t have is primary manufacturing — meaning sawmills. It’s too unpredictable to depend on state or federal timber to wood these facilities.”

Forrester said allowing more national forests to be logged could bring more mills to Prineville.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., met with city and business leaders in Prineville Wednesday to talk about the O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs Act.

It’s a bipartisan bill Walden said would add thousands of jobs to Oregon and pump millions into the economy.

“The way the federal law is written, you basically can’t do anything on the forest lands,” Walden said. “The jobs are gone, the revenues gone — and the forests are ablaze.”

Bend arborist and logger Wade Fagen said he’s watched small mills close in Central Oregon and all across the state as forests have overgrown.

He supports Walden’s bill and hopes other federal timber lands can be opened in the future.

“Firefighting has evolved to replace the logging business, and it’s kind of sad, because it’s an ass-backward way of taking care of your forests,” Fagen said.

Fagen said as the forests burn, so do possibilities of high-wage jobs — the chain from cutting trees down all the way to products produced.

Fagen also said logging is an important way to protect forests, keeping them healthy and green and replanting for the future.

But the environmental group Oregon Wild believes reverting to massive logging will only bring trouble.

Executive Director Sean Stevens said his organization opposes the legislation.

“Returning to the level we were cutting in the 80s might be good for jobs, but only in the short term,”Stevens said in a phone interview from Portland. “We only have about 10 percent of our old growth left, we’ve degraded water for drinking water, habitat for wildlife.”

So far, the fight between preservation and harvest is moving forward. Walden said the bill recently passed the House Resources Committee. Democrats Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader are co-sponsoring the legislation.