The protest in the Elliott State Forest last week was for the trees. Some call them timber. Timber, trees, big difference. Have you ever been in an old growth forest? One that has a huge canopy of shade, lots of different kinds of trees and a diverse understory? And have you ever been in a managed timber plantation? Rows of trees all the same kind and age? See and feel the difference?
The protesters were not “having fun in the woods” as a recent editorial in the Roseburg News Review ignorantly suggested, they were risking their lives, and many are still in jail. Does that sound like fun? Picture this instead – they care. They care enough about these natural forests to risk their lives. I admire them in some ways, I am not so brave.
I have fought for the trees in all the legal ways, written professional comments to the agencies including the managers of the Elliott State Forest. I support a local non-profit organization that is currently in a law suit over the mis-management of the Elliott. Meanwhile these trees once cut can not be put back.
The argument that 15 people were “idle for the week” as the editorial goes on to say is so short sighted, cutting off your nose to spite your face kind of thing. A mere 6% of old growth forests remain in the northwest, not Oregon, the whole northwest. You can not rely on that for jobs. What will you do when it is all gone? We can not finance the schools of the 21st century with the resources left over from the 19th.
These trees truly are from the 19th century, they are a public treasure. Over half of the Elliott is never-before-logged mature forests that grew back from a settler’s fire in 1868. This forest will never be allowed to grow back to anything more than a timber plantation. For what, one million for the schools for one year! A literal drop in the bucket compared to what we are losing with the destruction of these last remnant old growth forests. There are 1.8 million acres of commercial forest land in Douglas County. They pay so little a year compared to the rest of us land owners in Douglas County. One dollar an acre increase in land taxes for commercial forest land raises $1.8 million every year for the schools.
The Elliott State Forest has the oldest trees and best endangered species habitat on the pacific west coast. This has been proven by science. In addition, the agency’s new revised Habitat Conservation Plan will allowed them to increase logging significantly, by more than 40%, including 11,000 thousand acres of old trees! This area is important native forest land. We should set it aside as a biodiversity and carbon reserve for endangered species and climate change mitigation. Let’s plan for the 22nd century.
I don’t think, as the other editorial said, that the Earth Firsters just happened to have an annual meeting in Tiller, they know that here is some of the last old growth forests in America, they know that the public managers are trying to change and bend the law to take more trees, with the Western Oregon Plan Revisions on BLM, and the new Habitat Management plan in the Elliott. You say “we tout the beauty of our local forests and encourage people to visit”.
It’s not a coincidence that the fish are almost gone and really, there is not much to see in a clear cut……
Management techiques in Oregon's Elliott State Forest
Photo: Francis Eatherington
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