Northwest’s Battle Over Trees and Jobs

The timber base in our country is vanishing quickly on public and private lands. While the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have been busy liquidating forests on federal lands, a recent study by the Oregon State University School of Forestry indicates that the private forest owners in that state will essentially cut their last mature tree in a few years. There simply is not enough resource left to satisfy the insatiable appetite for raw logs for Asian markets. In attempting to satisfy this demand, we have been decimating our national forests and exporting the mill jobs that go along with the unprocessed logs.

In the Northwest, about 25% of the resource is exported as whole logs, 35% as raw materials and 40% is domestically processed. If exports are stopped the Northwest can stop cutting on all public lands without shrinking the domestic timber supply. The banning of exports is the one area of common ground between the timber industry and environmentalists. The overwhelming support in logging communities for the advisory referendum banning log exports reflects how closely related loggers’ job security is connected with the banning of log exports.

And those concerned with forest values such as watershed, climatic effects, wildlife habitat, fish spawning areas, scenic beauty and recreation would be pleased with the lowering of the cut. The time has come for us to put a halt to the plundering of our dwindling timber resource for the advantage of other nations. To save what is left of our native forests we must ban log exports now.

GREGORY K. COATES

Rolling Hills