Grass-Roots Ballot Measure Seeks to Ax Clear-Cutting in Oregon

Since the spotted owl cut back timber harvests in Northwest national forests by more than 80%, the timber industry has turned to private and state lands for the logs they need to keep their mills operating.

But now a grass-roots group has shocked the timber industry and mainstream environmentalists with a ballot measure that would outlaw clear-cutting on these lands.

Clear-cutting is the quickest and cheapest way to get logs to the mill, accounting for 89% of Oregon’s timber harvest, but the scars on the landscape are shockingly visible to anyone who has flown over timberlands. Clear-cuts also are blamed for contributing to the extinction of salmon runs, muddying water supplies and adding to the risk of deadly landslides.

“In a way this is a fight for the future of Oregon,” said John Talberth, the primary author of Measure 64 who founded the Native Forest Council in Oregon. “It is a fight between those who moved to Oregon and live there because they value the environment as a priority and those who for the past 120 years have destroyed its resources for private profit.”

Mobilizing a $3.5-million television and direct-mail campaign to defeat the ban, the timber industry argues that it would be put out of business, forcing a 60% cut in harvests worth $1.2 billion a year, eliminating 28,000 timber jobs and cutting state tax revenues by $88 million.

“This is an investment in the future,” said Ron Garner, a forester for Rough & Ready Lumber Co., as he stood in a stand of Douglas fir that the company would not be allowed to harvest under Measure 64. “What it is telling us is this is nice, but you can’t keep any benefit from it. And that’s scary.”

Mainstream environmental groups have been at best lukewarm to the measure. Those that endorse it are not doing much to promote it. The Audubon Society, a leader in the spotted owl wars, has formally taken a neutral position, but freely says the measure goes too far.

“If the ballot measure fails, I don’t think it will be a measure of the concern of people about clear-cuts,” said Paul Ketcham, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland. “Rather, it will be a measure of what people think about the solution offered to them.”

Chief petitioner James Musumeci, a freelance writer and former Greenpeace canvasser who led Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign in Oregon, scoffed at the mainstream environmental groups’ failure to support the clear-cut ban.

“They send out postcards of whales instead of doing the work that needs to be done on the ground,” he said.

With a shoestring budget, Musumeci is relying on radio spots and volunteers going door-to-door and targeting urban strongholds of Democratic voters.

“Yeah, this is David and Goliath,” said Norman Carley, spokesman for the Yes on 64 campaign. “But David did win.”

Oregon is not the only battlefront. Voters in Maine defeated a clear-cut ban in 1996, but the Legislature has taken steps to tighten logging restrictions, and a recent state report says current harvest rates can’t be sustained.

Faced with dwindling salmon runs, the state of Washington is moving toward tighter logging restrictions.

Recognizing the public’s dissatisfaction with industrial forestry, the timber industry has joined Gov. John Kitzhaber’s efforts to restore dwindling salmon runs, upgrading logging roads that cause erosion and taxing themselves $15 million a year for habitat restoration. But it has balked at federal efforts to increase logging restrictions to help salmon.

Currently, the Oregon Forest Practices Act allows clear-cuts as big as 120 acres--the size of 115 football fields--though the average runs closer to 50 acres.

Measure 64 would allow nothing approaching a clear-cut. Requirements to leave minimum numbers and sizes of trees per acre would allow only thinning, not outright harvest.

Of the 33,000 acres of its 80,000 acres that Rough & Ready has inventoried, 96% would be barred from harvest under Measure 64.

“Some things are just not feasible,” said Rough & Ready Vice President Lew Krauss.

Two months before the election, voters apparently agreed. A poll for KPTV television in Portland found 38% of a statewide sampling of 605 registered voters favored Measure 64, while 51% were against. The telephone poll taken from Aug. 28 to Sept. 3 had a margin of error of 4%.

If Oregon defeats Measure 64, the issue is not going away, said Jennifer Belcher, Commissioner of Public Lands in Washington.

“We have more and more people who don’t have a connection to the timber industry or timber jobs and they don’t accept the clear-cut notion,” she said. “They have lots of very good evidence on their side saying it is questionable in many circumstances.”