It is indeed a new year, and what a strange year it is starting out to be, on so many levels. Who could have guessed we’d be all cozy with Russia? Huh..maybe they’ll stop pointing their nukes at us. Ya think? As soon as Putin signs onto the new Board of Peace, I’ll sleep easier.
OK, back to what’s real. Yes, the Oregon Coast Range is on its knees. Here’s what most of it looks like:
Every acre of corporate timber has been cut over in the past 35 years. The natural forests that came back after the first time Weyerhaeuser et al whacked them down and left them for dead have all now been whacked again, sprayed with helicopters and planted with genetically “improved” Douglas-fir. In all, across western Oregon, over 6 million acres of former natural forest have been thus treated, all under the guise of sustainable forestry as determined by the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Oregon Forest Resources Institute and of course, the industry itself. None of these people understand what they are doing, and if they did, the ones at the top of the heap – the CEO’s and politicians – wouldn’t care. There is only one thing these folks care about, and that is themselves.
Our governor has zero experience in forestry, farming, fishing or business. She has absolutely no clue how to manage a state which is fundamentally rural, and which has very little going for it other than its soil and climate for growing food and trees and its water for growing fish and crabs. In these fields – farming, forestry and fisheries – Oregon rules. We have better soils and water and climate for growing trees and crops than anywhere else on the planet. There is more standing timber in Oregon than any other state in the US, and more ability to grow food than most entire countries. Our fisheries, historically at least, were unparalleled. But somehow, we have managed to squander and mismanage these resources and industries, leaving rural and small-town Oregon reeling. I seem to remember hearing that all the timber workers getting laid off by Big Timber back in the ’90’s were going to get educated and get jobs in tech. Hmm..how’d that work out? Most of them are old now and still scraping by, or homeless, their families shattered by unemployment and drugs and poverty. Meanwhile, the rich got richer, and Oregon politics became all about victimhood and false hopes and environmental nonsense that doesn’t work. So enough about politics. If it isn’t clear to you yet that modern politics – left, right and center – is a failed venture, keep on dreaming. When you wake up, give me a call. I’ll be glad to talk.
Here is the real Oregon Coast Range. It is complex and diverse, and that diversity defies mechanization and supports a diversity of labor-intensive products and industries.
And here is what ODF and the timber industry have turned most of it into:
Cedars – gone. Hemlock – gone. Grand fir – gone. Alders, bigleaf maple, vine maple, elderberry, salmonberry, baldhip rose, black-caps, oceanspray – wiped out. Over millions of acres. Get it? Millions. Of. Acres. Just in the past 35 years. If you don’t believe me, take a good hard look at Clatsop County, which is now just one giant tree farm. These puny Doug-fir saplings and the pathetic quality of wood products they yield do NOT support the real timber industry. The only way to make this trashy wood economical is to homogenize log sizes and mechanize absolutely everything, from logging to manufacturing. There will be no jobs here. And by the way, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi can crank out trashy wood way faster than us. We won’t win the bad forestry game either.
The future, if we choose to claim it, is all about math, science, accountability and honesty. Without all four of these philosophies, we will not succeed. While the “environmental restoration” crowd (myself included) has been dithering around the margins of urban areas and parks in the Valley, 6-million acres of natural forest that surround us were liquidated and turned into the most boring landscape imaginable. These are no longer forests, they are biomass plantations, and if ODF, OFRI and the industry have their way, that’s all they will ever be. OFRI wants us to see these coarse little Douglas-firs as trees, and dense stands of them with little but moss and sword ferns beneath as forests. But they are not. They might as well be oil palms or corn or loblolly pine. It doesn’t matter – one monoculture is much like the next. But they aren’t forests.
While this has gone on, we have fooled ourselves. We have congratulated ourselves on saving a few acres of greenspaces, putting cans in the recycling bin and composting our plastic-ridden kitchen scraps and lawn clippings. The math is not working in our favor folks. If we actually want our kids to have a decent shot at a good life, then it’s time to change the game. Let’s please do the math that is suggested by good science, and be honest!
Job #1 for 2026: start buying the entire Coast Range from the rapacious industry that has destroyed it.
Job #2: start the process of restoring beaver wetlands on 20,000 acres of soggy, uneconomical farmland in Washington County (250,000 acres in the Willamette Valley!)
These things are actually doable. And they are GOOD for the economy and for people. We just have to do the math!
’til next time,
-George