Patrick Dodd and Small Revolutions: The Brandt Report

Answering the Economic Questions Sidestepped by the WOPR1

What is the price tag for Oregon residents?

Roger Brandt, Highway199.org, Cave Junction, Oregon

Summary

The authors of the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR)1 tell the public that this plan will cause a loss of jobs and income, especially in southern Oregon, but provide no details to explain what these losses will be. This report is a grassroots effort to confront this issue and find answers to what these planners expect Oregon residents and communities to pay to make this plan work.

The report will explain the following issues:

$5,000-$10,000 in property value will be lost by many home and land owners.

Tourism revenues will be lost from Oregon’s economy at a rate that may be equal the revenues gained by timber resulting in an apparent net economic gain of zero.

The plan creates timber jobs by sacrificing forest values that support jobs in other sectors of the economy resulting in a job gain of zero.

The plan will impair the ability of communities to attract other sources of income such as small business, entrepreneurs, telecommuters, and home-based innovators who create enterprise, a loss that results in a community having less control over their ability to choose their own life style and future.

Tax liabilities are hidden in the plan.

The authors of the WOPR use cut and paste deception to misinform Oregon residents about their right to earn a living from O&C lands.

Introduction

The BLM acknowledges that the Western Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR) will cause the loss of jobs and income from Oregon businesses but have not included these issues in their economic analysis because these concerns are “beyond the scope” of their economic analysis (WOPR1, Vol II, p549; Community Well-Being).

1 The term WOPR has a high degree of familiarity to most readers and for this reason it is used throughout this document in place of the WOPR’s more formal title: Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Revision of the Resource Management Plans of the Western Oregon Bureau of Land Management Districts. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management. August 2007. Three Volumes 1,600 pages.

The WOPR will exert a significant influence over the economy of about one fifth of Oregon’s population for the next century, or more, a commitment that is being made without a comprehensive economic analysis. At best, the WOPR is a strategy of trade- offs, meaning jobs and income from non-timber businesses must be traded or sacrificed to create jobs and income for the timber industry.

The authors of the WOPR will make these trade-offs by sacrificing values in the forest that are important to the economic well-being of non-timber businesses and property owners. For example, the forest provides a community with scenic values that are important to the tourism industry as well as play a role in adding value to property, which is important to real estate agents who earn more when land is sold for top dollar. Clear- cutting benefits the timber industry but at the expense of losing scenic values that are vital to the economic well-being of tourism dependent businesses, real estate businesses, and private land owners. In this way, tourism jobs, private land values and real estate revenues are traded to create income and jobs for the timber industry.

The WOPR’s strategy of trade-offs does not support existing economic development plans for many Oregon communities nor considers how the forest can be managed to help communities grow in the direction they want to grow. Hence, the WOPR forces an additional financial burden on Oregon communities who will need to allocate time and money to formulate new economic strategies to survive under a timber dominated economy while at the same time suffering the loss of the values that inspired many residents to settle in Oregon. The strategy of trade-offs inflicts both financial and emotional sacrifice as communities are deflected away from the future they want into a forced future of timber industry dominance.

There are many subtle sacrifices that each community will be forced to make as a requirement to create jobs for the timber industry. This document attempts to itemize what those sacrifices may be and provide tools that help readers assess how the WOPR will impact those of us who are “beyond the scope” of consideration in the economic future of Oregon’s O&C corridor.

Property value

Property value can be influenced by many factors in a community to include the location of transmission lines, sand and gravel pits, pig farms, noisy highways, parks, natural landscapes, ponds, shade trees and many other factors. Researchers who review the history of land sales in a community have often found a pattern in the way different factors in a neighborhood can add to or detract from property value.

These studies have demonstrated that natural or forested areas add to the value of property. The clear-cut logging proposed in the WOPR (no green vegetation standing –

2 Class IV Visual Impacts. This class is for management activities which require major modifications of the existing character of the landscape. The level of change to the characteristic landscape can be high. These management activities may dominate the view and be the major focus of viewer attention (quoted from BLM Visual Resource Manual 8431, Appendix 2: VRM Class Objectives).

3 At 10% commission, a loss of 31 million in property value equals about three million in lost commission revenues for real estate businesses.

maximum, class four visual impacts2) will dramatically change the character of Oregon’s natural landscapes and clear-cuts will have a negative impact on property value (Kim and Johnson, 2002).

Natural areas can increase property value by an amount of about 5% for properties within view of forested landscapes and 6% for homes within a short proximity of the logged lands (Tyrväinen and Miettinen, 2000; Garrod and Willis,1992a; 1992b). Some estimates for the influence of natural areas on the value of nearby property go as high as 20% including areas where the forest interfaces with suburban neighborhoods (Crompton, 2001; 2007; Lutzenhiser and Netusil, 2000; Hammer, Coughlin and Horn, 1979; Moore, Stevens and Allen, 1988). Properties adjacent to naturalistic parks and open spaces are typically valued at about 8 to 20 percent more than comparable properties (Crompton, 2001). Other estimates place the increase of value for properties abutting a forested area at 3-7% higher for a home and 20-35% for a vacant lot (Thorsnes, 2002). Properties with wooded areas compete better for buyer attention and generally sell quicker than land without trees (Seila and Anderson, 1982).

Estimate how the WOPR will reduce your land value

Residents can use the information above to estimate how clear-cutting on BLM land will reduce their land value. For example, if the property is worth $100,000 and is within view of BLM land, the land owner can expect to lose 5% or $5,000 in property value when the BLM forest is clear-cut. Properties that are within a short distance of clear-cut land could experience a decrease of 7% or about $7,000 in property value. The 7% drop in property value is most pronounced for properties within 1,200 feet (approximately three city blocks) of the logged lands with reductions in property value gradually dropping to 5%, 4%, etc up to distance of a half mile (Hammer, Coughlin and Horn, 1979; Tyrväinen and Miettinen, 2000; Moore, Stevens and Allen, 1988).

The amount of property value lost from a community adds up quickly. For example, if 5,000 properties in the community of Illinois Valley of southwest Oregon, each with an average value of $125,000, lost 5% of their value, the net loss to the community will be more than 31 million dollars. This represents a significant drop in the potential income for real estate agents in that area3.

More than half of Josephine County’s 32,000 homes are in rural settings, each with an average value of $125,000 dollars (US Census Bureau, 2000; Josephine County

Integrated Fire Plan, 2003). These are the homes that will likely suffer the most property loss due to their proximity to BLM lands. If these rural homes, approximately 16,000 of them, lose 5% of their value, Josephine County will lose 100 million dollars to the WOPR, a sum that could be doubled if this estimate included the lost values of vacant land in rural areas or tripled if the estimate included suburban properties that interface with BLM lands.

O&C fund tax savings

A fraction of the capital generated by timber harvesting will be returned to Josephine County to help pay for county services. This has been widely promoted as beneficial to property owners but, in Josephine County, it will take more than 70 years for these so- called O&C fund “tax savings” to pay back to land owners what they will lose in land value under the WOPR’s strategy of trade-offs. It appears that land owners, not timber, are paying for the “tax savings” with their own land value.

Tourism

There is little doubt in the minds of many people that the WOPR will have a negative impact on businesses in many Oregon communities. The BLM has also documented their expectations that the WOPR will cause the loss of jobs and income and the greatest losses are projected to take place in southern Oregon (WOPR Vol II, p549; Community Well- Being). The industry that will be hardest hit with these losses will be businesses and individuals who depend upon tourism dollars for their income.

Tourism is one of the leading economic opportunities for many Oregon communities but is also the opportunity that is most susceptible to impacts by the WOPR. At stake are billions of dollars spent in recreation and leisure annually. Considering the aggressive competition for tourist spending around the world, any factor that reduces the state’s competitive edge will result in a significant loss of opportunity to attract income from tourist spending.

The following discusses the key elements that drive a healthy tourist-based economy to help readers understand how the WOPR will impair the ability of a community to attract tourist dollars to their businesses. Summaries are included to provide a rudimentary assessment of what is at stake if the opportunity for growing the tourism industry in the O&C corridor is lost or impaired.

Travel motivators

For most Americans, vacation time is precious and it is understandable that these people give very careful consideration about their travel destinations. They want to maximize their vacation time with the activities that provide the greatest fulfillment and satisfaction for the precious little time they have to for leisure. Communities and businesses that want to attract tourist spending need to understand what motivates people to travel to a destination. This is necessary so wise decisions can be made about fostering an environment that creates the unique and marketable amenities that set one community apart from other destinations and makes them competitive for a share of the billions of dollars spent by American and International travelers every year.



A summary of key travel motivators follows:



It is estimated that about 154 million Americans travel every year. Many, if not the majority, express the importance of natural, undisturbed landscapes as being important to their travel decisions. Nearly two thirds (61% - about 94 million) of travelers say their traveling experience is better when the destination preserves its natural, historic and cultural sites and attractions (Stueve, 2002). The National Survey on Recreation and the Environment, perhaps the most comprehensive recreation survey conducted in the United States, identifies a preference among travelers (56% - about 86 million) for pleasure driving in rural areas that offer scenic country roads, parks, forested areas and other natural settings (USDA, NSRE, 2004). Information compiled by the American Byways Resource Center indicates 63% (97 million) travelers prefer highway corridors that provide a tree-lined road with unobstructed landscape views and undeveloped green space complemented by scenic pullouts and overlooks (Vistas, 2003). One of the top reasons Americans travel is to view scenery and enjoy nature (Wight 1996; Longwoods, 1997).

Tourism in the state of Oregon closely reflects national trends. Visitor profiles summarized in the 1998 Report on Travel and Tourism in Oregon indicate the activities most frequently enjoyed by Oregon visitors are outdoor recreation and nature; 33% and 32% respectively (Jarworski, 2003). A recreation survey conducted in District Four of Siskiyou National Forest indicates that viewing scenery and hiking/walking were the primary reasons for tourism activity in this National Forest (Wetter, 1994). A survey conducted at Oregon Caves National Monument indicated that 69% of the visitors to this site were traveling to view scenery (Rolloff, 1995).

The majority of the traveling public (71% - 109 million) indicates it is important to them that their visit to a destination not damage its environment (Stueve 2002). This might be extrapolated to mean that Americans care about the environment and most Americans view clear-cuts as damaging to what they care about. It is intuitive that, based on many Oregon resident’s own feelings about clear-cuts, the message this style of logging casts over the community is “this place doesn’t care about the environment”. Surveys indicate that the majority of American travelers, most of which are looking for opportunities to spend their precious vacation time enjoying scenery, nature and outdoor recreation, will perceive the presence of clear-cuts to signal that the experiences and activities they have traveled to enjoy will not be found in these communities. This places Oregon at risk of compelling 53-71% of the travelers to leave the O&C corridor to find places, possibly in other states, that provide the experiences they have worked hard to enjoy.



The WOPR controls the factors that are important to the survival of tourism-dependent businesses in Oregon communities. Clear-cutting liquidates those factors and forces hardship upon many individuals, if not the majority in western Oregon communities, who depend upon tourism for their income. This works against the time and money that a community has invested in promotion, publicity and advertising to attract income for their businesses. The authors of the WOPR have given no consideration about how timber can be managed to support community planning. This imposes a double cost upon the community that includes the money and effort spent to identify and implement an economic strategy chosen by the community to a new phase of spending to redirect the community economic strategy to survive under the BLM strategy of timber dominance that is being forced upon the community.

Travel spending

A cursory scan of tourist spending in the United States illustrates there is a lot of money to be made in this sector if a community can create the environment that attracts the spending to the doors of their businesses and provide a market for selling the products of rural entrepreneurs.

Travel spending in the United States during 2006 was $699.9 billion, an estimate that includes spending by domestic and international travelers in the U.S. on travel related expenses (i.e., transportation, lodging, meals, entertainment, recreation, and incidental items such as gifts, admissions, toiletries, batteries, etc) (TIA, 2007).



Recent visitor profiles taken from surveys in four western states indicate the average expenditures per party (average of three people traveling together in a vehicle) in 2000 was about $115 per day (Sem, 2000). In southwest Oregon, the average daily spending per group, compiled from survey data in 2004, was about $135 per day (Brandt, 2004).

Nature travelers spend more than other travel groups and typically have a higher-than- average income (over $50,000). (Backman and Potts 1993; Liu 1994; Eagles and Cascagnette 1995; Unaaq 1995) and tend to be much better educated than the general traveling public (Tourism Research Group 1988; Fennell and Smale 1992; Cook, Stewart and Repass 1992; Backman and Potts 1993).

Nearly 69 million people visit Oregon’s publicly owned forests and parks each year. Of these, some 31 million visits are to forest-related sites. The direct impacts of visits to forest-related sites include an estimated $800 million in annual expenditures (OFRI, 2005)

Clearly, there is a lot of money to be made from tourism.



Example - Estimating Tourism Spending on Highway 199, Southwest Oregon

Tourist spending can be widely distributed in a community with some of the money going toward lodging, fuel, food, gifts, admissions and other expenditures. Income is distributed among many individuals who each depend upon tourism to provide one of several income sources that make up their annual income. Rural culture is defined by many people who enjoy an independent lifestyle through a multi-income strategy and this culture has been a part of southwest Oregon rural history since the 1800s. Oregon’s rural entrepreneurs represent an industry with deep roots reaching back to the early history of Oregon and most of America.

The loss of tourism income may not result in the financial failure of most rural entrepreneurs but it will cost them in terms of hardship. The loss of tourism opportunities will require them to reinvent themselves to survive in a new era dominated by a timber economy that, according to the BLM, will cause a reduction in the economic viability of non-timber businesses. The question to ask is “will the opportunities given to the community through tourism be replaced in equal or greater quantity by the new opportunities the WOPR will create with a timber dominated economy?”

A good place to answer this question might be found in the communities along Highway 199, an important gateway of tourist travel into Oregon from Redwood National Park and the Scenic Oregon coast. This is the only major tourist route that passes through Illinois Valley of southern Oregon, the part of the state that the BLM expects the greatest job losses in non-timber businesses to occur (WOPR Vol II, page 549; Community Well- Being).

Tourism on Highway 199 has been a consistent source of revenue for this community since the road was constructed in 1922. Most important, this road offers a dependable platform for rural entrepreneurs and artists to market products, and this dependability has a long history of consistent and reliable performance.

The economic opportunity Highway 199 offers to the community through tourism is considerable. There are about 300,000 tourist vehicles traveling through this corridor annually, each carrying an average group size of three people who spend an average of $135 per day on lodging, food, gas, and other items. The total spending potential of this tourist corridor is about forty million dollars annually. With the regional up-swing of new residents coming to southern Oregon and the dwindling opportunity for outdoor recreation in other parts of the state and nation, the potential for increased tourism travel through this corridor is imminent.

The trick is to get these travelers to stop and spend their money in Oregon. Considering that 71% of Americans travel to view scenery and enjoy outdoor recreation, the clear- cutting proposed by the WOPR increases the risk of discouraging visitors from stopping in Oregon and cause them pass through this area to California to find the experiences and recreational opportunities they seek. In this way, the WOPR works to drive revenues out of Oregon rather than augment the ability of the state to capture a share of this wealth. Based on the surveys above, the loss in revenues along the Highway 199 corridor could be anywhere between 33 to 71% or about 13 to 28 million dollars annually. This is a small representation of similar losses to be expected in other Oregon communities that fall under the shadow of the WOPR. The combined loss to the Oregon economy would be in terms of billions of dollars every year.

4 Assumes each of the 3,600 jobs will make a minimum salary of $50,000 annually.

Tourism represents a dependable revenue resource and promises the same dependability for decades into the foreseeable future. Tourism is the second largest industry in America and some speculate it will become the largest within the next decade.

The Job Trade-off

The WOPR will create jobs for the timber industry by removing forest values that are critical to the income of many non-timber businesses, especially tourism, recreation, and real estate. In this way, the plan implements a strategy of trade-offs that exchanges jobs and other monetary values out of the community to create jobs and income for the timber industry.

The BLM claims the WOPR will create 3,600 new timber jobs but doesn’t subtract the lost jobs or the reduced business income, and lost property value that will be sacrificed from the community to finance the creation of these timber jobs. These community sacrifices are considered as negligible and beyond the “scope of consideration” in the WOPR’s economic assessment but, collectively, these economic losses off-set the gain of timber jobs with an equal loss of tourism jobs and lost property value resulting in a net gain of zero. In a following section of this report, you will see that the loss of job and incomes are overwhelming compared to pallid gains of the WOPR.

This report attempts to fill in the information that the BLM has failed to provide; identify the economic losses caused by the WOPR and subtract these from the gains in timber jobs to give a realistic view of what the net outcome of the WOPR will be on the creation of jobs for Oregon. For example, the timber jobs created by the WOPR might have a value of $180 million4 in wage receipts but the property value lost in Josephine County alone is $100 million not to mention the loss of tourism dollars and rural home-based income. Considering the WOPR will impact property value in 18 rural counties, there could be a minimal estimated loss of 1.8 billion in property value from Oregon home owners, a cost ten times more valuable than the timber jobs created for the timber industry.

The actual loss will be more dramatic because very little acknowledgement is given by the WOPR to the steady decline of timber jobs over the past two decades.

Job Replacement by Automation, Mechanization, Technology and Outsourcing

The following is a summary of the number of jobs that have been lost in the timber industry due to automation, mechanization and trends in globalization. The overall outcome of these factors are resulting in a steady decline of timber jobs.

Automation

Automation, mechanization, and advances in technology have made it possible for one person to do the work that once took many people to do. The result of these advances has been a steady decline in the number of people needed for forest work and the operation of timber industry mills including those involved in the production of lumber, plywood, paper, container board, and other wood products. Jobs will continue to be traded for efficiency in the future (Humphrey 1990; Gerber 1992; Greber 1993; Draffan, 1999; Wilson, etal, 2001; Findley, 2001; Gale Group, 2005; Gooodstein, 1994; Gordon, 1996; Prudham, 1998; Seltzer, 1997; Ince etal, 2007; Eco-Link, 2002; and others). The WOPR is bragging how many jobs they will create without consideration of the trends that have steadily reduced jobs in the timber industry over the past two decades.

A factor also not fully considered in the WOPR are the expected reductions in jobs as Oregon’s forests are converted into tree plantations. Plantations lend themselves to mechanized management for all aspects of the industrial cycle from harvesting and planting to brush removal and fuel control. One person can do the job of dozens in fractions of time. Examples are the “feller buncher” and the “cut to length (CTL)” mechanized harvesters designed for work in plantations (Eco-Link, 2002). As old growth forests are converted to plantations, Oregon’s chainsaw foresters will disappear into history just as their axe and whip-saw predecessors disappeared when the chainsaw replaced them with one person doing the job of dozens in fractions of time. The WOPR will create a forest landscape that will deflect Oregon’s O&C corridor into a future with ultimately less and less timber jobs.

Outsourcing

Many American timber corporations have moved their timber mills and processing plants to other nations with a resulting loss of jobs in American communities. The primary reason for this is the availability of cheaper labor (Draffan, 1999; Gordon, 1996; and others). Manufacturing jobs appear to be on a significant down swing, and much of the downswing has been attributed in part to outsourcing. Since 2000, 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost nationwide (Hamrick, 2004; Gordon, 1996). The downward trend of manufacturing can be seen over the past 40 years as the share of U.S. employment in manufacturing decreased from 29 percent in the late 1960s to just 16 percent in 1995 (Baker, Dean). A useful summary of outsourcing history by four major American wood product corporations can be found in Draffan’s (1999) summary on the Globalization of Timber.

There is nothing that can be done to predict what economic forces in the future will prompt a corporation to move. This gives the WOPR a taint of unpredictability that will darken as more and more of Oregon’s forests are converted to corporate plantations. The integrity of jobs promised in the WOPR comes with a pall of ever-darkening uncertainty over Oregon’s future.

5 The author worked in the military as a photogrammitrist using satellite imagery and side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) to determine size and volume of objects on the ground. Space imaging radar (SIR) has made considerable advances in the ability to determine the composition of plant communities and digitize the size and dimension of individual objects on the ground. SIR was developed to map the surface of Venus and can be used to do mapping on the surface of the earth any time regardless of cloud cover and storms that would otherwise impair the ability of ground crews to work in the forest due to snow or heavy winds.

Technology

Advances are being made in aerial and satellite imaging that makes it easier and more economical to determine the productive volume of the forest from a computer terminal (Eco-Link). Information technology and GPS systems are making it easier to compile field information from a computer terminal. As databases fill with information collected from the field, there will be less need for field workers to gather information, leading to a drop in timber-related field jobs. More field jobs will be lost as aerial and satellite systems5 improve and software programs are developed to determine harvestable volume from a computer terminal resulting in further reduction of timber-related field jobs. Eventual advances in computer programming may even automate this process and result in the loss of computer jobs as well.



Selling of private timber lands

The gains of jobs by the WOPR will likely be off-set by losses of jobs as private timber lands are sold for development. Almost 1 million acres of private forestland were lost to development each year from 1992 to 1997. Projections suggest that another 26 million acres will be lost to development by 2030 (Alig and Plantinga 2004). The reason for this is due to the value of future returns of land in timber production. In southeastern states, forest production is expected to be $415 per acre, compared to its value in residential housing at $36,216 per acre — land with a developed value nearly 90 times higher than its forest value (Alig and Plantinga 2004). Developed values in the Pacific Northwest, including the O&C corridor, are estimated at 111 times higher than the value of timber. This financial land-use hierarchy means that private forestry returns alone are unlikely to keep land invested in the production of timber when development is an option. This reflects the change of market trends from those previously dominated by timber producers to markets that include those that focus on investing land in hunting, hiking, fishing, camping, conservation uses, second homes, retirement property, small farms and investment properties (Gilliland, etal). Corporate views of land reflect the same treatment given to any other asset; land must provide a return exceeding a corporation's required minimum return rate for investments (Gilliland, etal). In many cases, the economics of private forestland ownership encourage short-term, high value return from timber harvesting, followed by parceling and resale (Clay, 2006).

The selling of timber lands may signal a lack of dedication by most corporations for the future of the timber industry. Financial gains are the objectives that hold the attention of most stockholders and the trend of selling timber lands for development indicate there is not a strong interest among investors for preserving the traditions, pride and economic future of forest workers. It is logical that this same perspective follows in the corporate view of Oregon’s O&C lands and, for this reason, the WOPR amounts to little more than an instrument of corporate gain at the expense of Oregon’s heritage.

Timber exports

The WOPR proposes an annual harvest of 700 million board feet of timber to create jobs. However, these gains are offset by an apparent equal amount of timber being exported to corporate to mills in other countries. Between 1960 and 1990, 73 billion board feet of raw logs were exported from the West Coast, so most of what was cut from private (corporate) lands was exported as raw logs (Draffan, 1999). International Paper, Georgia- Pacific, and Weyerhaeuser are major exporters of raw logs, woodchips, and pulp, with Weyerhaeuser exporting about 300 million board feet of raw logs in 2000 (Draffan, 1999). Weyerhaeuser alone is exporting almost half the amount of timber that the WOPR will put into the system for the supposed reason of supporting jobs. The combined export of all corporations likely exceeds the amount added by the WOPR, which leads to the conclusion that there is no shortage of timber, just a lack of dedication among corporations to support American mills. At the bottom line, Oregon communities are being forced to sacrifice tourism jobs and property values for the apparent purpose of supporting corporate mills in other nations, not Oregon.

Market saturation

As the housing market declines, there is a decreased demand for wood products. The increase of logging on O&C lands will have the effect of saturating the market and result in lowering the value of timber. The authors of the WOPR are proposing to clear-cut the values that make a community prosperous and sell it for the lowest dollar.

Time

The regeneration of forest products has an inherently long-term character. For example, trees planted today on Oregon forest land may not reach their optimal harvesting age for 70 to 100 years. Similarly, after a forest is clear-cut, it may take hundreds of years for it to return to its original state. Forest industry investments are typically made on the basis of a 15–30 year time horizon (Hetemäki and Nilsson, 2005). During this extensive time, resources may be lost to fire, disease, and loss to conditions of drought brought on by global climate change. These factors make the future of timber jobs and the communities that depend upon them unpredictable.

Increases in timber harvesting will not create more jobs

The authors of the WOPR join a small group of timber advocates in the assertion that cutting more timber will create more timber jobs. Many people of this persuasion point to the hey-day of timber harvesting in the 1980s and recall the many timber jobs that were supported at that time. However, even if the 1983-87 harvest levels in Oregon could somehow have been maintained, employment was projected to drop from 6.8 percent in 1988 to 5.6 percent in 1995 (Sessions 1991). Automation and other factors are reducing the number of timber jobs and greater quantities of timber must be harvested to maintain each job in the industry (Wilson, etal, 2001). The solution to rural unemployment in timber communities is unlikely to be found in expanded timber harvests (Berck etal, 2000).

Outcomes of a timber dominated economy

Based on the discussion above, a timber dominated economy is not defined by its stability of job security. Jobs in this industry are susceptible to loss by automation and mechanization and the WOPR plan actually facilitates this decline by converting all O&C lands to plantations, which are easier to manage by mechanical harvesters with one person doing the job of dozens in a fraction of the time. Technological advances in GPS, GIS, aerial and satellite mapping, and similar technologies are also moving the timber industry in a direction of more efficiency, and efficiency means less jobs.

The industry itself is working against the goals of the WOPR by export of timber in quantities that appear to counteract the objectives of the WOPR to benefit the timber industry by increased timber harvesting on O&C lands. The increased timber harvesting on public lands is off-set by an equal or greater export of timber to oversea mills. This is timber that could have otherwise been used to support jobs in the United States. This leads to the question of whether the logs taken from public lands will support mills in the United States or in other nations at the expense of sacrificing jobs and property value from Oregon communities. In addition to this, the timber industry appears to be on a track of selling its lands to development, indicating the corporate interest in timber is driven by a desire to retain the attention and money of stockholders, not to support jobs and local economies.

Alternatives to timber – comparing the advantages of tourism

The economic advantages given by the authors of the WOPR to the timber industry are achieved at the expense of property value and job loss in other industries, particularly the tourism and recreation industry, which offers a viable alternative to the timber dominated economy of the WOPR.

The following compares the advantages of tourism as an economic strategy for a community, an advantage that the WOPR considers to be “outside the scope” of consideration in management of O&C timber:

Tourism cannot be outsourced. You cannot move the Grand Canyon to China. Crater Lake cannot be moved to India. Rivers and forests and the scenic coast that make Oregon unique cannot be moved to Indonesia. Tourism jobs are less likely to be lost to automation because the demands of the traveling public are for personalized experiences. Tourism defines itself by the unique marketing environment it creates. Travelers want cultural experiences and you cannot automate culture.

Tourism offers a more efficient input to the economy compared to the input in the WOPR’s strategy of timber dominance. For example, under the WOPR’s strategy of timber dominance, each acre of O&C lands is managed to produce an economic output once every 80-100 years, the life time of a human. If the WOPR was reoriented to manage the forest to facilitate tourism, recreation, and property value, each acre of land could be developed into a resource that contributes to the economy every year, and this could be done while HARVESTING A SUSTAINABLE YIELD OF TIMBER for local mills. In this way, the productivity and economic value of the land is managed to benefit the economic stability of local communities and industries every year rather than once every century.

On the bottom line, a timber dominated economy does not contribute to the ability of Oregon communities to define their own future. The missing ingredient in the WOPR is their ability to embrace the changing economy and focus on using forest resources to attract the economy of the future to Oregon. This includes knowledge based business and industry, home-based entrepreneurs and service providers, retirees with higher levels of disposable income, values that increase property value that in turn benefits home owners, investors or real estate agents, and other economic alternatives that use the forest to generate an income in a way that avoids taxpayer liabilities for forest management and establish a backdrop for making Oregon communities marketable in the billion dollar global tourism market.

The authors of the WOPR appear to have overlooked the importance of collaboration between the timber industry and businesses in local communities. They haven’t asked how timber can be managed to obtain a sustainable output of timber in a way that engages other industries and puts them to work on O&C lands. There are no objectives to make acre of land productive every year rather than once every 80-100 years. The timber industry needs to become a partner with Oregon communities for a more productive future. The BLM apparently will not allow their field staff to work on this problem and the result is the creation of a forest management plan with objectives to move Oregon into a new level of corporate domination rather than community productivity.

Oregon’s O&C lands are capable of playing a vital in the role of making Oregon communities more productive. The WOPR needs to be reinvented to become an instrument that becomes known for its ability to use timber management to double the economic productivity of O&C lands through a strategy of timber management that creates opportunity for a community. A good place to start this transition is to design timber management with objectives to increase quality of life amenities.

A Productive Option that gives Communities a Choice to Control Their Own Future

A community that is impaired in its ability to adapt to the changing demands of a global economy becomes less able to create a marketing edge in a world where marketing advantage is a strategic importance for economic stability. Communities need resources that give them both a choice for how to create a globally competitive community and the environment and life style they choose for their future. The WOPR’s endeavor to create a timber dominated economy puts a limit on a community’s ability to choose their own destiny.

The forest can be managed to create a much more productive and adaptable economy if the philosophy of forest management is oriented to make communities more competitive in the emerging global economy. The discussion below provides information on what many authorities believe will define future global competitiveness for rural communities. This economic future is not embodied in manufacturing or boosted by accelerated resource extraction. It is defined by forest qualities that collectively contribute to economic values associated with “quality of life” and the industries that these values attract. The forest can be used in an entirely different way to generate jobs and attract business development, all of which give a community a choice in the direction they want to grow and which can be achieved while at the same time increasing property value, reducing environmental damage, and HARVESTING A SUSTAINABLE YIELD OF TIMBER.



Quality of Life

Many rural communities are becoming increasingly aware that their ability to attract companies to relocate in their town depends upon their ability to provide the values and living environment that relocating companies seek (Crompton, 2007). Today, businesses are free to shop for an appealing location, and they clearly prefer communities with a high quality of life, including an abundance of open space, nearby recreation, and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods (Wells, 2002). For this reason, a high quality of life is not just an amenity for local residents, it is increasingly a key determinant in attracting a state’s leading industries (Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, 1998). And the leading industries of the future will be defined by entrepreneurship, innovation, and small business, all of which are considered to be the sources of competitiveness and growth for rural and urban areas (Manrique etal).



Quality of life plays an essential role in attracting businesses to move to Oregon but it is also essential to giving Oregon communities the freedom of control over their economic future and how that economic future will be achieved. For this reason, the WOPR’s economic strategy of timber dominance clashes against the well-being of Oregon’s communities as well as against the efforts they already have in place to promote themselves. For example, visits to websites of chambers of commerce and local development organizations in rural areas show that many rural communities are advertising their quality of life amenities to prospective businesses and residents (McGranahan and Wojan, 2007). Most people intuitively know that quality of life plays a pivotal role in the economy of a community, because, for many of them, it was quality of life that attracted them to live where they live.

Strategic economic development involves designing a community to satisfy the needs of its stakeholders. If quality of life constitutes the engine of the job generation process, then communities should foster and promote those things to facilitate business and job growth (Kotler, Haider, and Rein, 1993). The authors of the WOPR make no effort to use timber management to support objectives for quality of life and, in doing so, dislodge one of the major engines of job generation out of Oregon communities. The following information will help to identify what opportunities for jobs and income will be sacrificed under the WOPR’s strategy of trade-offs.

6 Resource based industries include mining, logging and agriculture that derive their income directly from taking resources from the land. Value added manufacturing mean taking a raw material, such as a log, and making it into a chair or table. The wood has become more valuable and can be sold for a higher value (value added).

Quality of Life’s Contribution to the Economy

Quality of life is a strategy of rural development and represents the collective incomes brought to a community by tourists, retirees, business owners, entrepreneurs and others who generate income and contribute to the local economy (OECD 1999, McGranahan 1999, Deller et al. 2001, Pezzini and Wojan 2002; Egan and Luloff 2000). The factors that attract these jobs and income are most frequently defined by the recreational opportunities a community provides, open space, parks, clean water and forested landscapes that define the community’s living environment.

Real estate industry analysts confirm quality of life to be a determining factor in real estate values and economic vitality. One 1998 industry report calls livability "a litmus test” for determining the strength of the real estate investment market. If people want to live in a place, companies, stores, hotels, and apartments will follow (Wells, 2002).

Surprisingly, prosperous counties have fewer resource based and value added6 manufacturing jobs, a sector often touted as a rural development strategy because it entails local processing of agricultural, lumbering, fishing, mining, and other products (U.S. Department of Commerce 2004). However, prosperity of a community appears to increase as it attracts industries not tied to local resources (Isserman, Feser and Warren, 2007. p16). Quality of life appears to play a significant role in the attraction of these industries and, hence, plays a significant role in the prosperity of a community.

In general, prosperous rural counties that have more diverse economies and seek to support the establishment and growth of multiple specializations rather than a single industry are more successful (Isserman, Feser and Warren, 2007). The advantages of diverse economies versus those that concentrate in a single industry are discussed by many authors (Conroy 1975; Jackson 1984; Simon 1988; Smith and Gibson 1988; Glaeser et al. 1992; Malizia and Ke 1993; Hunt and Sheesley 1994; Lande 1994; Harrison, Kelley, and Gant 1996; Quigley 1998).

Quality of life appears to play an increasingly pivotal role in creating stable rural economies, a role that becomes more important as the traditional economies of industry and manufacturing are eroded by globalization (Salvesan and Renski 2002). Quality of life values also make a community less susceptible to abandonment, such as is experienced when tax and cash incentives are used to attract businesses. If a community is not an engaging place in which to live, companies are likely to continue looking for the next set of cash and tax incentives and will move on when more attractive incentives are offered. If a community offers a high standard of quality of life amenities, it is less susceptible to “abandonment” by businesses (Crompton, 2007).



Attractive natural environments are important for attracting business and jobs. For example, the Pacific Northwest led the nation in job creation, income generation, and success in attracting new businesses and residents from 1988-1995, even as traditional industries including aerospace and timber were sharply declining. Many economists attribute the impressive growth to the region’s reputation as providing a superior, attractive environment in which to live, work, and do business. The natural environment appears to be especially important for economic growth (Power, 1995). A 1996 report by Arthur Andersen consulting company supports this conclusion with a survey that found many high-level executives increasingly choose to work in locations that offer a high quality of life (Wells, 2002).



Quality of life makes a community marketable to the rest of the world. These are values that cannot be taken away by any other country. However, it is possible to destroy these inherently unique American qualities with plans like the WOPR, a plan that sacrifices our community identity for a future of industrialism that contributes nothing to the market value of Oregon. It is prudent to understand what values define quality of life and take measures to reduce the risk of damaging these inherent values that give economic strength to Oregon.

What Defines Quality of Life

Quality of life is defined by a collective set of community characteristics that may include recreational opportunities, open space, clean water, and other social and environmental amenities. These attributes may differ in their quantity from one community to another community and often defines their ability to compete with the world for jobs, tourism dollars, and business recruitment. These are the core attributes that are essential to the economic development of the future.

Across the nation, parks and protected open space are increasingly recognized as vital to the quality of life that fuels economic health (Wells, 2002). For example, seventy firms that moved to or expanded within Arizona chose this state because of its outdoor lifestyle and recreation opportunities (The President's Commission on Americans Outdoors, 1887). Middle-aged (40-64 years of age) residents moving into Oregon list natural amenities as the reason for moving to this state (Judson et al.,1999).

Studies indicate that forest and open space amenities attract employment and qualified working people and retirees and tend to increase the value of nearby housing (Garber and Yonts, 2004; Geoghegan 2002). Competitive rural manufacturing is increasingly driven by quality of life factors required to attract highly skilled and creative workers (Wojan and McGanahan, 2007).

When speaking about quality of life, an Intel spokesman said, “This is where we are headed worldwide. Companies that can locate anywhere will go where they can attract qualified people” (Egan 1996). Many educated workers are interested in living in places that offer recreation, open space and other quality of life amenities (see more details about this under the subhead below titled “Economic incomes attracted by quality of life”).

Recreation also plays an important role in quality of life and might explain why the population of rural counties with a variety of recreational opportunities have grown at a much higher rate than that of most rural counties with less recreation. From 2000 to 2004, recreation county populations grew by 5.2 percent, while the rural population as a whole grew by 1.8 percent (Beale, Calvin). These facts lead to the natural conclusion that the management of O&C lands to create recreational opportunities for local residents would help to make the community more marketable and attractive for people who work in home based technical and telecommuting jobs. Conversely, the authors of the WOPR ignore these economic alternatives, resulting in a loss of significant job opportunities that are far greater in number and stability than the jobs that will be created for the timber industry.

Preservation of the environment stimulates economic development as new residents and businesses flock to areas known for clean water, access to recreation, strong environmental protection, and overall quality of life. A recent study that compared environmental protection laws with economic performance on a state-by-state basis consistently found that states with high environmental standards led economic growth (Hall, 1994).



Economic Incomes Attracted by Quality of Life

Quality of life attracts both income and prosperity to a community. This is accomplished by the way it attracts business and industry, creative and talented individuals, entrepreneurs who create home-based business, self employed technical and telecommuters, and retirees with reliable pension incomes. Oregon’s O&C lands play a vital role in how effectively the state can attract these businesses, jobs and income to our communities. If the authors of the WOPR ignore quality of life as an objective in planning, the loss will be significant, and likely far greater than the handful of timber jobs that might be created under the current plan’s timber dominance strategy. These quality of life jobs represent a diversity of economic options that give a community more control over choosing their own economic destiny.

Businesses and industry

Quality of life plays a significant role in attracting businesses and industry to rural communities.



Corporate CEOs say quality of life for employees is the third-most important factor in locating a business, behind access to domestic markets and availability of skilled labor (National Park Service, 1995). Recreation and quality of life are both emphasized as important for attracting companies (Beyers and Lindahl 1996) and firms (Goe 2002) in rural areas.

A Dell Corporation vice president in Austin, Texas, the country’s largest computer supplier, said “... people working in high-tech companies are used to having a high quality of life in the communities where they live. When we at Dell go and recruit in

those areas, we have to be able to demonstrate to them that the quality of life in Austin is at least comparable or they won’t come” (Crompton 1999).

Quality of life is not only important in decisions about business development or relocation, it is also important in employee retention, which has an economic bottom line. It is expensive to go through the recruitment and training process, particularly for key personnel (Crompton, 2007). The issue of employee retention explains why many businesses pay attention to surveys that tell them what type of living environment qualified workers want for a living environment and then seek to locate their businesses in places that fulfill these needs. For example, surveys have found that many individuals with high-technology skills ranked environmental quality as the most important amenity for their choice of where they wanted to live, above housing, cost of living, and good schools (Florida, 2002). Other surveys indicate forestland and open space are important factors in decisions an individual makes for the location of their residence (Kaplan and Austin 2004, Vogt and Marans 2004).

The importance of park and open space amenities can be found in a study conducted over a five year period in Colorado (Crompton, Love, and Moore 1997). They found that small-business decision makers were influenced particularly strongly by quality of life, which they reported was their main reason for relocating in Colorado. Six elements were used to measure quality of life and the small-business decision makers who were surveyed ranked the element of park, recreation, and open space amenities as being most important. They located their businesses where they could enjoy a preferred lifestyle. Studies like this are important for economic development in rural communities because analysts frequently reiterate that future growth in the U.S. economy is likely to come primarily from small businesses (Crompton, 2007). With this in mind, communities that want to attract small business would be prudent to note that owners of small companies ranked recreation, parks, and open space as the highest priority in choosing a new location for their business.



Creative and talented innovators

The key to local economic growth is to attract and retain talent because talent frequently results in further job creation (McGranahan and Wojan, 2007). The “modern economy” is knowledge-intensive and technology-based, with entrepreneurs and small businesses supplying much of the innovation and ideas underlying the development of more advanced technology and information tools. Communities that are interested in attracting new economic growth would be wise to identify and pursue the avenues that will bring entrepreneurship to their district (Manrique etal).

Researchers at the Economic Research Service (ERS) conducted a study on rural growth and explored the importance of people in highly creative occupations such as business ownership and top management, science, engineering, architecture, design, arts, and entertainment. They found that many of these people were present in rural areas, particularly in areas of high-amenity quality of life, and the presence of these people were

7 This report considers the effort of the WOPR to establish tree farms on all O&C lands as equivalent to converting Oregon’s forest heritage into a landscape of croplands.

associated with measures of creativity, such as patent awards and technology adoption, and growth in jobs during 1990-2004 (McGranahan and Wojan, 2007).

Rural areas need to attract talented young families, active retirees, and others to maintain their talent base and thereby their economies. Quality of life appears to be an essential part of that attraction (McGranahan and Wojan, 2007).

Home-based Entrepreneurs

Quality of life values, either natural or man-made, are strongly associated with the increase of entrepreneurs moving into a region. Landscape variables, including mountain topography and the amount of land with forests, were positively associated with growth, while the share of land in cropland7 was negatively associated with growth (Wojan and McGanahan, 2007).

Preserving quality of life values in a community is expected to attract entrepreneurs but the scale of how this might benefit a community may not be readily evident because business is conducted from the home, often using the internet to generate sales and income. The following information will help to establish a feeling for the magnitude of contributions that are made to the economy by home-based entrepreneurs.

According to the Department of Labor, in 1997 a total of 23.3 million persons were engaged in work at home as either a first or second job, including 21.5 million who worked at home as their primary job (U.S. Department of Labor, 1998). Many of these were working in service industries, although sales and precision production occupations also had large numbers of such workers (Ahrentzen, 2000). A subset of home-based businesses, micro-enterprise, represent the fastest growing economic engine in many communities. Over 20% of all jobs in rural counties in the U.S. are the direct result of these smallest of businesses (AEO).

A study of home-based workers in a nine-state survey (Heck etal, 1995) found that 88% of the home-based business owners sold most of their products or services within their state or within one hour’s drive of their homes. In addition, these businesses also became consumers of other local business goods and services (Ahrentzen, 2000).

Home-based businesses have two advantages; the start-up cost for small business is not out of reach for most individuals and the level of education does not necessarily determine the ability of a person to succeed. For example, using data from a survey conducted by the U.S. Census in 1982, it was found that almost half of all small home business owners had a high school education or less. About 75% of business owners had previous wage work experience and a third had managerial experience. Between 25% to 33% of home-based small business owners started with no capital whatsoever, and between 60% and 70% started with less than $5,000 capital (Balkin, 1989).

8 In 1995, there were 2,600 new home-based technical and telecommuting jobs established in Washington State (Beyers and Lindahl, 1996). The average rate of in-migration to Washington in 2000-2006 was about 80,000/year. Thus, 2600/80000 = 3% of total new residents to Washington State established home-based technical and telecommuting jobs



Opportunity appears to be the controlling factor in whether home-based businesses can prosper and the more opportunities that are available, the more directions these enterprises have to grow. The authors of the WOPR focus on developing a timber dominated economy and in doing so are setting a course that reduces opportunity and, hence, reduces the feasibility and viability of home-based industries. The outcome is a net loss of jobs.



Home-based technical and telecommuting jobs

An increasing number of people are able to live in the environment and community of their choosing while working by internet with a business that might be located in another state. This brings the benefits of jobs to a community without the congestion, commuting, and pollution usually associated with having a corporate industry in the same location. Homes become the office and income is earned and spent in the local community. It’s an invisible industry representing hundreds of jobs.

The number of home-based technical-telecommuting jobs that are attracted into a community with quality of life values might be determined as follows:

Quality of life values were credited for attracting 2,600 home-based technical and telecommuting jobs to the state of Washington in 1995 (Beyers and Lindahl, 1996). Census data for the state of Washington indicates 2,600 people represent about 3% the total people moving into Washington annually8. It is assumed that this 3% increase of home-based technical and telecommuting jobs could also be coming into Oregon counties with similar quality of life values as are offered by Washington. For example, the potential influx of this type of job into Josephine County (average of about 1,000 new residents/year) could be 30 jobs per year. If each of the 18 O&C counties is attracting the same number, then within seven years these combined jobs would exceed the number of jobs that the WOPR is proposing to create. The difference between these two economic strategies can be found in the job ceiling. The WOPR can never create more jobs because timber is a limiting factor on job creation. Quality of life job creation has no apparent limitation for the amount of jobs it can attract and sustain.

Quality of life values attract skilled workers to a community who create their own jobs. They represent a viable contribution to the local economy. It might be logical to assume that an increase of quality of life values would attract more home-based technical and telecommuting workers and this would contribute to a positive economic growth of a community, all of which would constitute an invisible industry of people working in their homes, something we can all live with.



9 The author of this paper worked for 15 years as a volunteer coordinator with hundreds of volunteers, many of which donated more than a thousand hours of work annually.

Retirees

Retirees are beneficial to communities because of their potential for stimulating local economies (Longino 1995). If 100 retired households move into a community, each with a retirement income of $40,000, their impact is similar to that of a business with a hundred employees spending four million dollars annually in the community (Crompton, 2007).

Some communities believe that attracting retirees is more desirable than attracting businesses because Social Security and private pension benefits of retirees are stable so their incomes are steady and not subject to the vicissitudes of economic business cycles that result in layoffs. This income comes from outside the community, but retirees spend it locally so it stimulates the economy and generates jobs (Crompton, 2007).

Many retirees express a desire to have a recreation-oriented lifestyle. These retirees have an image of how they want to live in retirement and seek environments that facilitate that lifestyle. Therefore, recreational opportunities play a central role in attracting retirees and this is exemplified by the growing number of specialist retirement settlements, such as the Sun City and Leisure World communities, that have emerged in various parts of the country. Such communities invariably emphasize in their promotion the ambience created by open space and opportunities for recreational (Crompton, 2007).

Retirees tend to be substantial contributors to volunteer activities in churches and local philanthropic and service organizations (Crompton, 2007). The national standard value for volunteer time in 2007 is $18.77 per hour (Independent Sector, 2007). The amount of time that retirees donate to the community varies but many will donate from 1,000 to 1,500 annually9. A volunteer who donates a thousand hours of time is in essence donating more than $18,000 of services to the community. A hundred volunteers teach volunteer a thousand hours donate a combined value of 1,800,000 million dolRetirees offer a community two sources of economic benefits; their retirement income and the value of their community service.

The authors of the WOPR make no effort to help Oregon communities attract retirees with recreational and quality of life values that meet their retirement dreams and desired lifestyle. The WOPR plan is designed to work in the opposite direction, sacrificing recreation to produce timber, and in doing so make communities less attractive to retirees. The outcome is the twofold economic loss of retiree income and volunteer services for Oregon.



Quality of life – the natural flow of progress for future forest management

Noncommercial economic values associated with our natural landscapes are not of small or trivial significance compared to the more familiar commercial economic values given to timber. The US Forest Service’s estimate of the economic productivity of its forestlands attributed almost 85 percent of that economic value to recreation and wildlife in the year 2000 and projected that that would rise to nearly 90 percent by the year 2045. Commercial timber contributed an estimated 2.7 percent of total forest economic productivity in 2000 and this was projected to fall to 1.9 percent in the year 2045 (US Forest Service. 1995).

Based on the information above, the timber-based economy of the WOPR faces a strong current of progress in the opposite direction. For example, the authors of the WOPR expect to create a static 3,600 jobs with no expected capability to create new jobs in the future. These jobs are susceptible to loss through automation, outsourcing and mechanization, which leads to a future of eventual job loss. On the other hand, quality of life values that play a key role in attracting small business and industry, home-based technical and telecommuting workers, entrepreneurs, creative talent, and retirees are all projected to increase steadily into the foreseeable future. These sources of income are more stable but also are less costly to society; they inflict no environmental damage that taxpayers must pay to clean up such as is necessary after logging operations and do not demand that other industries around them must fail so they can succeed. This observation supports the conclusion that a more constructive and productive course for the WOPR would be for the authors to reorient the purpose of timber management in a direction that produces forest resources that contribute to a community’s quality of life. In this way, the authors of the WOPR can double the economic productivity of these lands by enhancing the marketability and competitiveness of Oregon communities in the emerging global economy while at the same time HARVESTING A SUSTAINABLE YIELD OF TIMBER.

Working Landscapes

A forest that is managed to provide quality of life values for a community will also gain additional economic benefits from environmental services that the forest provides. This includes such things as filtering water, collecting and storing carbon dioxide, prevention of erosion, healthy watersheds, and wildlife shelter. These services have an extended value of providing recreational opportunities, tourism resources, hunting, growing berries and mushrooms and scenic landscapes that increase property value (Hetemäki and Nilsson, 2005).

A forest that is managed to provide a full compliment of services and resources is referred to as a “working landscape” (Wells, 2002). Timber can also be harvested from these landscapes but the purpose of timber harvesting is to facilitate the effectiveness and number of services that a working landscape can provide. For this reason, the combined economic output of a working landscape may be much greater than what is obtained from a forest managed for the solitary purpose of generating timber and timber jobs.

If working landscapes are ignored in planning, the result will be the loss of environmental services, which increases tax liabilities that the public must pay to restore the services disrupted by logging. The cost of this is forced on the public.

Tax liabilities and subsidies

Clear-cut logging, such as will be implemented by the WOPR, inflicts environmental damage that the authors of the WOPR expected will be repaired with American tax dollars; a cost that is imposed without consent upon those of us who are “outside the scope” of consideration in the economic analysis of this plan. These expenditures include the cost of protecting watersheds, thinning of brush and debris to reduce the threat of fire and paying for the cost of fighting fires or control of disease.

The WOPR does not account for the expenses forced on Oregon residents for repair of environmental damage. For example, based on 30 years of data from a research forest in the Cascade Mountains, Grant and Wolff (1991) determined that clear-cutting in the Pacific Northwest can generate an additional 1 ton of sediment per acre per year, and clear-cutting plus road building can generate 3.5 tons of sediment per acre per year for about 25 years into the future. These numbers indicate that the offsite environmental damage that logging imposes on others in terms of sediment-related damage can be more than $250 per acre (Nieme and Whitelaw,1999, p15-16). The cost for Oregon residents to pay for managing sediment damage in watersheds from the 2.2 million acres of O&C lands proposed for clear-cut logging under the WOPR will be more than 500 million dollars.



Some of these expenditures are subtle including those needed to cover expenses for unemployment insurance, a subsidy of support enjoyed by the timber industry that becomes the burden of society. For example, between 1980 and 1991 the unemployment- insurance benefits paid to workers laid off from Oregon’s lumber and wood products industry exceeded the total premiums paid into the system by the timber industry by more than $221 million (1992 dollars). Business owners in other industries, and their workers, bore the burden of making up this difference (Nieme and Whitelaw,1999).

As free trade agreements encourage the closing of domestic mills, a new layer of subsidies brought about by globalization has been created. The U.S. Department of Labor uses tax dollars to give "NAFTA aid" to laid-off American workers for job retraining, relocation reimbursements, and extended unemployment benefits when plant closures have been caused by cheap imports or the relocation of operations to some other nation (Draffan, 1999).

The ability of the WOPR to create jobs for the timber industry hinges on imposing economic burdens and liabilities on the rest of society.



10 I personally have not met a single BLM employee or manager who has ever recited any part of the O&C Act’s purpose statement. Most don’t seem to know that it exists. They all faithfully quote the first part of the sentence and, like the authors of the WOPR, assert that this means O&C lands have only one purpose and that is to grow timber and make jobs for the timber industry. When asked about the importance of O&C lands to the generation of income for non-timber businesses they assert that the well-being of these people, businesses and industries cannot be considered because this would be against the law.

Crossing the “Purpose Line” – The Answer to WOPR’s Problems

The solution for many of the issues in the WOPR could be easily solved if the authors of this document followed the guiding principles of the O&C Act, the law that directs the objectives and purposes of timber management on O&C lands. The issues begin and end at the “purpose line” a key point in the law that separates the language that serves the interest of the corporate timber industry from the language that serves the interest of Oregon’s communities, including locally owned wood product enterprises.

It is disturbing how persistent the BLM has become at denying the purposes of the O&C Act and many citizens perceive this as a deliberate campaign to mislead and deceive the public in favor of corporate interests. The campaign includes spreading the erroneous idea that only the timber industry is allowed to profit from O&C lands and the authors of the WOPR have used this deception to exclude all forest management objectives from the plan that might benefit other industries such as tourism, recreation, and real estate (WOPR, Vol I, page 6, footnote). By choosing to take this course, the authors of the WOPR have jeopardized the integrity of the entire plan and leave the public with the perception of government participation in antitrust activities.

The campaign of misleading the public has permeated the culture of the BLM and it is virtually impossible to find an employee in the BLM who will cross the purpose line, the part of the O&C Act that directs this agency to achieve the objectives that timber management on O&C lands must achieve.

The purpose statement is found in this sentence of the O&C Act:

The forest on O&C lands shall be managed ”for permanent forest production, and the timber thereon shall be sold, cut, and removed in conformity with the principal of sustained yield for the purpose of providing a permanent source of timber supply, protecting watersheds, regulating stream flow, and contributing to the economic stability of local communities and industries, and providing recreational facilities."

The first part of the statement, the part before the “purpose line”, leads the reader to understand that these lands are to be managed for permanent forest production. This is the part that is quoted by advocates of the timber industry and most BLM staff10, all of which ignore the next part of the statement that clarifies the purpose (objectives) that timber management must achieve... the part that benefits Oregon communities.



The authors of the WOPR discredit the integrity of this document with deliberate deceptive “cut and paste” tactics to change the public perception of the O&C Act and its

11 The BLM is not required to establish a minimum timber volume that must be offered every year. See WOPR Vol III, page 931, Portland Audubon Society v. Babbit, 998 F.2d 705 (9th Cir. 1993) “The court found that the O&C Act did not establish a minimum volume that must be offered every year”.

purpose. The following example is taken from page six of the WOPR under the heading “The BLM re-focuses the goal for management of O&C lands to the statutory mandates specifically applicable to these lands”. This heading leads me to believe that this section will tell me about the laws the BLM must follow in managing O&C lands, but the manner that the law is quoted is twisted into conformity with the objectives of benefiting the timber industry. This is what the cut and paste sentence says:

“The statutory requirements of the O&C Act .... include, but are not limited to, managing the O&C lands for permanent forest production by selling, cutting, and removing timber in conformance with the principles of sustained yield; [at this point the purpose statement of the O&C Act is cut out and timber industry objectives are inserted as follows] determining the annual productive capacity of the lands managed under the O&C Act; and offering that determined capacity annually under normal market conditions11.

An uninformed reader would naturally be led to believe the pasted timber objectives are part of the law. The purpose of the O&C Act is then listed, separated in importance from the rest of the law, and this is discredited with a discrete footnote that rejects these objectives.

The footnote

The cut and paste statement discussed above is followed by a list of the purposes in the O&C Act. The language used in this sentence is legitimate but the sentence ends with a reference to a footnote (bottom of page 6) that states the BLM interprets the purposes of the O&C Act to be in support of sustained yield forest management (the new roundabout way of saying logging) rather than enumerating additional objectives for management (the part that benefits the economic stability of Oregon communities). With this sentence, the authors of the WOPR reject any responsibility for following the law that requires them to achieve the objectives that serve the economic needs of people, businesses, and industries in O&C counties. This footnote appears to be inserted for the purpose of brushing aside the people, businesses and communities of Oregon, which collectively represent the biggest obstacle that stand in the way of making O&C lands into the exclusive domain of the corporate timber industry.

The myth of “timber dominance”

Ask a BLM employee why the WOPR is exclusively focused on allowing only the timber industry to profit from O&C lands and they will faithfully explain that timber is dominant over all other uses of these lands. They will tell you timber dominance is the law but this isn’t what you will find if you look at the Congressional mandates and court cases regarding O&C lands.

The notion of the corporate timber industry’s dominance on O&C lands and the idea that only the timber industry is allowed to make a profit on O&C lands is a distortion of a judge’s decision in a court case between Headwaters, Inc v. BLM. In this case, the judge decided that, in regards to O&C lands, timber would be dominant over wildlife habitat, not over people, businesses or other forest dependent industries.

It is interesting that the judge’s decision in Headwaters, Inc. v. BLM aligned with the language of the O&C Act, the guidelines given to the BLM for management of O&C lands. This included his agreement that timber must be managed to contribute to the economic stability of local communities and industries. The O&C Act was written to address the needs of communities and industries adjacent to O&C lands and the law makes no inference that these communities and industries must be timber communities and timber industries. Tourism, recreation, and real estate are dependent industries. There is no law that says they need to take a back seat to the timber industry.



The cut and paste distortion of the law used by the authors of the WOPR appears to be part of a deliberate campaign to deceive the public into believing they have no right to have their needs considered in forest planning and only the timber industry is allowed to profit from O&C lands. There is no such thing as timber dominance over people, businesses and industries, especially those that need O&C lands to generate an income and create a stable economy. These needs must be included in the WOPR plan. It’s the law.



Conclusions

The authors of the WOPR have created a document that will contribute nothing to Oregon’s competitiveness in the emerging global economy and, as has been discussed, reduces the ability of rural communities to pursue alternative economic strategies that give them the ability to choose their own future.

The WOPR is a strategy of economic trade-offs, not gains. Oregon communities must suffer economic losses that are of far greater value than the combined value of timber jobs and tax breaks the plan claims are its greatest strengths. These losses are extracted from the community through the destruction of forest values that give value to property and support non-timber jobs such as tourism..

The timber revenues and jobs predicted to be created by the plan are unrealistic because of the continuing trend of job loss as the timber industry automates its operations and uses advances in digital technology. The BLM is contributing to this decline through a program to create plantations, which are more easily managed by mechanization. The faster land is committed to plantations, the faster jobs will be lost.

The authors of the WOPR claim accelerated timber harvesting will increase jobs while ignoring the fact that an almost equal amount of timber and wood products are being shipped out of the country by private industry. There appears to be no shortage of available timber for local industries, just a lack of commitment by the timber industry to

keep the wood here and support jobs in America. There is nothing to monitor if timber from public lands will be shipped out of this country to support jobs in other nations. And the accelerated logging program will flood both the local and international market at a time when construction of new housing is dropping, essentially selling our heritage for the bottom dollar.



Americans are expected to pay for the restoration of environmental damage caused by logging as well as pay for unemployment and reeducation of wood product workers who have lost their jobs because of automation, mechanization and export of wood and jobs to mills in other countries.

The authors of the WOPR give no consideration to retaining forest values that contribute to the quality of life of a community. In fact, they have created a plan that will inflict the greatest damage on existing quality of life values and in this way impose a handicaps on the ability of communities to attract other sources of income such as small business, entrepreneurs, telecommuters, retirees, and home-based innovators who create their own enterprise and jobs for the community. Many authorities on economic development claim these businesses and people, both of which are attracted by quality of life, represent the future of rural economic vitality. Without paying attention to retaining the forest products that attract these entrepreneurs to Oregon, the WOPR is poised to inflict a setback that can be expected to ripple through the Oregon economy for decades into the future.

The WOPR is a management strategy that produces the lowest economic output at the greatest expense to society. Each acre of land is managed to produce one timber harvest every 80-100 years. The result of this is the commitment of two million acres of O&C forest land to create a meager 3,600 jobs, all of which come at the expense of job loss in other sectors, loss of property value, and tax liabilities. It makes far more sense to retain values that contribute to quality of life and use the forest to put other economic sectors to work. The outcome of this strategy will make these forest lands productive every year rather than once every 80-100 years.

Many far-reaching economic objectives could be achieved with less cost to society by retaining and growing forest values that contribute to quality of life, which opens the door for using O&C lands to contribute to the economic stability of communities and industries. This can be accomplished while HARVESTING A SUSTAINABLE YIELD OF TIMBER. The authors of the WOPR miss this point completely as well as miss the fact that this is how the O&C Act directs the BLM to manage the timber on O&C lands.

The O&C Act directs the BLM to manage timber to achieve five purposes, and these five purposes will not go away no matter how much the authors of the WOPR engage in cut and paste distortion of law. This behavior does nothing but validate the public perception of BLM arrogance and the confirmation that the WOPR is nothing more than a federally sponsored antitrust program with a price tag of economic deterioration for Oregon and financial loss for Oregon residents.

This report was produced by a concerned Oregon resident seeking answers to personal questions about the WOPR. Shared with others in the spirit of making informed decisions about Oregon’s future.

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The following information has been taken from the Minnesota Division of the Izaak Walton League of America, in their annual convention April 29, 2006.

“Off-highway vehicle travel has multiple effects on the landscape, and each effect is felt over a large area. OHVs require and by their use, create 3-to-8-foot wide de-vegetated trails. An OHV “footprint” on the land and its influence on the surrounding area can be large. So while other forms of recreation share some of the types of effects on the land, the magnitude and combination of these effects is generally greater with OHV usage.

OHVs operating near or in wet areas, streams and forest environments churn and stir up earth and vegetation causing the erosion of sediment. OHVs may inadvertently transport and introduce to new areas the seeds of invasive non-native weeds. Whereas hikers, cyclists, canoeists, anglers, hunters, birdwatchers, and other non-motorized recreation lack the power to destroy wet areas of the forest, OHV riders have mechanized power to do such damage. Some OHV riders utilize these impressive capabilities in sensitive areas that cause damage to water quality, aquatic vegetation, and sediment structure. Rider advocates argue that a small percentage of OHV riders are responsible for such damage, yet this continues to be a long-term problem that is persistent, reoccurring, documented, and sometimes is promoted in advertising.

When OHVs ride over slopes or weak soils, they cause erosion. Depending on the relative weakness of the soil and local conditions, the area affected by an OHV’s passage can spread and grow over time to cover an area much larger than the tracks initially left by any one OHV. The erosion effects of OHVs are inherently greater than those of similar numbers of hikers, bicyclists, or skiers. A dirt bike weighs 100-200 pounds, whereas typical OHVs can weigh up to 900 lbs, or up to several tons for 4x4 Off Road Vehicles. Because these weights are coupled with powerful engines, aggressively treaded tires, and a tendency of many operators to gun the engines and spin wheels intentionally, vegetation and landscape is easily churned up.

OHVs cause mechanized noise pollution, interrupting the solitude of nearby residents, quiet users of public forests, and wildlife. When revved and running, OHVs can be heard at distances up to and over two miles. If a single OHV is heard within a radius of one mile, it has a “soundshed” – the area where people and wildlife are affected by its noise is approximately 3 or 4 square miles. When a single OHV travels 30 miles on a trail, in the course of a 2 or 3-hour ride, its sound is heard by people and wildlife within an area of almost 70 square miles. Hikers, bicyclists, canoeists, skiers, do not generate much in the way of sound as compared to the sustained high-volume motorized noise of OHVs. Scores of non-motorized users could use the same area of forest in a given day without noise disturbance and possibly without ever knowing the others are present, while a single OHV operator intrudes upon all people and wildlife in the vicinity.

In summary, OHVs have inherent abilities to trample vegetation, cause erosion, travel long distances, and affect large areas resulting in disturbance to both people and wildlife. The planned and unplanned trails fragment habitat, degrading its value as feeding, breeding, sheltering, and rearing habitat for a wide variety of wildlife species.”

Because of the noise consideration alone which is stated above all proposed OHV emphasis areas adjacent to residences in the community of Selma are not acceptable. Even a single trail designated for OHV use adjacent to residents would be unacceptable.