Forestry Smart Policy

This episode with Sara Duncan, Director of Communications for the Oregon Forest Industries Council, takes on the top six myths about the timber industry, including:

1. Tree farms are not forests, and the timber industry only plants a monoculture of Douglas-fir.

2. Clearcuts are unnecessary, you could just thin forests instead.

3. Logging is the number one source of carbon emissions in Oregon and older trees sequester more carbon than young trees.

4. The timber industry cuts down trees for toilet paper.

5. All timber companies in Oregon are owned by out-of-state, wall street investors like TIMOs and REITs.

6. The listing of the spotted own didn't cause as many job losses as the industry said, it was actually automation.

This episode with Katie Murray, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, and Seth Barnes, director of forest policy for the Oregon Forest Industries Council covers all things related to pesticide use in forestry, including: how pesticides (primarily herbicides) are applied either aerially or with a ground crew roughly two to four times in the first few years of a new forests’ life to hold back invasive species and noxious weeds. We also cover the regulations in the Oregon Forest Practices Act related to reforestation and water quality protection (including new protections put in place by the Private Forest Accord), what happens when applicators don’t follow the law, the process for notifying the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and neighbors about forest activities, water quality monitoring studies, how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assesses health risks and registers pesticides, what’s on a pesticide label, the carcinogenicity of glyphosate (Roundup), and impacts to pollinators.

This episode with Dr. Tom DeLuca, dean of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, focuses primarily on carbon sequestration and storage in forestry and forest soils. We also discuss a whole range of topics surrounding carbon, including the history of forestry as a practice, the carbon cycle of forests, how long carbon is stored in wood products, the carbon benefits of mass timber like cross laminated timber and mass plywood panels, the human connection to trees and wood products, the impact of active management on carbon stored in soil, the symbiotic relationship between soil and trees, and the impact of different land uses on carbon in soil.

This episode with Jim Paul, the newly appointed Executive Director of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute, discusses the institute’s three primary program areas (public education, K-12 education, and landowner education), as well as how OFRI is funded, the institute’s response to former Governor Kate Brown's request for a 2021 audit by Oregon Secretary of State Shamia Fagan, and implications of a bill in the 2023 Oregon legislative session.  

This is the second in a two-part series on Oregon’s state forests, including the current controversy surrounding the Department of Forestry’s pursuit of a Habitat Conservation Plan for western Oregon state forests, the plan’s failure to provide adequate projected timber harvest levels to keep the Department of Forestry’s budget afloat for the next 70 years, and the mounting pressure on the Board of Forestry to change course.

This is the first in a two-part series on wildfire in Oregon, including what’s causing the wildfire crisis in Oregon, what role climate change plays in our smoky skies, the different firefighting and land management approaches of private landowners and federal landowners, and how we might begin to take on treating Oregon’s forests with thinning and controlled burns, and creating defensible space and hardened homes in our communities to make Oregon more fire resilient.