Oregon Wild Newsletter Winter 2019
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OREGON WILD Winter/Spring 2019 Volume 46, Number 1 FOREST DEFENSE IS CLIMATE DEFENSE Working to protect and restore Oregon’s wildlands, wildlife, and waters as an enduring legacy for future generations. Main Office Western Field Office 5825 N Greeley Avenue Portland, OR 97217 P.O. Box 11648 Eugene, OR 97440 INSIDE THIS ISSUE Phone: 503.283.6343 Phone 541.344.0675 Fax: 541.343.0996 www.oregonwild.org The forests can fight back {4-7} Forest & Watershed Organizer Jason Gonzales The e-mail address for each Oregon Wild Conservation & Restoration Coord. Doug Heiken From the Willamette to the Potomac {8-9} staff member: [email protected] Western Oregon Field Coord. Chandra LeGue (for example: [email protected]) Northeastern Field Office Vive tu propia aventura con Vive NW {12} Outreach & Marketing Coord. Marielle Cowdin x 213 P.O. Box 48, Enterprise, OR 97828 Membership & Event Manager Gaby Diaz x 205 Phone: 541.886.0212 Development Director Jonathan Jelen x 224 NE Oregon Field Coordinator Rob Klavins Wildlife Coordinator Danielle Moser x 226 Finance Director Tony Mounts x 219 Central Oregon Field Office Conservation Director Steve Pedery x 212 2445 NE Division St, Bend, OR 97701 Communications Manager Arran Robertson x 223 Phone: 541.382.2616 Fax: 541.385.3370 Executive Director Sean Stevens x 211 Ochoco Mountains Coordinator Jamie Dawson Wilderness Program Manager Erik Fernandez Oregon Wild Board of Directors Kate Blazar, President Naila Bhatri Lisa Billings, Vice President Vail Fletcher Clara Soh, Treasurer Megan Gibb Mellie Pullman, Secretary Danielle Grabiel Vik Anantha Jared Kennedy Hillary Barbour www.facebook.com/OregonWild Oregon Wild is a tax-exempt, non-profit charitable organization. Newsletter printed on Endeavour, 55% recycled with 30% post-consumer content COVER PHOTO: RHETT WILKINS The climate conversation has been and FSC certified, printed with vegetable based inks. Oregon Wild is printed dominated by energy and transportation issues, but here in the @oregonwild @oregonwild locally by Environmental Paper and Print, an Oregon Wild donor and business Northwest, our forests hold a key piece of the climate puzzle. partner. Winter/Spring 2019 Volume 46, Number 1 2 From the Director’s Desk From defense to offense Sean Stevens, Executive Director • Train budding activists at Bishop) is losing his gavel as the climate fighting tool our monthly Wild Ones chair of the House Natural right in our backyard – gathering; Resources Committee. That Oregon’s forests. means that the unceasing attacks • And meet with allies to on endangered species, National While Oregon Wild has s this issue of Oregon Wild discuss how to keep the Monuments, and almost every fought across five decades goes to print, we’ve got a pressure on King Clearcut single one of our bedrock to safeguard our forests lotA going on. as we endeavor to environmental laws will stop. for wildlife habitat, clean modernize the Oregon water, and recreation, it In just one week, the Oregon Forest Practices Act Wild team will collectively: Taking Bishop’s place is Rep. may be that the most Even though we are a relatively Raul Grijalva – an outspoken important reason to keep • Join forces with our small non-profit, it sometimes champion for wild places and our ancient forests partners at Soul River Inc. feels like we are everywhere at wildlife. With new leadership in standing is to save our to lobby Congress to once – knowing that if we don’t place, it is imperative that our planet from climate protect the Ochoco show up, some part of Oregon’s Congressional delegation seize catastrophe. Mountains National landscape will suffer. That the moment and push through Recreation Area; vigilance has always been part of important protections for It’s time to shift from Oregon’s special places. Oregon defense to offense – to • Host the third in a series of our DNA, and we know we Wild will be there to remind put lines on the map and forums aimed at explaining need it regardless of the political them of the importance of this to strengthen the laws the important connection landscape. moment. that protect our forests, between forest defense and rivers, and wildlife. We climate protection; November’s elections were hugely important for the As you’ll read in our main story can’t just hold the line any • Attend an all-day environment. The much-hyped this issue (pages 4-7), climate longer. Join us in creating stakeholder meeting where “flipping” of the House of disruption continues to wreak a new natural legacy for the fate of Oregon’s wolves Representatives into Democratic havoc across the globe. The the future. is on the line and we must control has many consequences, scientific consensus is clear that be their voice; but perhaps none is bigger than swift action is needed now more ZACK KENNEY With each election cycle, it is than ever before. Yet, the dawn of new approaches, new angles, this: the most anti-public lands and new challenges to our environmental member of Congress (Rep. Rob policymakers continue to miss w o r k . 3 Winter/Spring 2019 Volume 46, Number 1 Enlisting our forests to fight climate change Alexander Harris, Public Lands Fellow lobal climate change presents perhaps the most profound andG complex challenge the human species has ever faced. As the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented pace, we will continue to see significant impacts to Oregon’s economy, communities, and ecosystems. Today, there is roughly 50% more CO2 in the atmosphere than pre-industrial levels, and the amount of carbon in the atmosphere continues to increase at an alarming rate. Fortunately, it appears that the State of Oregon is finally ready to take meaningful climate action in 2019. In November’s pivotal election, Governor Kate Brown was re-elected and Democrats expanded their majorities in the State House and Senate. Democrats now hold supermajorities in both houses of Oregon’s State Legislature, which means they don’t need a single Republican vote to pass climate legislation that charges corporations for their greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the legislature is primed to pass the Clean Energy Jobs WES BAKERWinter/Spring Oregon's 2019 native Volume forests 46, Number hold 1 a wealth of carbon storage 4 and continued sequestration - but only if we protect them. LET THE TREES GROW! Arran Robertson, Communications Manager This fall, the world’s leading climate scientists warned that we have only twelve years to ward off the most dramatic impacts of global warming. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged world leaders that urgent action is necessary to head off bill, a cap and trade bill that Oregon can take to combat an increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. While we’re already seeing the impacts of would be similar to the programs climate change is to modernize rising global temperatures, the scientists warned that continued increases would result in in California and Canadian our weak logging laws. If we do mass coral die-offs, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, ecosystem collapses, and provinces. The Oregon this, alongside better protection of other global disasters. Legislature’s six-month session our public lands, the sprawling begins in January and this bill is forestlands that blanket half of The report provided policy recommendations to curb carbon emissions, including a section one of the top priorities. our state could become an on forests. Maintaining (or increasing) forest area and canopy cover, fighting forest invaluable asset in mitigating and The bill must pass if we want to adapting to climate change. degradation, and increasing carbon density in forests and soil were the report’s leading avoid catastrophic climate change. mitigation measures. However, notably absent from the How do trees store carbon? bill is Oregon’s largest source of The IPCC report is a wakeup call for policymakers in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest to carbon emissions: logging. Recent Carbon is a building block of life. get serious about protecting our native forests and modernizing forestry laws. Basically, research, including a As forests grow, trees take in we can help by just letting the trees grow! Climate change is a global crisis, and we have an carbon from the atmosphere, groundbreaking study from opportunity to step up and do our part. Fortunately, looking to our forests to help combat Oregon State University, shows building living structures by storing it in their trunks, bark, climate change has the added benefit of cleaner water, better wildlife habitat, and that Oregon’s logging industry preserving the spectacular Oregon forests and landscapes we all love! emits more carbon into our branches, and extensive root atmosphere than any other sector. networks. This natural process, known as “carbon sequestration” The destruction and converts carbon dioxide from its mismanagement of Oregon’s gaseous state into a solid that native forests over the past remains safely stored for long century has transferred massive periods of time. amounts of stored carbon to the atmosphere, contributing Forests are among the largest significantly to the warming of stores of living carbon on the the planet. But if we improve our planet, and it turns out that the STEVE HANSEN forest management practices, forests of western Oregon have a Oregon’s forests can actually be higher carbon density than almost part of the solution to climate any other forest type in the world. growth appears to have slowed. carbon; however, research shows creates a “carbon debt” that takes change, not the problem. Oregon’s oldest forests are that old forests store far more. many decades or centuries to particularly good at capturing and The logging industry has falsely Logging older trees and replacing repay. storing carbon, and they continue claimed that fast-growing young them with younger ones emits It’s becoming increasingly clear 2 that the single biggest step to absorb carbon even after tree forests are better at absorbing tremendous amounts of CO and 5 Winter/Spring 2019 Volume 46, Number 1 eliminated most of have otherwise remained stored with tree plantations (logged on a The timber industry often argues Oregon’s original in the forest for many more years.