Oregon Wild Winter Spring Newsletter 2021
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OREGON WILD Winter Spring 2021 Volume 48, Number 1 OREGON'S FORESTS FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE Also: Priorities for the new administration 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 Oregon’s forests fight climate change {4-7} The e-mail address for each Oregon Wild Conservation & Restoration Coord. Doug Heiken staff member: [email protected] Western Oregon Field Coord. Chandra LeGue Priorities for the new administration {8-9} (for example: [email protected]) Northeastern Field Office Say goodbye to 2020 {15} P.O. Box 48, Enterprise, OR 97828 Forest Climate Policy Coordinator Lauren Anderson x210 Phone: 541.886.0212 Membership & Event Manager Gaby Diaz x 205 Development Director Jonathan Jelen x 224 NE Oregon Field Coordinator Rob Klavins Wildlife Policy Coordinator Danielle Moser x 226 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 Finance Manager Ellen Yarnell x 219 Ochoco Mountains Coordinator Jamie Dawson Wilderness Program Manager Erik Fernandez Oregon Wild Board of Directors Kate Ritley, President Faith Briggs Lisa Billings, Vice President Judy Clinton Clara Soh, Treasurer Vail Fletcher Stacey Rice, Secretary Jared Kennedy Vik Anantha Darcie Meihoff Naila Bhatri Seth Prickett www.facebook.com/OregonWild Oregon Wild is a tax-exempt, non-profit charitable organization. NICK HEILBRUNN As the sun sets on 2020, we’re looking ahead to @oregonwild @oregonwild Newsletter printed on recycled paper sourced 100% from post consumer waste new opportunities. content and FSC certified. Winter Spring 2021 Volume 48, Number 1 2 From the Director’s Desk Exhale...and then back to work Sean Stevens, Executive Director our living room, and we tuned in efforts to protect forests to save we stood in 2016. And we’re So, in the days to come, find for some comic relief on Saturday the climate (see feature article). eager to pursue the goals your peace and resolve in Night Live. We’re poised to reverse Trump embodied in our new strategic nature and then join policies across the board and plan (see page 14), including us in the With a flourish less poetic than ensure conservation efforts fighting for a healthier work ahead. s we all waited for election Wendell Berry (but just as slingshot ahead of where representative democracy. results in early November, evocative), SNL cast member myA wife and I took a quiet walk Michael Che delivered the most in the woods looking to escape apt analogy for this moment that the stress of inconclusive I’ve yet heard. He compared our The Peace of Wild Things headlines. The fall leaves were in current national mood to the full technicolor, some already scene in Shawshank Redemption When despair for the world grows in me giving in to the lure of the when the inmates all share cold and I wake in the night at the least sound ground below. A parade of beers on the roof of the prison in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, mushrooms sprouted from any – stealing a moment of normalcy I go and lie down where the wood drake and a temporary escape from the perch they could find. It really rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. realities of incarceration. was wonderful to be calmed and I come into the peace of wild things comforted amid the “peace of who do not tax their lives with forethought I think the point is that – with wild things.” of grief. I come into the presence of still water. coronavirus raging and our And I feel above me the day-blind stars systemic economic, racial, and On the Saturday following waiting with their light. For a time election day, news outlets called environmental inequalities no less present than before – now is a I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. the presidential election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. That time to both appreciate the moment and prepare for the work evening, we listened to the - Wendell Berry president-elect share the mission ahead. at hand, including “marshal[ing] the forces of science, achieving Nature can surely act as escape racial justice, and saving the and inspiration, but our fleeting climate.” We breathed a deep sigh experiences there should also of renewed hope, we danced in spur us to action. Oregon Wild is MEHRDAD SHOJAEI ready. We’re ramping up our 3 Winter Spring 2021 Volume 48, Number 1 hen most Americans Oregon’s oldest climate amounts of carbon, with fires W think of forests and solution is its best typically burning in a mosaic climate change, their minds climate solution pattern that leaves a mix of live go to tropical rainforests in and dead trees. Dead trees can the Amazon, Africa, or Not all forests are created equal store carbon in their trunks and Oregon's key Southeast Asia. Those when it comes to their ability roots for many decades, returning forests sustain indigenous to store carbon. Old-growth nutrients to the soil and communities, fish and and mature forests, with their providing important habitat for wildlife, and store vast mixture of ancient giants, snags, wildlife. to fighting amounts of carbon (carbon and young trees, as well as vast that is ultimately released as root networks, rich soils, and Some people, particularly in the carbon dioxide when they diversity of species, store far logging industry, have argued are logged). But closer to more carbon than young that cutting down old-growth climate change home, the lush forests of forests. Older forests stack up and mature forests, turning them Oregon and the Pacific particularly well against young to wood products, and replacing Northwest also play a vital “plantation” forests, the them with young trees is an role in capturing and storing unnaturally dense single- effective climate and carbon the atmospheric carbon that species stands of spindly strategy. This is the wrong is fueling global climate Douglas fir favored by the approach. Carbon is stored more change. Protecting and logging industry in Western securely in growing forests, not in restoring old-growth giants Oregon. In their 2018 report logged forests where only a small on public lands, and shifting on carbon and forests, the fraction ends up in wood to more sustainable logging Oregon Global Warming products. Researchers from practices on private lands, Commission concluded that Oregon State University are among the most Lauren Anderson, Forest Climate Policy Coordinator our forests actually rival tropical concluded that protecting important steps Oregon can rain forests for carbon density western forests with high and Steve Pedery,Conservation Director take to help protect the and quantity of carbon stored. medium carbon-storing abilities climate. would be the equivalent of Though they may not match halting eight years of burning For decades the climate the carbon stored per acre of fossil fuels across the same impacts of clearcutting and old-growth giants, younger region, and a 2018 study found old-growth logging have forests are also valuable - that the largest 1 percent of trees been ignored by federal particularly the wildlife-rich in mature and older forests agencies and Oregon’s state “early seral” forest that comprise 50 percent of the government. Oregon Wild is regenerates naturally after fires biomass, storing half the forest’s launching a new campaign and windstorms. And even carbon. that aims to change that. burned forests still store vast Winter Spring 2021 Volume 48, Number 1 4 DAVID PATTE In Oregon, scientists estimate forests in western Oregon’s coast conversion of forests to non- that only ten to twenty percent of range are only a third of their forest uses (such as crop land), the state’s ancient trees remain. ecological potential. While the and tax reform that could help These trees are not all logging industry is not going revitalize rural communities. permanently protected, despite away, smarter policy can help Further, reforming Oregon’s their incredible climate and meet demand for wood products logging rules and tax structures ecological value. Ensuring that while promoting better outcomes could motivate more climate remaining old-growth forests are for the climate and wildlife friendly forest practices and safeguarded from logging, and through longer logging rotations reward private landowners for that we restore more old-growth (the intervals of time forests are preserving older forests, and across federal public lands, is a allowed to grow between better government incentives critical first step in maximizing logging), less clearcutting, and could help open up new markets our forests’ ability to act as a financial incentives that provide for Forest Stewardship Council natural climate solution. As a landowners with economic (FSC) certified wood products, starting point, federal policy is alternatives to logging. including products made from needed to ensure America’s small diameter trees. Such mature western forests are Today, logging is not the practices could potentially have protected as a cornerstone of economic engine it once was, overlap with other state America's climate strategy. though policy makers often seem objectives, such as reducing stuck in the past. In contrast, wildfire risk and protecting FRANCIS EATHERINGTON Logging is Oregon’s largest Weyerhaeuser Millicoma Oregonians benefit from a Oregon’s clean drinking water, TreeFarm, western Oregon coast source of carbon emissions diversified economy that is less while allowing forest landowners reliant on resource extraction, and to reap economic benefits.