Oregon's Sanctimonious Voters

Money doesn't grow on trees...

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My old friend Bob Zybach lives on the opposite side of the clock from me.

While I sleep, he’s generally busy filling my email box with new and always interesting insights concerning the roles Indians have played in shaping Oregon's forests for thousands of years, current forest mismanagement, subsequent wildfire and, lastly, public betrayal in Oregon’s breathtakingly biased state government.

Last week was no exception. He presented a resolution at the Oregon Logging Conference that again exposes the Oregon Department of Lands attempt to steal the Elliott State Forest and its Common School Fund from rural taxing districts in western Oregon. OLC’s members unanimously approved the resolution.

Several essays on this website - among them Who Steals from Children - trace the history of the 3.4 million acres of Common School Land granted to Oregon by the federal government when it became the nation's thirty-third state in 1859.

Most of these acres were subsequently transferred to the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, but 681,000 acres are held in six state forests including the Elliott, easily the most productive timber growing forest in Oregon.

These 681,000 acres are the Common School Lands that the Oregon Lands Department is attempting to steal from rural Oregon counties under the guise of its phony carbon credits scheme. Bob exposed the scheme in an essay that appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle on August 20, 2024.

The Land Board's deceptions might have worked had not Oregon State University President, Jayathi Murthy, blown the scheme out of the water in a letter to the State Land Board in which she regretfully withdrew OSU from its tentative agreement to assume management of the Elliott.

Murthy withdrew because the Land Board intends to manage the Elliott as a defacto wilderness. Thus, no meaningful research, no timber harvesting, and no money for the Common School Fund.

And thus, OLC’s unanimous acceptance of Bob's well-crafted resolution.

The whole sorry mess reminded me that both Bob and I had addressed the Oregon Logging Conference years ago. Bob in 1996 and me in 1993. My 1993 speech brought the house down. Loggers were standing on table tops cheering when I finished. When the President Calls, Do You Hang Up? – seems apropos given the whirlwind of events unfolding in Washington, D.C.

Bob appeared as a panelist in 1993. His remarks also seem apropos given the flurry of scurrilous events that have unfolded at the State Land Board and in the Oregon State Legislature.

OLC’s 1996 proceedings booklet – in which Bob’s remarks appear – is a trip down memory lane. Many that I knew well have gone on to their final rewards: Dave Burwell, Bruce Blew, Paul Ehinger, Hap Huffman, Tom Goodall and Will Heath, who was President of the Oregon Logging Congress in 1995.

It all circles back to the ongoing advancement of a false narrative - that the relationship between conservation and management is mutually exclusive - and humans are an enemy to the natural environment.

Oregon’s rural timber, farming and ranching economies and communities have been destroyed by sanctimonious voters in Multnomah, Clackamas, Marion, Lane and Deschutes county. Clamoring for "wilderness" while the communities that live in and next to wild spaces are ignored, dismissed, and vilified.

Again, the demand for selective compromise that serves not science - but agenda. Urban voters controlling the health and economy of communities and lands where they do not live or work. Ironically, the expectation is that with no investment or support - these lands and communities should be available for their recreation.

That is some high end entitlement.

It is no wonder that citizens in 15 central and eastern Oregon counties want to become part of Idaho...and it seems the Idaho legislature is ready to welcome them with open arms.