Rural Oregonians Respond to the Draft Elliott State "Research" Forest Plan

The Oregon Department of State Lands has released its Draft Elliot State Research Forest Forest Management Plan Community Engagement Report. I don’t know why the word “Elliott” is missing a “t” on the report’s title page but I presume someone will correct this misspelling.

The Elliott – Oregon’s first state forest - takes its name from Francis Elliott, Oregon’s first state forester, appointed by the Board of Forestry at its founding meeting, March 30, 1911. During his 19 years at the helm, Elliott was instrumental in the Oregon legislature’s decision to develop a state forest system from public domain lands granted by Congress at statehood in 1859.

Normally, Congress granted only one section [640 acres] per township but Oregon got two sections [1,280 acres per township] because of its more mountainous and difficult to develop terrain. Statewide, 3.5 million acres – with the proviso that Sections 16 and 36 were to be used to generate revenue for rural schools.

The history of these events is exceptionally well told in the late Jerry Phillips’ Caulked Boots and Cheese Sandwiches, a memoir recounting his years with the Elliott. He joined its Coos Bay staff in  in 1956 and was the Elliott’s Chief Forester for 19 years before his retirement in 1989.

Many scholars believe that Phillips’ work was key to turning the Elliott into Oregon’s most productive forest – a tree growing marvel that yields more timber volume per acre than any other publicly owned forest in the state. Counties that share in the timber harvesting revenue generated by the Elliott and other state forests have enjoyed a revenue bonanza shared by dozens of rural taxing districts.

Not surprisingly, the Elliott has become a target of anti-forestry mobs in Portland and Eugene that are pressuring the state legislature to turn the Elliott into a “research” forest where no management and no commercial timber harvesting would occur.

Under the guise of saving old growth and in service to the climate change banner, the mob had hoped to cover its tracks by convincing the Oregon State University College of Forestry to take over management of the Elliott.

Fortunately, OSU President, Jayathi Murthy, saw through their deception. What is there to research in a forest in which there is no harvesting and thus no way to compare, measure or analyze the positive and negative impacts of natural and human-caused disturbances?

Evergreen got involved in this political sideshow for two reasons:

·        We were founded in southern Oregon in 1985 and still feel a kinship to the state’s rural timber communities.

·        Bob Zybach, who has led the charge against the anti-forestry mob’s attempt to hijack the Elliott, has been a colleague since we interviewed him for an Evergreen cover story in 1994.

The topic was the proposed Clinton Forest Plan and the question uppermost in my mind involved the boxes of research material that filled his Corvallis rental. Solid evidence that refuted the Clinton Administration claim that the Pacific Northwest has been a vast sea of old growth before white settlement began.

“Where did you get all of this research,” I asked Bob as I surveyed perhaps 100 boxes of photocopied research. “The Clinton forest planning team says it looked high and low for photographs of nineteenth century forests in western Oregon and Washington and couldn’t find any.”

 “Oh, that’s easy,” he casually replied. “I have a library card.”

 Bob’s remark enraged members of the planning team – but I had made a friend for life.

Over the last five years, Bob and I have collaborated on several essays focused on wildfire, it’s history and the well documented use of fire by Indian tribes that have lived in western Oregon for thousands of years. Indians used fire mainly to clear land for agricultural purposes. All of Bob’s essays are posted on our website.

Separately, Bob assembled The Elliott: An Anthology. It includes 23 well researched essays he wrote for the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Journal between March 2012 and January 2024. The entire anthology also appears on this website.

His last essay, “Requiem for a Boondoggle: The Elliott State Research Forest” is the capstone of his monumental effort to prevent the Elliott from being turned into an 83,000 acre no-harvest reserve run by the Bird Alliance of Oregon, formerly the litigious Portland Audubon.

My contribution to Bob’s Anthology was to write Who Steals from Children, an essay posted on our website last May that explains that the proposed research forest deprives western Oregon’s rural school kids of a quality education historically funded by Elliott State Forest timber harvest receipts.

The chart below illustrates the slow motionn collapse of the Elliott's timber harvesting program that began during the spotted owl wars as layer after layer of federal and state regulation made it increasingly difficult for the Elliott State Forest staff to maintain their historic management program. The lower right corner red line coincides with the 2020 creation of the OSU Research Forest. What's left for rural school kids? Nothing.

Switch reels covering decades. Come forward to the recently released  Draft Elliot State Research Forest Forest Management Plan Community Engagement Report. The engagement report was prepared by ICF, an international consulting firm hired by the Department of State Lands to organize public comments requested by the Department.

I asked Bob what he thought of ICF’s report. On the plus side, he said it was “well done and a clear departure from previous public responses to this proposal. Kent and I were apparently heard!

The Kent that Bob references is Kent Tresidder, a partner in Tresidder Tree Farms, LLC and Lampa Creek Land and Livestock, LLC. Kent is also an Oregon State University forestry graduate and a member of the Society of American Foresters.

The Department of State Lands received more than 450 responses to its request for comment on its draft forest plan. ICF classified 23, including Zybach’s, as “unique” – meaning they were original comments on specific aspects of the plan. Some 400 more were form letters signed and submitted by members of the anti-forestry mob. Zybach reported that "unique" comments received “far more attention than mass duplications. Finally!”

“ICF did a very good job of actually reading and reorganizing the 450 or so responses to the plan. Large segments of my review are reproduced verbatim, and complementary comments and quotes from Kent Tresidder and Rod Taylor are also included.” Taylor is a western Oregon radio personality who does a weekly podcast focused on coastal issues including politics and forestry.

This is all good news. The only remaining questions are [1] what will the newly appointed Department of State Lands Elliott Board do – if anything - when it meets today [September 12] and [2] what will happen when they present their Draft Plan for final acceptance at the State Land Board meeting on October 15?

 Here’s hoping the Board rejects the overtures of the underhanded and deceitful Bird Alliance of Oregon.