Oregon Public Broadcasting

You’ve heard the old saw: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound?”  

Timber companies in Oregon must follow strict rules when they harvest trees.  But will anyone follow those rules if no one is around to enforce them?

That’s the question on the minds of state regulators known as stewardship foresters.  The budget axe in Salem is threatening to change the way they do their job.  Correspondent Chris Lehman reports from Tillamook.

Dan Cotton looks out over a hillside high in Oregon’s Coast Range.  In front of him a crew of loggers attaches a bundle of trees to a sort of zip line so that the dangling wood doesn’t damage the ground as it’s pulled up the hill to the awaiting truck.

Dan Cotton looks out over a timber project near Tillamook, Oregon.

Dan Cotton:  “We’re just kind of looking to see to make sure the guys are doing a good job on keeping the damage to the hillside to an absolute minimum. It looks like they’ve done a good job with that.  Not much disturbance out there.”

If the loggers mess up, Cotton isn’t afraid to come down hard.  He once slapped a fine on a church camp after its owners started harvesting trees there without permission.

But he’s concerned that proposed cuts to the Department of Forestry’s budget will mean stewardship foresters like him will spend less time heading off violations before they happen, and more time responding to complaints.

Dan Cotton:  “When you go into the enforcement mode what you’re really doing is you’re going out there and you’re trying to correct a problem after it’s occurred.  Some of these sites that are damaged, it takes a decade, maybe two decades for the site to come back.”

Cotton is one of 57 stewardship foresters in Oregon.  Almost half would be laid off under a proposed state budget.  It comes as lawmakers are grappling with a four billion dollar shortfall.  

The possible cutback to a program that enforces Oregon’s forestry laws concerns one environmental group.  The Nature Conservancy’s spokesman Stephen Anderson, says his group is asking lawmakers to think long and hard before they cut funding for stewardship foresters. 

Stephen Anderson:  “What’s really important is to not cut so far that a program like this, that’s so important to Oregon’s future sustainability is devastated so that we would have to go back and rebuild it from scratch in the future.”

It’s not just environmental groups that are concerned.  A group that lobbies on behalf of Oregon’s largest timber companies is also worried.

A logging crew prepares trees for the mill in the Coast Range near Tillamook.

Ray Wilkeson of the Oregon Forest Industries Council says a deep cut in the number of stewardship foresters could leave large landowners vulnerable to criticism.

Ray Wilkeson:  “It creates the possibility that a concern could be raised, unfounded, that ‘Well the money’s not there and therefore the industry’s just going to be able to do bad things and nobody’s going to stop them.’ It’s not going to be the case but that perception could be created, so that’s the concern.”

Wilkeson insists timber companies will adhere to Oregon’s Forest Practices Act regardless of whether there’s anyone around to keep an eye on them.  

Meanwhile, some environmental groups aren’t mourning these potential cuts.  A spokesman for southern Oregon based KS Wild said Oregon’s logging regulations are so weak that there’s little point in enforcing them in the first place.

Dan Cotton disagrees with that.  He says he’s constantly on the lookout for potential damage to streams and other wildlife habitat.  He already has to review hundreds of logging applications a year, and if he loses half his colleagues that number could skyrocket.  

He says that would keep him from getting out into the field to do first-hand inspections, which he says yield information that even the best map-maker can leave out.

Dan Cotton:  “It’s not uncommon to come up with that heron rookery that wasn’t on the maps.  Or the bald eagle nest that wasn’t on the map.  Or the fish creek that wasn’t on the map out there.”

Cotton says missing out on details like that would leave Oregon’s environment more vulnerable to damage.  But in a year of tough budget choices, the mission of stewardship foresters like Cotton is not ranking high on the priority list.