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Here is an editorial from Brainstorm Magazine, a conservative magazine in Oregon. The editor addresses the failure tourism and the real end goals of the Eco Fascists re no logging on federal/state properties.

Editorial
Wobbly Pillars
Brainstorm.com

December, 2001

Last month Gov. Kitzhaber announced that, in response to our deepening economic crisis, efforts would be directed at increasing Oregon tourism. Given the state of Oregon's economy, far be it from us to throw cold water on any idea. But surely the governor has noticed that of all the industries hardest hit and undermined by terrorist activity, tourism probably tops the list. The airlines are in trouble and associated travel industries--restaurants, hotels, convention centers--are all feeling the pinch (make that a python squeeze).

If we're going to reinvigorate the economy, we might want to choose a less wobbly pillar upon which to rebuild.

Maybe we should even go back to comments from a former governor (Running on Empty, by Vic Atiyeh, Brainstorm, November 1999) who said, "if Oregon were to avoid such dramatic unemployment rates in the future, we would need to do more than just tighten the budget. We would have to have an economy with more than just two and a half pillars!the good news today is that Oregon has a diversified economy, an economy built around five solid pillars: high-tech, international trade, tourism, timber and agriculture.

Atiyeh's successful plans to reshape and strengthen Oregon?s economy have been virtually undone by the years of the Clinton/Kitzhaber administrations and the subsequent reliance on high-tech and the forced slowdowns in agriculture and timber.

About the same time that Kitzhaber was making his case last month for tourism to save Oregon from recession, the Sierra Club and 12 other preservationist groups announced an ill-timed campaign to halt logging of mature and old-growth trees in Oregon's federal forests.

The preservationists' campaigns are especially ill-timed because in Oregon's current economic crisis it will be absolutely necessary to carefully inventory and examine all of Oregon's resources for their most productive use and best practices.

According to Joe Keating of the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club, "all forests older than 80 years should be protected so that younger forests can develop into old growth."

Let's get this straight: we should protect existing old growth with the goal of all young trees turning into old growth. Sounds like the end game is to stop the cutting of all trees everywhere.

And Keating confirms the Sierra Club goal: The national position is the end of all commercial logging on federal lands. Just about half of Oregon is federally owned.

But federal forests aren't the only targets. Michael Scarpitti, better known as ledge-sitter "Tre Arrow," recently fell to the ground from his tree-sitting perch in the Tillamook Forest, where he and others from the loose-knit Cascadia Forest Alliance were singing a similar no-logging tune about state forests. Scarpitti quickly recovered from his injuries to return to the protests of the Acey Line thin in the Tillamook Forest. This protest isn't just ill-timed; it's also poorly aimed, because the Tillamook is the forest where all interested parties took more than six years to carefully design a sustainable harvest plan for the millions of trees planted by ordinary Oregonians after devastating forest fires left the area a near moonscape. For almost 50 years locals have been waiting to thin and harvest, and waiting to finally rescue their struggling local economies and schools.

Timber, ask any forest scientist, is a renewable resource. And fortunately we have hard data on the supply of this renewable resource. The graph below shows the available supply of timber over the past 50 years(1999-00 are unavailable, but reports show the current trends worsening). The graph tracks the volume of trees being grown (in million board feet) against the volume of timber being harvested. This is the kind of real data that forest scientists concerned about fire load have been discussing these past years. But now perhaps Oregonians might be ready to take a harder look at what this data portends for our economy in the coming years, not to mention fire protection.

Oregon?s forests are being under-harvested. They are becoming over-grown. It's really that simple. Oregon is one of the best places on the planet to grow timber. And the timber grows whether the Sierra Club fills its coffers with donations to save it or not.

Oregon taxpayers can spend money fighting the fires caused by overgrowth or they can earn money by harvesting the available timber.

Sustainable yields from Oregon forests, state, federal and private, are good for the forests and good for the Oregon economy.

The resource, the renewable resource, is all around us. Oregon State University and University of Washington forest scientists have developed some of the best tracking data and the best forest management practices in the world for using this resource without depleting it.

Fortunately, Frank Gladics, who gathered the data and built the graph shown here, was recently hired as a committee staffer for the Senate Natural Resources Committee in Washington D.C. Perhaps from his post there he can help restore some sanity and balance to Oregon's economy by advocating for wise use of our bountiful resources.

Tourism must be revitalized; high-tech will continue to rebound; international trade must be nurtured; but natural resources, timber and agriculture, are Oregon's greatest, most fundamental strength. To turn our back on this bounty is impractical and wasteful. Oregonians can afford to be neither.

Dave, do you have one of these saved?

Enviralists:

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They are very easily adapted to any of the bump list groups-- you just change the "name" in 2 places, and alter the group number to suit.

Oregon's forests are being under-harvested. They are becoming over-grown. It's really that simple. Oregon is one of the best places on the planet to grow timber. And the timber grows whether the Sierra Club fills its coffers with donations to save it or not.

Here is another area where the Metolius River serves as an excellent example. That area has been very heavily logged for many decades -- even as the very same area was a mecca for nature lovers. My mom's family has been going there since the 30s, and my dad's since the 'teens, and continuous logging had been going on the entire time. It was never an issue until clear-cutting and "eco-friendly" stuff started in the '70s or so.

The people who talk about preserving it have apparently never walked through the "old growth forests" in the area -- there are many big trees, certainly, but also many stumps, and a positive maze of old logging roads. Substantial logging even took place in the "unspoiled" areas bordering the west bank of the river. And yet even the logged areas weren't particularly ugly -- probably because they were never clear-cut, but instead selectively logged, so they returned to "natural-looking" after only a couple of years.

The lesson is, of course, that logging needn't destroy anything. And the fires and bug plagues of the past few years suggest that not logging leaves the forest open to far more destructive threats.

I think the real issue here is primarily psychological: the people filing suit seem genuinely to believe that it's possible to wish into existence a world where nothing dies, ever. To them, logging is murder, and making money -- especially on logging -- is worse than murder.

Powerful statement...most of the government owned 50% of Oregon is in the tree growing part of the state...

Stop the attacks by the wacko, extreme left-wing, enviro-nazis terrorist's on our Freedoms !!

Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!

Molon Labe !!

Thanks for the ping, the pics, and the updates, Gramps.
You have done yeoman's work on this issue!
Keep up the great work!;o)

Well, according the Greenies, none of this would have ever happened if we hadn't allowed big-mega-corps to build and sell Suburbans in the first place!

I guess I'll have to do my part to help you guys out in Oregon next winter by coming down to Mt. Bachelor again to ski. Such an effort, such a sacrifice...but I'm up to it.