Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio is floating a proposal to turn the Bureau of Land Management’s “Oregon and California” lands into two trusts, one focusing on timber production and one focusing on environmental protection. This plan was partly developed by frequent Antiplanner commenter Andy Stahl.
The Oregon & California (O&C) Railroad land grant lands now managed by the BLM are shown in orange; green is national forests; click for a larger view.
The Antiplanner has long supported the idea of turning public lands into fiduciary trusts. My most-recent proposal would also create two trusts: one driven by markets and the other to protect non-market-resources. Some of the revenue from the first trust would go to fund the second.
The DeFazio-Stahl proposal is slightly different, more like the New Zealand solution, which is to divide the lands into two. One chunk of land would include mainly old-growth forests that have not been logged; the other would mainly be partly or fully logged forests. The latter forests would be the base for the timber trust; the former would be in the care of the environmental trust.
