When Oregon land-use laws and rules were written back in the 1970s, timber companies cut down trees, hauled them to the mill, cut them into boards, and sold them to homebuilders. Now, some homebuilders go into the forest, cut down trees, piece together a home on site, then carefully dismantle it to take to the homebuyer’s lot for final assembly.
The problem is that piecing together the home is considered secondary forest processing, which is illegal under Oregon land-use rules for land zoned “timber resource.” As a result, some log homebuilders are being regulated out of business.
The reasons for these rules are nonsensical. Oregon is not going to run out of forest land. According to the Department of Agriculture’s 2007 National Resources Inventory, all of the developed land in Oregon, including both urban and rural developments, amounts to just 2.2 percent of the state. The density of Oregon urban areas is only about 20 percent greater than the national average, so if those rules didn’t exist, the amount of developed land would probably only be about 2.6 percent of the state. Half the land is federal and most of it is never going to be developed.
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Rules can be updated, but that takes a lot of time and effort and the mom-and-pop log homebuilders can’t afford to do it or wait for it. In the meantime, those rules stifle innovation and create a bias towards big corporations, which can afford to lobby for changes. They also lead to crony capitalism, in which the wealthy are able to get rules changed for themselves while everyone else pays the cost. This is just one of many ways that land-use regulation needlessly creates a business-hostile environment.
This is just one of many ways that land-use regulation needlessly creates a business-hostile environment.
This anecdote is a stretch to make the point for sure. Nevertheless i agree that ag and forest land should be able to make money so it doesn’t get developed and paved over. Adding a few approved uses isn’t that hard.
But don’t expect success if you try another
anti-zoning campaignPrivate Property Rights initiative. It’s too easy to explain the issue in under two minutes for it to work.DS
So, in Oregon we have successfully driven most of the Timber industry away, and much of our Timber now is imported from Canada. That is hypocritical, because we have given up control, we can’t control the environmental impact in Canada, and we are benefiting from its negative impact there, and absolving ourselves of any responsibility what-so-ever.
Tom,
Canada has decided to log all its beetle kill and use its forests as pulp-fiber resources. The US has decided to keep its forests for watershed protection, multiple-use, etc. If you drive thru eastern BC, you’ll note the vastly different forestry approaches. I wonder if you’d enjoy the forest resource there, and I wonder if you’d be concerned at thousands upon thousands of hectares of stumps.
DS
I recently drove from Jasper to Vancouver. I saw some recently logged land, but mostly I saw miles and miles (and more mile and more miles) of forest.
You can rationalize it any way you want, but we are sending our money to Canada, our people are unemployed, and underemployed, for a readily available resource, that was planted to harvest, and it is right here in our backyard.
That’s a nice drive, surely. Envious!
I can see a ton of logging around Kamloops and going down the hill into Edmonton and Red Deer, and generally along the eastern front where lodgepole predominates (as opposed to higher-up where fir predominates). We drove out to Penticton-Osoyoos area and vast logged expanses were easily seen from the highway,
The “softwood wars’ starting from the 1990s were a result of Canada aggressively cutting and flooding the market with wood from beetle kill.
DS
I recently drove from Jasper to Vancouver. I saw some recently logged land, but mostly I saw miles and miles (and more mile and more miles) of forest.
May have been just an illusion.
Logging tends not to occur along major highways as it attracts attention and because highways tend to follow major watercourses, which are generally protected from logging. Check out HWY 62 in Southern Oregon on Google maps. Driving along the Crater Lake Highway, it looks like old growth forests have been preserved. (Check street view for this.) Satellite imagery shows massive clear cuts not far from the highway corridor.
Frank’s explicit point about “beauty strips” is a good one. A prof of mine at UW had a grad student who did her thesis on visual preferences for such beauty strips on the Olympic Peninsula – yes, there’s a demand for that.
DS
Several years ago, there was an outcry in Mendocino County to the property owners along the Cal Western Skunk Train route not to clearcut within eyeshot of the tourists. I believe it was resolved by the owners of the train buying out a lot of the property so the solid view of redwoods would continue.
I hate to have to be the person to point this out, but remember all those jobs lost and people hurt in order to save the spotted owl? Now it turns out the spotted owl is just being out competed by its cousin the barred owl (difference is spots vs. bar coloration). The old growth forests were just such bad habitat that the barred owls left them alone so the spotted owl still hung on there. Evolution is a bitch, but you can’t fight it in the long run.
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022505341_barredowlsxml.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-northern-owls-ousted-barred-owl.html
Sandy,
I posted this story (Government now killing owls to protect owls) to my FB page back in July. $3m for the feds to kill 3600 owls. $1000 an owl? WTF? Our tax money at work.
All my NPS and environmentalist friends were silent. All but two, one of whom is a libertarian. The comments: “Cue the keystone cops theme” and, from my libertarian friend, “Monty Python couldn’t have scripted government policy better. The sooner these loons go bankrupt the better.”
My passion for the environment is what steered me to libertarianism. Government is by far the worst polluter and despoiler of the environment.
Now it turns out the spotted owl is just being out competed by its cousin the barred owl …The old growth forests were just such bad habitat that the barred owls left them alone so the spotted owl still hung on there
No. The Great Plains were a barrier to westward migration of the barred owl. Human settlement and subsequent tree planting allowed them a pathway westward to the Rockies. So it’s not really evolution. Or ‘bad habitat’.
DS
Apparently the A-1 California School of Trucking and Urban Planning teaches that humans are not a product of evolution.
The world is changing. Always has, always will.
No. The Great Plains were a barrier to westward migration of the barred owl. Human settlement and subsequent tree planting allowed them a pathway westward to the Rockies. So it’s not really evolution. Or ‘bad habitat’.
Interesting. I didn’t know that. In addition to tree planting, supplanting indigenous peoples with fence-building farmers played a role as Plains Indians burned the steppes and plains quite regularly, severely retarding woodlands, as grass=bison.
Barred owls are native to Mexico and how they got to the NW USA is just speculation. They also interbreed with spotted owls to produce”sparred owls”. So the whole spotted owl issue is a fight to keep the pure coloration of some owls for a few more generations.
“Barred owls are native to Mexico and how they got to the NW USA is just speculation.”
Source?
According to an article in Natural Resources Year in Review, “Native to eastern forests, the barred owl (Strix varia) has moved into the Pacific Northwest over the last several decades, likely as a result of human-caused changes in the landscape.”
Subspecies: There are three subspecies of the Barred Owl in the United States and Canada. There is also a fourth subspecies found in Mexico.
S. v. varia is the most widespread. It ranges from NW California north to SE Alaska east across Canada, C & E USA (S to N Texas and North Carolina).
S. v. georgica is spread across the SE US from Georgia and Florida W to E Texas.
S. v. helveola is resident in southern Texas.
S. v. sartorii is resident in C Mexico.
The NW US barred owl range is connected to the eastern barred owl range through the boreal forests of Canada, not across the great plains of the US.
Apparently the A-1 California School of Trucking and Urban Planning teaches that humans are not a product of evolution…The world is changing. Always has, always will.
That’s one way, I guess, to try and distract away from one’s erroneous assertions.
DS
According to research by the A-1 California School of Trucking and Urban Planning, the ecosystem would collapse if owls wore “bars” instead of “spots”, and the noise from that collapse would set off earthquakes and tsunamis around the world.
The urban planning ecologists suggest shooting the barred owls, painting spots on owls, or fighting evolution for a few owl generations by throwing thousands of people out of work.
Come, come now. I’ve given Dan a lot of grief, but his degree from UC Davis is worth more than the preceding fallacy-laden attempt at an argument, the sole purpose of which is to distract from getting caught using misinformation.
Direct your ire at Federal wildlife officials, not urban planning ecologists that have nothing to do with any of this.
Frank, seriously, if humans are a product of evolution, then why are anthropogenic effects also not a product of evolution? This planner/environmental fetish that anything man does is not “natural” is just internally illogical.
If you want to blow your mind, read “The Botany of Desire” on how tulips and apples and other plants have outsmarted Homo sapiens in the evolutionary game.
“if humans are a product of evolution, then why are anthropogenic effects also not a product of evolution?”
I tend to agree with this point, but its effectiveness was lost in the presentation.
To this point, I often argued that attempting to remove invasive species often causes more harm than good. For example in a Utah national park, bio techs cut and sprayed tamarisk in riparian areas. The toxic spray entered the ecosystem; one tech, an SCA intern, felt terrible after she accidentally sprayed a frog and killed it.
Better, IMO, to let nature sort it out until such time as fantastical technology allows restoration without side effects. (Right.) Jack Turner, in The Abstract Wild, also advocates this approach.
I’m inclined to agree when it comes to the Barred Owl.
However, I don’t agree that humans should continue contributing to extinctions, nor do I feel that even one more acre of old-growth forest should be logged; there is so little left. As the apex sentient species on earth, humans have the potential to transcend evolution and to minimize negative consequences to other species and the environment.
why are anthropogenic effects also not a product of evolution?
Because extinction, introduction of invasives, pollution, fragmentation, chemical burdens etc etc aren’t a change in inherited characteristics over generations.
And I agree it is too late to try and prevent the extirpation of the spotted owl. The barred owl was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back – had not widespread logging and fragmentation decimated habitat, we may not be talking about the (likely) vain attempts to save the spotted owl.
DS
We have more forested land in Oregon today than any other time, yet those who don’t live here, go out of their way to keep us from managing our Federal Forests, so they can be as healthy as our State Forests.
“We have more forested land in Oregon today than any other time”
Evidence?
All I can find is a pro-timber website that maintains Oregon has 92% of forested land when compared to 1850. The Willamette Valley was cleared for farms and settlement, and it’s only about 25% forested now, having lost 91% of its old conifer area.
Also consider that forested areas in Oregon have increased due to the “Juniper invasion” of Eastern Oregon. When it comes to timber and the environment, not all forests are created equal, and human intervention in fire ecology has caused an imbalance in juniper populations. Its range is expanding 1.5% per year, and it’s invading ponderosa forests. The juniper range has gone from 1.5m acres in the 1930s to 9m today.
In other words, “more forested land today” is not the best metric to measure forest or ecosystem health.
You didn’t use old-growth or mature forests as a way to gauge forest health. According to a study published by the Conservation Biology Institute, “historical extent of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest was roughly two-thirds of the total land area. Since the time of European settlement, approximately 72% of the original old-growth conifer forest has been lost…” Only 7% of the original old-growth area is strictly protected, and it’s mostly high elevation, non-commercial species in rugged terrain.
And the ODF is hardly a managing for healthy forest ecysystems, that is unless you consider the following healthy: run-off from logging roads that endangers fish; chemical spraying; clear-cutting that leads impacts wildlife habitat and causes landslides.
Old Growth isn’t a sign of forest health, and clear cutting is a healthy forest management tool. Yes and the spotted owl, fiasco – and the lies behind it, caused more damaging forest management policy, and hurt more wildlife, and exposed more forest to insect damage and disease, it just show what kind of arm chair amateurs, are behind this “environmental” movement.
“Old Growth isn’t a sign of forest health”
Evidence, please.
“clear cutting is a healthy forest management tool”
Evidence, please. And not only from pro-logging sites.
“the spotted owl… caused more damaging forest management policy, and hurt more wildlife, and exposed more forest to insect damage and disease”
Evidence, please.
“it just show what kind of arm chair amateurs, are behind this “environmental” movement.”
Evidence that this is driven by “arm chair amateurs” and please stop using scare quotes.
You’re getting the picture, right?
Put up or shut up.
And please respond to your previous assertion that there is “more forested land in Oregon today than any other time”. Please consider the evidence I presented that those forests aren’t necessarily and indicator of ecosystem health.
I also see you ignored proof that ODF sprays and that their road building is causing significant ecosystem impacts. Care to recant your assertion about ODF management?