The timber industry is a target on two fronts. Representative Pam Marsh (D-Ashland) and Nancy Nathanson (D-Eugene) propose to extend or make permanent the privilege harvesting tax with automatic increases - funding for the Oregon Forest Resources Institute Fund (HB 2430, HB 2389). On another front, Representatives Andrea Salinas (D-Lake Oswego), Paul Holvey (D-Eugene), Khanh Pham (D-Portland), Marty Wilde (D-Eugene), and Senator Jeff Golden (D-Ashland) propose to eliminate the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) and the Oregon Forest Resources Institute Fund (HB 2357).

HB 2357 would create a separate Sound Forestry Practices Subaccount and the funds in the Oregon Forest Resources Institute Fund from privilege harvesting taxes will be transferred to the General Fund. It poses the questions of proper use of those tax funds that had a specific purpose.

Calling for the elimination of OFRI, they propose to require the State Forestry Department to develop and apply sound forestry practices to:
(a) Promote forest health;
(b) Incorporate regulation or monitoring of pesticide use in forests;
(c) Employ adaptive resource management; and
(d) As related to forest management, advance climate science or climate policy.

The Legislature created OFRI in 1991 to advance public understanding of forests, forest management and forest products, and to encourage sound forestry through landowner education. It has been a lobbying arm for Oregon’s timber industry. Therein lies the problem for the Governor’s carbon agenda.

Governor Kate Brown crafted her cap-and-trade bill in 2018 to enact sweeping limits on greenhouse gas emissions that targeted industries, and timber was not excluded. OPB reported that OFRI worked to discredit the research that calculated for the first time how much carbon was lost to the atmosphere as a result of cutting trees in Oregon. It concluded that logging, once thought to have no negative effect on global warming, was among the state’s biggest climate polluters.

A new OFRI report highlights the major role Oregon’s forests play in keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, underscoring the importance of using strategies that enhance these forests’ carbon-sequestering superpowers to combat climate change. The vast forests that cover nearly half the state capture and store significant amounts of atmospheric carbon, both in growing trees and wood products sourced from those forests, according to their Carbon in Oregon’s Managed Forests science review report. “As we work to solve the climate crisis, this report will inform Oregonians about ways we can harness our forests’ natural carbon-storing abilities in the fight against climate change,” says OFRI Director of Forestry Mike Cloughesy, who served as one of the report’s technical editors.

The primary goal of OFRI is to educate the public about forestry and responsible forest management. Is it that OFRI’s forest management doesn’t support carbon taxation that prompts elimination? Numerous Legislators have introduced bills to reinstate the tax credit for reforestation (HB 2632, HB 2782). If timber happens to retain their lobby arm in OFRI, they will surely face increased privilege harvesting taxation.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2021-01-16 16:36:39

Last Update: 2021-01-16 17:47:11