Reprinted with permission from the author, Bill Barton
Originally Published: Wednesday, Jul 6, 2011 in the Register Guard

Steve Bowers’ June 14 response to a June 8 guest viewpoint about log exports by Roy Keene claimed to want only the “facts.” Lets look at Bowers’ “facts.”

Bowers states, “Federal law restricts the export of unprocessed logs from public lands. Period!” Unfortunately, that is not true. The ban applies only to certain species. Others, including valuable Port Orford cedar, can be and regularly are exported whole.

Federal logs are also shipped overseas in huge quantities as pseudo-processed products, chips, pulp, slabs and cants, where the bark is removed and logs are squared up on three out of four sides.

These products could be processed here in our state, employing thousands of Oregonians in living wage jobs.
Bowers takes Keene to task for applying a jobs multiplier of 12 jobs per million feet to the hundreds of millions of board feet of logs being exported each year by private industry. The same equation can be found in Bureau of Land Management data, a result of empirical research, and on Peter DeFazio’s website.

Clearly Keene’s intent was to point up the hypocrisy of selling off publicly owned forests at a loss while shipping vast quantities of raw logs into Asian markets. Yet Bowers says, “Keene’s contention that additional jobs would be created if we halted log exports is not necessarily true.”

Does an Oregon State University Extension Service forester such as Bowers really believe that halting massive raw log exports wouldn’t create more domestic timber jobs?

Many exporters, including Weyerhaeuser, deposit the payments for these exported logs (think jobs) in offshore accounts. The tax rate on repatriated money is normally 35 percent. But in 2005, Congress passed a one-year law to allow that offshore money to be bought home at a 5.75 percent tax rate.

Major exporters of raw logs and others took advantage of the windfall and brought home $312 billion at the heavily discounted rate. This cost other taxpayers (you and me) billions. There is a bill in Congress right now to repeat this loathsome act.

In addition, large private timberland owners pay no severance or ad-valorem taxes in Oregon. In 1977 they paid a combined 12.5 percent tax. This is costing our state tens of millions of dollars a year. There goes your kid’s school.
Bowers says a raw log export ban would infringe on private property rights.

He doesn’t mention that the people of Oregon own the water, salmon and wildlife within these private forests — forests that are routinely degraded by non sustainable export logging. What about our rights?

Bowers claims that mills that purchase public timber can’t export logs. Doesn’t he know about the log export substitution loopholes, or the fact that many corporations that buy public timber also own subsidiary companies that export logs?

Bowers disputes Keene’s statement that there are 2 billion board feet of sold, uncut trees standing in our national forests. But there are 2 billion board feet of timber under contract and uncut, as Keene states.

The industry is speculating on your forest the way Wall Street speculated on housing derivatives. Why should we increase logging in the public forests at a loss? Selling more public assets into a radically depressed domestic market is throwing good money after bad. It makes no sense.

The Oregon Department of Forestry states that timber harvests in Oregon last year were up 21 percent from the historic low they hit in 2009. The department’s forest economist Gary Lettman said Chinese log buyers are the reason Oregon’s timber harvest saw a spike last year.

Lettman also said, “Mill owners are using log exports as a reason to argue for more logging on public forest land.”
It appears that Lettman agrees with Keene, and recognizes the clear connection between industry exporting more logs while demanding more public timber. Bowers accuses Keene of “using a single pulpit to express two entirely different topics: public timber sales and log exports.”

What part of this obvious connection does Bowers not get?

It’s time for the people of Oregon to demand an end to the taxpayer-subsidized theft of our national forests and the mindless destruction of our rivers, soils and wildlife.

It’s time that the logging corporations are fairly taxed on the money they are making while degrading our streams and soils. It’s time they stop poisoning our rural communities with herbicides and pesticides.

It’s time they stop exporting our jobs and community health.

It’s time for these corporations to benefit our counties and our nation and stop their destructive and predatory ways.
And it’s time for Steve Bowers to look at the real facts.

Bill Barton — a contractor and small timberland owner — has worked as a logger, geologic technician and environmental advocate at the Native Forest Council. He lives near McKenzie Bridge.