By Ron Sadler

“Congress giveth, and Congress taketh away.”

If you are looking for a quick explanation as to why the golden torrent of funds once provided to the western Oregon counties by the BLM’s O&C timber program has dried up to a bare trickle, the above play on an old folk saying might provide a hint. At different times, and in different ways, that is precisely what has happened.

The O&C lands were originally granted by Congress to a railroad company in 1866 to help finance the construction of a railroad from Portland to California. This was a common practice at the time, and hundreds of millions of acres were granted to various companies across the nation to help finance the construction of a railroad network.

The terms of the grant was specific as to the timing of the completion of the railroad as well as the requirement that the land be sold to bona fide settlers at a specific price. This was an era of wide-spread fraud involving lands within the Public Domain, and Oregon lead the league in many instances in terms of the audacity and creativity of some of the illegal schemes.

Congress revoked the original grant and took back the remaining lands into Federal ownership in 1916. Since the O&C lands had gone onto the county tax rolls at the time of the original grant to the railroad company, management of the revested lands was given the Federal Land Office with the idea that revenues produced would be adequate to pay the county tax bills.

Since the Federal Land Offices had no infrastructure or expertise to implement a formal management program, Congress had to pass special legislation on several occasions to appropriate funds due the counties.

Finally, in 1937, Congress passed the O&C Sustained Yield Act which stated that, while the lands were to remain in Federal ownership, the timber thereon was to be managed and sold so as to provide a perpetual source of timber on a sustainable basis to the local counties and communities. Further, it set up a revenue sharing agreement whereby the counties containing O&C lands would receive 75% of the revenues from timber sales with the remaining 25% going to the Federal treasury. However, until the Federal treasury was reimbursed for management expenses and taxes paid prior to revestment, the counties would receive only 50% of the timber sale receipts.

The O&C Act itself presented somewhat of an enigma, then and now. Because it recognized to maintain watersheds and provide for recreational uses in addition to timber production, it is sometimes hailed as being the first multiple-use act. However, its emphasis on long-term timber production as an aid to community stabilization has earned it the label of a dominant-use act.

Management responsibility for the O&C lands was given to the O&C Revested Lands Administration, headed by pioneering forester Walter Horning, and placed within the Department of Interior. Finally, in 1946, the Bureau of Land Management was formed and given the responsibility for management of the O&C program.

The post-war years saw a great boom in housing starts, and timber prices rose accordingly. The golden era of O&C timber receipts flowing to the counties had begun in a volume that exceeded all prior expectations.

In the early 1950’s, the Federal treasury had been reimbursed for all prior expenditures, and the full 75% began to flow back to the O&C counties. This unprecedented flow of funds generated on Federal lands back to the local counties was unique to western Oregon, and soon caught the eye of Congressman and Senators from other parts of the country. Talk began to surface within the halls of Congress relating to revising the O&C formula for income distribution. In a successful attempt to stifle this type of discussion, the O&C counties agreed to go back to accepting 50% of the O&C receipts directly and returning 25% to the Feds to be directly invested in the O&C program for such things as intensive timber management practices, recreational facilities, and access roads. These were the funds that came to be called the “plowback” funds.

The plowback funds turned out to be a good investment for the counties. The O&C lands were, by far, the most intensely managed Federal forest lands anywhere. The BLM’s O&C forest management program was the most efficient within the Federal sector, and maintained a benefit/cost ratio of about 3 to 1.

Largely because of the intensity of management made possible by the plowback funds, by 1970 the non-declining even-flow allowable cut level for the O&C lands had risen to 1.2 billion board feet annually. State of the art computer models verified this level of harvest was sustainable for 400 years into the future.

The BLM normally re-inventoried their forests and re-calculated the allowable cut every decade. As preparations were made for the 1980 calculation, it was apparent that major changes were ahead and that a new era had begun.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) went into effect in 1970. It required specific documentation that important decisions were based on an objective and transparent consideration of environmental, economic, and social impacts. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was passed in 1973 and its main purpose was to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved.

In addition to these new legal mandates, it was readily apparent major changes were affecting the forests themselves.
The BLM’s major goal for the management of the O&C lands has always been to have them provide the maximum non-declining even-flow of timber to the local and regional economy. In order to do this in perpetuity, it would be essential to configure the forest over time so that the oldest stands corresponded to the age at which average annual growth rates peaked

This means that, in our Douglas-fir region, the maximum sustainable even-flow of timber production on the O&C lands would be possible only when the oldest age-class of timber growing in the forest was approx. 80 years old. Inventories and computer projections showed that, in 1980, the O&C lands were within 10 to 30 years of reaching this configuration, depending on specific location.

By 1980, old-growth stands 250+ years of age were already gone from most private and industrial forest lands in western Oregon, and would be gone from the O&C lands within a few decades given harvest levels then in effect.

A very strong ecological case could be made that the Douglas-fir ecosystem would not be sustainable over time were the older age classes to be removed permanently, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this essay. What is inescapable, however, is the fact that somewhere between 300 and 1,000 plants and animals are dependent upon Douglas-fir old-growth and thus subject to protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Obviously, the 1980 allowable cut computation would be a whole new ballgame. We also knew we would have to clear the ground rules with the Department of Interior back in DC.

A knowledgeable, dedicated, and creative staff in the BLM Coos Bay office developed a prototype plan that would have complied with all of the new legal, ecological, and economic constraints. It would have maintained a distribution of functioning portions of the old-growth ecosystem, and would have reduced the growing urgency at that time to list the spotted owl as an endangered species. Our estimate was that, if this type of plan were to be implemented across all the O&C lands, BLM’s timber output, and the related timber receipts flowing to the O&C counties, would have been reduced by about 20%.

We took the proposal back east into the smoke and fog that usually surrounds the Potomac during the time that the Reagan Revolution was gaining traction.. We worked our way up through the hierarchy of the BLM, and eventually found ourselves briefing the top assistant to the Secretary of Interior.

He came fully equipped with gotcha-type questions obviously prepared in advance by his staff. He seemed somewhat taken aback when it became obvious he could not overcome the science or the logic of the proposal,

Finally, he gave a verbal permission to release the proposed plan to the public, and to implement its principles in the rest of the O&C district offices.
We left Washington D.C. the following day and arrived back in Oregon on a Friday evening with a sense of fulfillment. Congress had given us logical procedural legislation, namely NEPA and the ESA., and had staffed the BLM with expertise across a broad range of disciplines and made available modern technological tools thus enabling the development of a management plan in full compliance with the spirit and intent of the regulations.

The situation changed the following Monday when we arrived at our offices. Awaiting us was a teletype from Washington withdrawing the previous week’s verbal approval of the new allowable cut plan and initiating a new round of discussions.

On the one hand, Congress had given the BLM the tools and expertise to develop a legally-defensible management plan fully consistent with ecological reality as well as with the spirit and intent of NEPA and the ESA. On the other hand, Congress allowed an overlay of political appointees within the upper levels of the BLM and the Department of Interior to prevent its adoption and implementation for reasons based entirely on political expediency.

Subsequent meetings with the Washington-based hierarchy were scheduled in order to jointly craft a new management plan acceptable to them. We expected the meetings would begin with them expressing concern with the logic or scientific credibility behind our original proposal. These matters were never discussed. Rather, they succinctly expressed the two political mandates that were driving them.

“The spotted owl will not be listed as endangered during this administration.” This statement was intended to put to rest any further discussion of the disappearance of the old-growth ecosystem across western Oregon.

“This administration will raise timber production from the O&C lands, not lower it.” This clearly indicated their interest in arriving at a desired end result, compliance with science, logic, existing laws and regulations be damned.

As to their first statement, they were correct. The spotted owl was not listed as endangered until the early years of the administration of Bush the elder.

As to raising timber production from the O&C lands, they were clearly wrong, and we are still suffering the effects of ignoring due process to this day.

Instead of seeking ways to comply with existing environmental laws and regulations, the political appointees started down a pathway designed to skirt or
ignore existing mandates. This was a process that continues to the present day. The BLM attempted to implement a politically-driven Western Oregon Plan Revision (the WOPR) in 2008 in an effort to restore an increased and predictable flow to timber sales from the O&C lands. However, it was withdrawn in 2009 by Secretary of Interior Alberto Salazar as being “legally indefensible” because of its failure to fully comply with the letter and intent of NEPA and the ESA.

In summation, instead of a 20% reduction in timber flow from the O&C lands back in 1980 in order to facilitate compliance with existing environmental laws, three decades of attempts by appointees driven by short-term political considerations to skirt existing laws have resulted in a 95% reduction in timber flow.

Given the lack of timber sale receipts from the O&C lands together with the anticipated end of supplemental federal payments, the counties in western Oregon are in a critical financial bind. Understandably, the Oregon Congressional delegation is seeking ways to help. One proposal is to remove the O&C lands from federal management and allow them to be managed by a private trust or trusts.

This is a very unusual and unique scenario. Congress is seeking to remove lands from federal management in order to evade the effects of laws that Congress passed 30 years ago – laws that are still in effect and that have repeatedly been upheld by the judiciary.

There is a far simpler and better solution.

Congress should “giveth” the responsibility for management planning back to the experienced, dedicated, and knowledgeable career professionals within the Bureau of Land Management, and Congress should “taketh away” the heavy and oftentimes incompetent influence of the overlay of 296 political appointees in key positions within the Department of Interior driven primarily by short-term political considerations.

“Ron Sadler holds a BS-Forestry from Michigan Technological University and a MS-Natural Resource Administration from the University of Michigan. He had a 34 year career with the Bureau of Land Management in capacities ranging from brush-ape forester to Chief of Forestry Planning covering all BLM operations within Oregon and Washington.”