During the October 4, 2011 regular BOC meeting, Commissioner Parry delivered an impassioned presentation last Tuesday in favor of turning over the management of the 59,000 acres of Coos Bay Wagon Road timber lands to the Coquille Tribe in a gambit to bring in projected $3.5 million to $8.5 million in annual revenue to Coos County.
Parry spoke for over 14 minutes delivering forth a voluminous word salad and there is no doubt he is not only determined to bring this transfer about but he appears 100% convinced that this sliver of ground, 5.5% of the land area in Coos County, will fill 15-20% budget shortfalls with $185 million over ten years, employ 1,600 people, reduce child food insecurity, bring back five day school weeks, shorten food bank lines and “save the future of this county”. That is a tall order for a relatively small stand of trees in the middle of a million square acres.
Parry wants us all to come together “unilaterally” to work on this and asserts that all federal environmental protections will be met while at the same time producing millions in revenue. He assures us this project has been five years in the making and, “The tribe hired one of the best forest economists in the country to take a look at the jobs and dollars generated.” If this is true surely after five years there is a prospectus or business plan out there somewhere so the citizens can participate in this effort.
What the BLM is doing now is thinning and they are thinning young stand forests and they don’t have a high value, often those are sold for $60 on the thousand. It is not the kind of money we need to stabilize the county it can’t fill the budget hole that we are looking at. But sustainable management respective of ecological values can fill this budget hole and will and we put some numbers together that we’re going to take the chance to show you.
Alas, the tribe did show some numbers printed on a glossy poster board but no supporting data. There is no metric or formula to support the many claims made in Parry’s presentation, namely how if … “Our fisheries, our watershed our quality of life is incredibly important to us and we need to protect that and work hard to protect…” that he believes “…we can protect it and produce a sustainable amount of revenue.”
Parry wants people to work together on this but not to double check the math or question the plan but rather to take a “leap of faith” in the absence of hard data and just blindly trust his judgment. Where is the data the gives Parry his confidence in this proposal?
The World paper is printing a correction noted here that Dr Norm Johnson is not the author of the revenue figures being presented but rather John Sessions, also of OSU. John Sessions has not returned calls or emails requesting information on what volumes he is factoring in to arrive at his revenue figures. While Johnson is well regarded by the environmental community, Sessions is not so the inability to produce any data to corroborate his numbers has many people questioning his conclusions.
Oregon Forest Resources Institute, cited in the paper as the source for jobs creation has provided the following formula-“The formula is 17.4 direct jobs per million board feet of timber harvest and 38.3 indirect jobs plus direct jobs per million board feet (total employment) from 2009 Oregon Employment Department and Oregon Department of Forestry data. – This formula is not ours; we merely compile these data from the footnoted sources. Our booklet is well scrubbed by those who provide data and we have confidence in it.” You can read more here. From this we can back into harvest volumes necessary to achieve these employment figures (remembering that these numbers are often inflated) and I have asked three experts to run these calculations for me and will publish them upon receipt.
Parry also asserts that the tribe does not need Coos County to acquire management of the Coos Bay Wagon Road lands, there are federal laws in place for that, he says. This may well be technically true but, in my opinion, without the county it is highly unlikely Congress would approve the effective privatization of 59,000 acres of federal land to a small population tribe unless they perceived some other benefit such as sharing revenue with a county government. The tribe acknowledge that DeFazio’s office would only speak to them in DC because Parry asserted county support.
If Parry is so certain this is a good deal why will he and the rest of the commission not produce a business plan and subject it to public scrutiny?
If these commissioners were going to invest their own money in a project they would insist upon seeing a business plan. Now they want to invest public resources, the CBWR timber without a business plan. A friend likened this proposal to having someone ask to own one of the rooms in your house so they can rent it out and let you share in the revenue.
they will but not until management is officially transferred
A written business plan is not too much to ask for. Any and every bank would want a good one. I would want iron clad protections that these logs not be exported and that market price triggers would be employed to decide harvest. My real concern is simple, Cam Perry has never recieved one single vote from the people of Coos County. If this has been 5 years in the making what is his rush? He ought to stand on his performance and ask the voters of Coos County to give him a mandate to act on their behalf. Right now he has none and until he does he is talking through his hat.