People often forget the original purpose of these state forests was to harvest the timber and pay the teacher salaries as part of the Oregon Common School Fund... As the great great grandson of Francis Elliott (Oregon's first state forester), I have been reminded of this by my family many times over the years. I'm unsure of it's purpose today, but I suspect the teachers wouldn't mind the extra pay.
I think we now know about a lot more externalities of this kind of logging than we did generations ago. For example, much of the hydrological basis that provide drinking water to the Seattle metro area was aggressively logged 100 years ago which impacts the hydrology of the basin in a negative way for the purpose collecting drinking water.
I think extra knowledge in the space of the environment often leads to indecision which is certainly it's own drawback but I think these choices are not without tradeoffs that should be acknowledged.
I'll admit I'm not up to speed on the affect of the aggressive logging of Seattle on the hydrological cycle. From the little time I've spent there, I managed to gleam one small fact, that by the 1950's the Seattle city sewage system was dumping up to 50 million gallons of sewage into the Puget sound (per day).
I'm only a software engineer and have no understanding of hydrological cycles, but I suspect the evaporation and precipitation of that alone would have an impact on the nearby watersheds used for drinking water.
Everything has externalities though. Don't get me wrong I'm all for a forest going unlogged, but we will replace those resources with something else.
We still use lumber, if it isn't locally harvested we buy it from another part of the world, outsourcing those externalities and throwing in all the extra costs of shipping, labor overhead for the various middlemen, customs, etc.
My point isn't that we're screwed and should just chop down forests because we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. But saving one forest won't fix anything by itself and could very well make things worse if we don't do it by simply reducing the number of resources we consume. Paying someone else to own the externalities will never help.
> and the size of the forests are mindbogglingly vast.
The size of the forests isn't really relevant; compared to lumber demand, they're mostly insignificant. Humans have never had a problem wiping out local forests.
What matters is how much wood a forest can produce per year, not how much has accumulated over the course of the past.
There is plenty of timber in northern California and southern Oregon, these regions are actually temperate rain forests, that are harvested sustainably and aren't old growth forests. Every 30-50 years, (depending on species: redwood or doug fir) the same tracts of forest can be logged again and again.
Once you get further north the taigas are colder and slower growing and may take 200 years or longer to grow back.
The best thing for the USA is to use the resources which supports jobs in logging, wood processing, transportation, and have lower costs associated with transportation and fees from importation. I'm not against importing timber into very northern parts of the US but there is no reason to ONLY use canadian timber.
The boreal forest aka Taiga is quite a bit more at risk than the forests of Oregon. There may be an argument to be made that the wrong kind of firs have grown in the south of Oregon (they're much more susceptible to fire from heat) and that logging and replacement with the right type of firs could be a win economically and environmentally. Somebody with specific knowledge would need to fact check that idea though.
You're still going to miss externalities when you limit the factors you consider. Sure, lumber sellers in Canada could do well and the US could avoid cutting downt heir own trees, but can we really assume that deforedtstion in Canada would be without consequence?
Assuming that stripping resources from other parts of the world is how we got into this ecological mess in the first place.
Washington has absolutely tons of other lumber forest that isn't part of the Cedar River watershed, and it is still harvested today. We don't need to be logging in our drinking water watershed.
While I agree that we shouldn't be logging in Washington, is the answer really that we should just pay someone else to log in their watershed instead?
We need to not be logging, period. There's a huge difference in selectively felling trees locally and commercial logging. The problem is that we have collectively grown so accustomed to immediate gratification and the appearance of unlimited resources that we've completely disconnected from how the world really works.
If we really want to fix anything meaningful it's going to take people realizing that cheap energy from coal and oil, combined with paying someone else to deal with the immediate ecological damages caused, aren't sustainable approaches to living here.
I did not say we shouldn't be logging in Washington -- just not in drinking water reservoirs (which we don't). DNR managed logging / the Campbell Global Snoqualmie tree farm seem like mostly a success.
Do you know how much logging they actually do there? I haven't kept up with that project at all and can't find any recent data.
I know when they were first proposing the project the state was going to limit them to a couple hundred acre clear cuts and Campbell had their own limit at less than that. Unless that number increased dramatically, I'd say the project is a success mainly because they just aren't logging a meaningful amount of timber at all.
Someone actually just clear cut a few hundred acres down the street from me before the locals ran the investor out of town. It's terrible to see it cleared and it's basically just a massive, open, festering wound now but st the end of the data a few hundred acres of timber is a drop in the bucket relative to what we actually consume.
Trees effectively behave as a buffer for the water cycle. Under conditions of high rainfall, they absorb a lot of water from the ground. Under conditions of low rainfall, they must nonetheless continue to release moisture via evapotranspiration, which promotes the production of rain in dry conditions. This mean that forested locations are more resistant to both floods and droughts.
Tree roots also greatly reduce erosion, which means that rainfall is more likely to end up in a few well-established waterways and less likely to be spread across numerous tiny rivulets; it also means that waterways are less likely to change shape over time. Large, stable waterways are much easier to collect water from (e.g., via dammed reservoirs) than small or unstable waterways.
However, I'm not sure how much of a factor erosion is here. I suspect it will only directly impact small communities that rely on minor waterways for drinking water. (Mind you, when small communities connect up to city water because their existing water supply becomes unreliable, that can affect the city's water supply.)
Sure, but this region is still heavily forested -- just with second-growth forest (trees ~100 years old and not older). Is there a significant difference between old growth and second growth for this purpose?
From the recreational perspective (summer hiking / back-country skiing) - the forests are night and day difference. Having a map of what has been logged and what has not often is the difference between forests that are easy to travel through and forests that are harder. A forest that was clear cut will have trees that are much denser and tightly packed together but tend to be smaller in diameter. These are very hard to travel through (hiking or skiing) compared with the old growth forests.
I don't know a ton about forest ecology but my sense is that trees that do the best are a function of what's already there and that it takes much longer than 100 years for the pre-clear cut conditions to return.
The Cedar River Watershed is not open to recreational use (it's a protected pristine watershed that supplies drinking water to Seattle and surrounding suburbs). The difference for that use is not relevant here.
A forest with larger trees and more extensive root systems will have a stronger effect than a forest with smaller trees with less extensive root systems.
Different tree species can also be more or less effective at functioning as a buffer. "Thirsty" trees typically do a better job of taking up water when it's wet and continuing to release water when it's dry. (Unfortunately, many new tree plantings favor more drought-resistant trees because they are easier to grow in clearcut fields, which are drier than forests.)
So, because I don't know much about this region specifically, these are my two questions:
Has there been a change in tree biomass in the region?
Has there been a change in the tree species makeup of the region?
They are most likely referring to the Cedar River Watershed, which supplies 70% of Seattle's water. While the city spent the 20th century buying up all the land so that it is now a protected wilderness area, plenty of logging happened during that time and less than a fifth of the old-growth forest remains. You can read all about it here:
Specifically, here is the forest management plan, which goes into great detail about the current conditions, their effects on the water cycle, and the long term objectives:
I spent a few years in my 20s volunteering for ecological restoration projects in the watershed. We dug up old logging roads, removed invasive species (Japanese knotweed, ugh!), deconstructed landscaping left over from abandoned small towns, did erosion control along creeks in logged areas, restored riverside habitats, and planted lots of native trees and shrubs. I am not in touch with the organization anymore, but I'll always feel some pride in the work we did and a sense of connection to the place.
Yes, I assumed they were talking about the Cedar River Watershed (Chester Morse lake basin).
> Specifically, here is the forest management plan, which goes into great detail about the current conditions, their effects on the water cycle, and the long term objectives:
This is a 130 page document. The first few pages mentioning old-growth forest are mostly discussing habitat for fauna. Is there a more specific part of the document discussing hydrological impact?
> I spent a few years in my 20s volunteering for ecological restoration projects in the watershed. We dug up old logging roads, removed invasive species (Japanese knotweed, ugh!), deconstructed landscaping left over from abandoned small towns, did erosion control along creeks in logged areas, restored riverside habitats, and planted lots of native trees and shrubs. I am not in touch with the organization anymore, but I'll always feel some pride in the work we did and a sense of connection to the place.
Very cool! My only connection to this is that my mom worked for SPU in drinking water.
Very common scam. Introduce revenue source, say "it's going to the schools/teachers." Do that for a bit, defund the prior source of cash so the teachers are at what they were before. When it's time to run the next scan rinse and repeat. Seen it done with about every new tax introduced. Teachers still get paid shit and other taxes either barely move or go up.
I'm not sure I'd call it a scam. It certainly takes advantage of the fact that voters don't seem to really believe (or understand) that money is fungible.
It’s always a scam because money is fungible and unless the underlying asset itself is held by a separate entity, you’re always at the whim of the party in power.
Not OP, but tying some new revenue source to some existing expenditure very often is. A classic example in the US would be lottery and casino revenues. Bills or referrenda legalising these (fairly recent, largely since the 1980s) were generally sold to the public as a source of revenue for public education. In the case of California, those services had been paid for through state and local property taxes which were capped (or kneecapped, depending on your point of view) through the 1978 referrendum Proposition 13, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13>.
In the case of lottery / casino revenues, the initial messaging was that these would provide additional funds for education. In time, general funds allocations for education have declined, justified by the availability of gambling taxes, funds, and fees. That's on top of further problems and externalities of gambling, including gambling addiction, organised crime, political corroption, and the like.
The lottery is another example where tickets allegedly fund education. The reality is that most of a state’s budget is set holistically and paid for out of the general fund. From an accounting standpoint you can’t really target a specific program for additional funding under these circumstances.
No because you can cut funding by slowing the annual increase from the general fund. Be that for inflation or just population growth.
Year 0: general fund hands 100m to schools.
Year 1: General fund hands 101m / year and lotteries add 10m to that yay! 111m for school, or except ‘inflation’ was 2% so it’s more like 109m.
Year 2: General fund hands 102m / year and lottery adds 10.2m, ‘inflation’ was 2%. So adjusting for inflation Schools get ~108 million and general fund only spends ~98m.
Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
Backdoor defunding by not adjusting for inflation is definitely a thing but that seems like a separate issue from what I was responding to re: where the funds come from and if they are kept separate, not how much should be spent in total.
> Repeat as needed until general fund is handing the equivalent of 90m with the slack taken up by the lottery.
The lottery picking up the slack so that the general fund doesn’t have to do all of it is the whole point.
> The lottery picking up the slack so the general fund doesn’t have to do all of it is the whole point.
That’s identical to the lottery just putting money directly into the general fund. Unless the funding source results in an increase in total funding this stuff is pure theatre.
>> The lottery picking up the slack so the general fund doesn’t have to do all of it is the whole point.
> That’s identical to the lottery just putting money directly into the general fund.
While that's true, your example upthread seems to obscure the fact rather than illustrate it. Try this one:
1. (19X3) Oregon funds its public school system to the tune of $70 million. This is "not enough".
2. (19X4) Oregon implements a lottery dedicated to funding the school system. In the meantime, it funds the schools to the tune of $70 million.
3. (19X5) The lottery system has been set up; it provides $20 million just for the schools. Oregon makes up the rest by contributing $50 million out of the general fund.
Where did the money from the lottery go? Not to the schools. The cash flow table clearly shows that funding to the schools hasn't increased while the general fund is up $20 million. Inflation isn't relevant. Allocations from the general fund are discretionary.
If a person arguing on hackernews can't understand the scam that requires a 3rd grade mathematics education, bthen I don't have a lot for the general public.
Which is why I'll never support these short sighted "legalization" efforts. I see no utility in arresting someone for smoking a joint in their own home. Arming the government with yet another source of tax revenue is simply unacceptable
Another example would be various gas taxes were supposed to be for the maintenance of roads but now a fair portion of the revenue is diverted for other purposes. It depends on the state.
That seems unlikely. The movement of money is usually the other way: fuel taxes are not high enough to cover the expenses and it is made up from the general fund. It’s a huge subsidy for roads.
That strikes me as reductive. As an underpaid teacher (though I'm one of those who was happy with my low pay because I absolutely loved my work at one of the schools and was able to keep it all at school & actually work just 40 hours per week), it is nowhere near desirable to get some extra temporary money at the expense of the hundreds to thousands of years of value that a healthy forest ecosystem provides.
The state CSF forest is like a gnat in the eye of the national forest. They only own 40k acres, while the USDA/USFS administers 16 million acres and BLM administers another 4 million acres.
Timber is still the original and main purpoes of state forests in Oregon and Washington.
The article is discussing federal forests. The timberlands in Oregon are owned by private, federal and state entities.
Forests managed for for timber by the state are protected differently, like, first to get sprinkler lines in a wildfire. They are a crop which is invested in and harvested. Federal forests are easier to log after a burn anyway, and you can log outside the burn with that cover. The United States Forest Service (USFS) is actually, basically, a road building and logging company, but owls and so on really got in the way for a couple decades. We're figuring out how to keep logging. We're capitalists.
The only state forests with old growth are going to be the "experimental" state forests in the Cascades and the Olympic and Coast ranges. Otherwise we woulda logged 'em. I mean there are old growth pine trees and juniper in Oregon and Washington east of the Cascades, a few, but those aren't timberlands.
