Oregon: Bad lumber market is great news for ecosystem recovery if we can old off the developers

You might guess environmental groups would be glad timber prices have
collapsed to where loggers’ chain saws have fallen silent and sawmills
are shutting down. Holding onto working forests is the single largest
conservation challenge facing the country, Selzer said. But some
environmental groups have focused so much on trying to block
activities such as logging, he said, they have a hard time shifting
their sights to support continued cutting.

“The environmental
community has spent 40 years perfecting the art of saying no and has
almost no ability to say yes,” Selzer said. However, Doug Heiken of
Oregon Wild does not see a high risk of forest sell-offs in Oregon, as
long as land-use laws keep it under control. He said it’s more
important to reform clear-cutting and road-building practices, and
warned about promoting the business prospects of timber companies.
“I’m a bit hesitant to make forestry a highly profitable enterprise,
because it means there’s going to be more logging,” he said. The
financial argument for maintaining private forests has steadily
weakened for years, as wood that grows quickly in far-flung places
like Brazil filled the world market and pushed timber prices down.
That’s good for consumers, but not for forest owners hoping to profit
from long-term forestry. “Most forest owners want to own forest and
want to hold it and are looking for an excuse to hold it,” Donegan
said. “And yet, if a piece of land is worth 10 times more selling it
than holding it in the long term, how can I handle my fiduciary
responsibility if I’m blind to that?” He has identified four main
strategies to close the gap in revenue between selling and holding
forestland: 1) Boost the profitability of timber by growing it faster
or more efficiently. 2) Generate more revenue beyond the timber.
Forest owners might be paid for the greenhouse gases soaked up by
their trees, for instance. 3) Sell development rights to the land. For
example, conservation groups may buy easements that provides forest
owners revenue while they give up the right to develop the land. 4)
Restrict development through zoning, so it’s not as profitable.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/fall_in_wood_products_market_r.html

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