Timber and conservation groups reach deal to update forest management rules for 10 million acres of private land – By Ted Sickinger (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / Oct 30 2021
After decades of controversy and a year of intensive negotiations, conservation and timber groups reached a deal early Saturday to update rules governing timber harvests and forest management on 10 million acres of private land throughout Oregon.
The Private Forest Accord, which was announced Saturday by Gov. Kate Brown, proposes a variety of new protections for sensitive and endangered species and would provide more regulatory and legal certainty for timber companies and small woodland owners regarding logging on their lands.
The deal still needs to be codified in new legislation, and the state plans to use it as the basis to propose a federally supervised habitat conservation plan. Such a plan, if approved by NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, would protect forestland owners from lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act in exchange for hard conservation commitments on their land.
Those commitments would include wider no-cut buffers for fish-bearing streams; new buffers for streams that were previously unprotected; new rules governing logging on steep slopes to minimize erosion and protect habitat, improvements to logging and forest roads; new minimum harvest standards for small forestland owners; compensation for small forest landowners who are impacted by the rules; and new protections for beavers, among other things.
