Some Elliott Photos

Palouse Creek Salmon Video

I shot some Salmon footage in the Elliott and made a little video when I had some computer access a few weeks ago.  Hoping to get my mac up and running again to fix the typos and fuse this with the longer Elliott video and update the story.  The Salmon are Coho in Palouse Creek and the water turbulence shots are on the West Fork of the Millicoma.

Working with Google Earth-The North Slope Assault on Wy'east

I am working on creating maps. These were the three .kmz files that were easy to access. The goal is to create interactive google earth data sets with embedded photos

A Tour of the Elliott State Forest

After the controversial sale of three parcels of old growth forest to private timber companies in June of 2014, Oregonians have implored the State Land Board to save native forests from further privatization and clear cutting in the 92,000 acre Elliott State Forest.  The Elliott is located in the steeply sloped hills ten to twenty miles inland of the Pacific Ocean, extending north to the Umpqua River and south to the community of Allegany.  Parts of the forest have been clear cut since the 1950's in order to provide funding for the common school fund, which constitutes a small portion of the Oregon education budget.  After a lawsuit stopped logging in mature forests throughout the state to protect the endangered marbled murrelet, the State’s timber-focused management department lost approximately three million dollars in 2013. The State claimed it needed to recoup the losses and auctioned three parcels of native forest composed of trees over 120 years old, including rare trees over 300 years old, despite outcry from citizens and conservation groups.  The three parcels were sold at a large discount after consultation with the timber industry because of the likely presence of an endangered species, but were not surveyed by the state for the marbled murrelet.  A citizen science group, Coast Range Forest Watch, observed occupied behavior of these protected seabirds in all three parcels, but the sales were still finalized.  Now the state is being pressured by the corporate timber industry and its lobbying wing to sell the entire forest, claiming it has become a financial burden.  Hundreds of Oregonians from across the state including conservation groups and small timber operators have told the State they want to keep the forest in public hands.  The land board will speak take public comments on the issue during a public meeting on December 9 in Salem. 

Benson Canopy Ridge-one of the privatized parcels

The land that is now called the Elliott was inhabited by the Hanis and Quuiich people of the Lower Umpqua tribe before European settlement. The native peoples hunted deer and elk, gathered berries, and guarded their borders closely, allowing visitors and hunters on invitation.   They also gathered medicinal plants including pipsissewa and ceanothus, which was known by the Hanis as xwalxwaluu hlehlox (eye medicine).  Healers from the tribe would travel into the mountains of the Coast Range to remain isolated to pray and gather spiritual powers.  Settlers arrived in numbers around the Elliott in the mid-nineteenth century.  A treaty was negotiated in 1855 but was never ratified.  After battles between settlers and native peoples in the Rogue Valley in 1856, many of the native peoples on the southern Oregon Coast, including the Hanis and Quuiich were rounded up and held captive on the north spit of the Umpqua River and later at a reservation near Yachats river after an executive order created the Coast Reservation.  By 1877, half of the natives imprisoned at the Yachats reservation had died.  The reservation was opened to settlers and the native peoples were encouraged to move north and inland to Siletz Reservation, but most refused and moved south, back near their ancestral lands.  After failed attempts to reclaim their lands in the courts in the 1930s and the federal government’s attempt to terminate all western Oregon tribes in 1954, a restoration bill was signed in 1984 recognizing the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw.  

The 1868 Coos Fire was started by human activity and burned much of the forest that became the Elliott but left smaller stands of old growth throughout the park.  Much of the older forest currently standing in the Elliott is regrowth after the fire, 120-145 years old, with scattered individual trees over 300 years old.  In 2011, 43%, or 41,000 acres, of the forest was composed of this advanced structure.   The dominant tree species is douglas-fir, with western red cedar, western hemlock, big leaf maple, red alder, oregon myrtle, cascara, madrone, sitka spruce, and tanoak also living in native stands.   A number of rare and endangered species inhabit the Elliott.  Notable plants include Bensonia, tall bugbane, and Howell’s montia.  Notable avian species include the Northern spotted owl, the marbled murrelet, the bald eagle, the band-tailed pigeon, the Red-shouldered hawk, the purple martin, the western bluebird, the olive-sided flycatcher, and the willow flycatcher.  Notable amphibians include and the Southern torrent salamander, the tailed frog, the Pacific giant salamander, Dunn’s salamander, the western red-backed salamander, and the roughskinned newt.  Notable fish include the Coastal Coho salmon, fall Chinook salmon, chum salmon, winter steelhead, rainbow trout, both anadromous and resident races of cutthroat trout, the Pacific lamprey and and the Millicoma longnose dace.  Within the monitoring area for the evolutionary significant Oregon Coastal Coho Salmon Population, which ranges from the Columbia River to Cape Blanco State Park just north of Port Orford, 22% of the 183,000 average annual returning individuals from 2004-2013 were attributable to Elliott.   

Cascara in Benson Ridge

When Oregon became a state in 1859, the federal government set aside 5.6% of the land to provide funding for the public education of the state, which at the time consisted of approximately 52,000 settlers.  In the next 50 years over 3 million acres of land were sold, often fraudulently. After a series of trials convicted many high ranking state officials in 1904, This the state was left with 700,000 acres, only 130,000 of which were forested.  Francis Elliott, the state’s first forester, negotiated a series of land exchanges with the Siuslaw National Forest beginning in 1912 to form a contiguous block of land that became Oregon’s first state forest in 1930.  Timber sale planning began in the 1950’s with the post war housing boom. Road construction and logging in the forest increased rapidly after the 1962 Columbus day windstorms.  Since that time the State has managed the Elliott by planning and auctioning timber sales to produce revenue to the common school fund.  This has included the sale of old growth stands.  After the federal protection of the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet, the Elliott was forced to come up with a habitat conservation plan to manage these endangered species in the forest.  In 1993, a series of surveys found 69 spotted owls in the Elliott. In 1995, the Oregon Department of Forestry adopted a habitat conservation plan, which allowed them to “take” or destroy the habitat of  43 of the 69 owls over 50 years.  In 2003, surveys found only 26 owls in the forest and in 2012, only 20 owls.  This was the result of clear cutting hundreds of acres of native forest.  Other forestry practices used by the state include applying herbicides after clear cuts to kill competing vegetation other than the planted douglas-fir monoculture, using prison labor for replanting work, and the killing of thousands of native mountain beavers.

Douglas-fir near Johanneson Creek

These practices have lead to a series of direct actions including a road blockade by Earth First! and Rising Tide in 2009.  These actions helped bring the destructive management practices of the forest to the public’s attention.  In 2011 the state approved a new management plan that would increase the clear cuts of the forest by 40% to increase revenue.  This decision prompted more road blockades, tree sits, protests at the state capitol, and a lawsuit in 2012 brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands and the Audobon Society. In 2014 a settlement was reached, the canceling 28 timber sales across the state for violating the protection of the marbled murrelet.  Because of these canceled sales the state lost ~3 million dollars in 2013.  Approximately 72% of the Elliott’s budget goes into timber sale planning and in 2013 and 2014 the Oregon Department of Forestry has struggled to plan timber sales in the Elliott that aren’t native forests occupied with endangered species.

The State Land Board consists of the Governor, the Secretary of State and the Treasurer and is in charge of managing common school fund trust lands.  The Land Board has a fiduciary responsibility to “obtain the greatest benefit for the people of this state, consistent with the conservation of this resource under sound techniques of land management.”  Ballot Measure 1, approved by Oregon’s voters on May 28, 1968 allows the common school fund to invest money in trust lands and removes the strict income requirement.  The common school fund is a 1.2 billion dollar trust that has gained over a billion dollars since 1980 and contributed between 13 and 55 million dollars annually to the Oregon Education budget from 2003-2013.  The biennial budget for public schools in Oregon is projected to be $6.9 billion in 2015-2017.  From 1999-2009, the revenue from the Elliott contributed an average of 7.9 million dollars a year to the common school fund.  The Elliott’s contribution to the annual school budget would be about 0.23%.  The loss of endangered species and old growth forest is a heavy price to pay for what the Governor himself has called “a drop in the bucket” for school funding.

The three parcels chosen for auction in the spring of 2014, East Hakki Ridge, Benson Ridge, and Adams Ridge 1, totalled 1,453 acres were largely composed of mature trees 120-145 years old with scattered older trees over 300 years old.  None of these three parcels were surveyed for murrelets by the state before the auction commenced.  The state did commission a private timber cruise which gave detailed reports of the timber on the parcel and instructions on how to cable log murrelet habitat.  The timber cruise report discounted the older forests in the parcels by 90% because of the likely presence of murrelets.  The discounted price was reached after consulting with timber industry representatives including Roseburg Forest Products, whose subsidiary ended up purchasing two of the parcels. A citizen science group, Coast Range Forest Watch, who were trained and certified by the same group as state and private surveyors, detected Murrelet activity on all three parcels early in the 2014 survey season before the sales were finalized.  The State valued the timber on the three parcels at $12.5 million, started the bidding at $2.5 million dollars, and sold them for a total of $4.5 million.  Scott Timber Company, a subsidiary of Roseburg Forest Products purchased Benson Ridge and Adams Ridge 1, and Seneca Jones purchased East Hakki Ridge.  Kathy Jones, one of the owners of Seneca Jones, stated that she bought the East Hakki Ridge parcel, not because her mills needed the lumber, but to challenge “cowardly” environmentalists, and that she plans to clearcut the diverse hardwood forest containing old growth douglas-fir, western red cedar and big leaf maple forest and replant it with a monoculture douglas-fir plantation.  The East Hakki parcel was formerly a part of the Siuslaw National Forest, and when that land exchange was negotiated it was agreed that the lands would not be sold.  There is a currently a lawsuit contesting the East Hakki sale on this basis, and a lawsuit challenging any potential logging plans on the other parcels.   

In the three days after the decision to auction these mature forests at discounted prices to large corporate timber companies, Governor Kitzhaber received $75,000 in total from five different timber groups including Roseburg Forest Products, Weyerhaeuser and Hampton Lumber Sales.  The Governor has received $225,000 in donations from timber and forest product companies in the last five years.  State Treasurer Ted Wheeler has received $23,742 and Secretary of State Kate Brown has received $10,200.  After the three sales were completed, editorials and articles were published that espoused the idea that the State should sell or lease more of the forest to private timber companies., Some of them contained misinformation including a promise that the parcels will reap tax benefits for the state. In fact private forestland owners pay little to no taxes on their land and trees, tax breaks that total over 300 million dollars annually.  In 1977, the state ended taxes on private standing timber and in 1999 removed the privilege taxes on harvested timber.  The only tax that remains on forestland owners over 5,000 acres is the Forest Products Harvest Tax, whose proceeds do not enter the general fund, but instead go to benefit timber interests in the state. Additionally 58% of the state’s 8 million acres of private forestland are classified highest and best use (HBU) and are exempt from property taxes.  A fair tax on the timber industry would be more than enough to replace the income from the Elliott to fund public schools and other state services.   

After the controversial land sales, the state contracted a consulting team to conduct an “Elliott Alternatives Project” and conducted a series of stakeholder meeting with forest industry, education beneficiaries, and conservation groups to discuss alternative management plans and strategies. The initial economic analysis commissioned by the state focused on timber extraction but after feedback from the stakeholders a more inclusive final report was issued by the group that includes the potential ecosystem services, potential income from carbon sequestration credits and does not recommend the forest be further privatized.  One economist cited in the report calculated that while Elliott would produce $5,000 per acre if logged like an industrial forestland, this activity would generate $50,000-$300,000 per acre of economic harm by destroying endangered species habitat, carbon release, and water quality degradation. Temperate rainforests store more carbon than any ecosystem on the planet and recent research has shown that older trees continue to store more carbon as they age.  In 2011, US Fish and Wildlife commissioned Eco-Trust to perform an analysis on the carbon storage in the Elliott State Forest.  In this report, the analysis predicted the carbon storage of various levels of timber harvest in the forest.  The report found that management similar to private timber owners practice with maximum harvest would result in a small decrease in carbon storage on the land by the year 2050.  On the contrary, a no cut management plan would sequester 46.6 million metric tons of carbon by 2050, equivalent to approximately 68.5% of the carbon emissions of the state in 2007.  While carbon markets have not significantly realized themselves on public forestland in the United States, the large amount of publicly owned forestland will play a major role in national and global carbon balance. Landowners and investors like the State Land Board should see the potential for large profits or credits if management for carbon sequestration is incentivized.  Carbon is currently trading at ~$10/metric ton and is forecast to be worth up to $60/metric ton by the year 2050.  The interagency working group of the federal government estimated that the social cost of releasing one ton of carbon will be $12-61 dollars in 2015 and  $28-104 dollars by 2050.  As 37% of land in the United States is owned by the federal government and 38% of that is forested, it is likely that an international agreement on carbon emissions will incentivize management for carbon sequestration on public lands.  The Governor has publicly stated that climate change is the most imminent threat facing our generation. To further privatize or clear cut the Elliott State Forest would not only go against the wishes of Oregonians and destroy valuable wildlife habitat, but would impose a huge cost on the global commons and possibly reduce potential earnings for the State.

There are a number of possibilities for the future management of the Elliott that do not include privatization and clear cutting of native forests. The official report from the alternatives project recommends four options, continued management by the state, contracting different management but retaining state ownership, transfer to federal or tribal lands, and buyout by another state agency.  The first two options options would require the state to be satisfied with a small or negligible annual profit or receive permits to "take" endangered species.  The third option could involve a land exchange or sale to the federal government, who originally managed much of the forest and has more sensitive environmental laws that protect many older forests and endangered species.  A sale to the tribal government is possible but the tribe would likely have to be able to pay approximately half a billion dollars for the land.  Although the history of the native-settler relations in the region suggest that giving the land to the Coos, Siuslaw and Lower Umpqua tribe would be appropriate, given the State’s strict profit seeking motivation, this seems unlikely at this time.  The final proposal, new public ownership, has precedent in other states with common school trust lands.  Beginning in 1989, Washington State transferred 116,455 acres of low revenue-producing lands into other ownership including State Parks and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.  The funds for a buyout like this could come from the general fund or most appropriately from a new timber harvest tax that would need to be approved by the legislature.  The land board is faced with a number of options, and the public must continue to pressure their elected officials to save this rare tract of coastal rainforest.  

For more pictures of the Elliott and other Threatened Forests see my Flickr

Thanks to Francis Eatherington for research on the habitat conservation plan, common school fund land fraud and editing. Thanks to Patricia Whereat Phillips for research on the indigenous history and ethnobotany.  For more history on the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Tribes see Our Culture and History.  Thanks to Andy Kerr for research on Timber Taxes. For more information on the Elliott State Forests past see Jerry Phillips' "Caulked Boots and Cheese Sandwiches."

A Closer Look at Wyden's O&C Land Act

Here is a video we filmed and produced about Ron Wyden's O&C Land Legislation.

It has information about current BLM practices and tax breaks for timber companies.