PORTLAND, Ore. – County payments under the Secure Rural Schools program have kept some of Oregon's most rural counties going, with federal dollars to fund their local schools and services. Now that the program has expired, several alternatives have been suggested for counties that are made up of mostly non-taxable federal land.
This week, one bill - the Federal Forest County Revenue, Schools and Jobs Act (HR 4019) - has been the subject of a congressional subcommittee hearing, and also a new report that details why it might not work. The report says in Oregon, the bill would require cutting 30 times the number of board-feet of timber as last year, in order to raise enough money to replace the county payments program.
Economist Mark Haggerty is with Montana-based Headwaters Economics, the nonpartisan group that crunched the numbers.
"For Oregon, they would have to cut 10 billion board-feet. The highest single-year timber harvest between 1980 and 2010 was only four billion board-feet. So, they would have to cut a significantly higher amount in order to meet the revenue targets in the Act."
The report concludes that bill's approach might not fit counties today, either fiscally or politically. Haggerty explains that the original county payments law was based on using public lands to produce commercial products.
"That made a lot of sense back in 1908-1910, when it was written. That model may not work today - the economy has changed, the commodity markets have changed. And we might need to think more broadly about how we support rural communities."
The report says Oregon would generate millions more dollars for its counties if the bill became law, but other states would lose millions. It says the county payments program used a formula to distribute federal dollars that was more fair than the current, commodities-based proposal would be. It also notes that 81 counties across the country depend on county payments for more than ten percent of their budgets.
The bill was introduced by Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.). Another proposal - by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-4th Dist.), Kurt Schrader (D-5th Dist.), and Greg Walden (R-2nd Dist.) - would significantly increase logging on Bureau of Land Management lands to fund county payments.
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Crews have been ramping up wildfire resilience projects to thin out brush and dead wood in California's giant sequoia groves, clearing twice as many acres in 2023 compared with 2022.
The Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition is trying to avoid a repeat of the disastrous mega-fires of 2020 and 2021 - which killed about 20% of large mature trees in their native Sierra Nevada range.
Joanna Nelson, Ph.D. is the director of science and conservation planning with the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League.
"We remove fuel," said Nelson, "we get to a safe place to do prescribed burning and to do cultural burning - which is always led by Indigenous people, which is another practice of taking care of the forest and reducing wildfire risk."
Sequoia National Park is just one part of California's giant sequoia groves, which stretch over 26,000 acres.
A new report shows that in 2023, the program treated nearly 9,900 acres in 28 groves - and more than 14,000 since 2021.
Crews have also planted 542,000 native tree seedlings in severely burned areas over the past two years.
Nelson said the groves must be re-treated about every 8 to 10 years.
"The cost of inaction is loss of giant sequoias in their native range," said Nelson. "And big fires that spread because of the fuel continuity. We risk further loss of trees that are anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 years old if we do nothing."
The groves have built up quite a bit of dead wood fuel because, until the last few decades, it had been national policy to suppress almost all fire - which led to intense firestorms that incinerated entire groves of old-growth trees.
It is now understood that judicious use of fire can clear out the understory and be beneficial to the forest.
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The Bureau of Land Management has proposed expanding the public land available for solar power production in 11 states, including Montana.
The BLM's Western Solar Plan builds on a version first released in 2012 and focuses on harnessing the potential in Western and Plains states most amenable to solar production.
Nick Fitzmaurice, energy transition engineer for the Montana Environmental Information Center, said the expanded plan reflects the country's growing demand for solar energy.
"It's projected that 700,000 acres of solar development are going to be needed to meet future clean goals, and in the range of about 5,000 of those acres are going to be in Montana," Fitzmaurice explained. "It's a small part of the picture but important that all our open land that is able to contribute to solar can do so."
The Wilderness Society released a statement supporting the proposed Western Solar Plan expansion. The BLM is taking public comment on it until April 18.
The BLM has already done an environmental impact statement, which can sometimes be a stumbling block for such projects.
Fitzmaurice pointed out Montana was not part of the first Western Solar Plan. He thinks adding the state and having the BLM involved in siting the facilities will be crucial as Montana takes advantage of its alternative energy opportunities.
"It's really important that BLM gets ahead of this," Fitzmaurice asserted. "As these applications for development come in, they are able to be sited and put in locations that will minimize the impact on this important public land resource that we have."
Fitzmaurice added the plan proposes solar facilities be built near existing power transmission lines but not near culturally sensitive areas of Montana. Critics of the proposal said additional solar development could threaten wildlife species and habitat.
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The remote landscape of southeastern Oregon is receiving additional protections.
The Bureau of Land Management has finalized its resource management plan for the southeast corner of the state and it includes protections for parts of the Owyhee and Malheur Rivers and canyon lands in the region.
Michael O'Casey, deputy director of forest policy and Northwest programs for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said it's an exciting announcement, which will protect sensitive landscape from activities like surface development and road building.
"When that landscape is impacted, it's really hard to bring it back and restore it," O'Casey pointed out. "And so, it's really important to protect the places out there that are healthy and intact and resistant. And resilience is a term that we use, to stresses from climate change or whatever else."
O'Casey noted the plan still allows for traditional uses of the land like hunting and fishing. The BLM's final resource management plan for the district covers four-point-six million acres of public land.
O'Casey stressed the agency deliberated for years on this decision.
"This planning process was initiated in 2010 and so it's been 14 years in the making," O'Casey emphasized. "The good news is that, even though it's been a really long time, was that there was a really robust public comment process throughout this."
O'Casey added appointing the Southeast Oregon Resource Advisory Council in 2014 was an important part of public involvement. The council was made up of a wide variety of area people including grazing, energy and conservation interests, who made recommendations for management in the region.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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