Saving Timber from Development

Some surprisingly green actions by members of both parties in Oregon this week.  An organization called the Deschutes Basin Land Trust (DBLT)  is trying to buy 31,000 acres of forest land between Bend and the Three Sisters from Crown Pacific, or rather the bank that owns CP now.

DBLT is a private conservation group designed to buy and preserve lands in the Deschutes river basin.  The fact that CP went bankrupt last year is no big secret, as well as that the bank controlling the interests of the company is calling the shots.  They have sold off CP’s saw mills already, and speculation is that they are thinking about selling the lands when the market is right. 

CP owns more than just this particular parcel along the US97 corridor, and all of that land, situated where it is, near Sun River, Bend and LaPine, is prime for developers.

What’s interesting is that they are being helped along by the government.

The Community Forest Authority bill, the brainchild of Rep. Chuck Burley, R-Bend, was passed by the state assembly in June and signed into law on Jul. 14 by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

It’s a bill designed to help environment trusts to buy timberland, and a Republican thought of it.  Who woulda thunk it.

House Bill 2729--which found support from timber companies, conservation groups and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle--allows local governments to create forest authorities. Those authorities will be able to tap into lower-cost government bonds and buy working forests, with the debt later repaid with sustainable-yield harvests.

By tapping into government financing, which has lower interest rates than traditional loans, the community forest backers can afford to bid against developers and land speculators, said Tom Tuchmann, a former federal forestry official who now helps buyers get financing for forestland.

Sen. Gordon Smith is also in on the action, introducing a bill in congress that would “allow the community forest authorities to get tax-exempt revenue bonds under the Internal Revenue Service code.”  Basically, that means the trust can offer bonds to pay for the sale, and the bonds would be free of federal taxes.

This isn’t the first time someone has tried to do this.  Environmentalists, who are also realists in the sense that they recognize that there are some things, namely development, that are more destructive to forests than clear-cutting, have been trying to make a big deal like this for years.  Tom Tuchmann has been involved in many of them, and was involved with a deal near Seattle, next to the Snoqualmie NF, that would have had a local trust purchasing almost 100k acres from Weyerhaeuser.  The deal fell through because the trust could not raise the money, and the laws allowing them to sell tax free bonds didn’t pass in time.  The tree farm was sold to another timber company, but it’s certain to get chipped away at by developers over the coming years.

Getting the laws passed does not guarantee that the trust will get the land, but it’s the best effort so far, and the more pieces are falling into place than I’ve seen in the past.  It’ll be interesting to see if this works, and if success launches more efforts like this one.