Big money bought the forests. Small timber communities are paying the price

This sucks. Timber has been a huge part of Oregon's DNA for some time now, and a lot of the old-time loggers here are basically environmentalists (though they would prefer it if you didn't call them that.) And what I mean is, they seem to have a deep understanding that taking care of the ecosystem that sustains their livelihood is good for them and their families in the long run.

Some of these ranges are just staggeringly beautiful – especially the coast range as you drive out to the water. Typically you'll see small patches logged, with signs indicating the new plantings, etc.

One interesting bit of info: Douglas Fir is an iconic tree here, but a hundred years ago what was more common was rolling prairies of oak savanna and oak woodlands. The Douglas Fir have taken over the oak woodlands, which are vanishing (and in the Willamette Valley a lot of the prairies and oak woodlands have been cleared for vineyards.) Native Americans used to maintain the landscape by setting burns annually. The oaks are fire resistant, so they'd get rid of a lot of brush that way, while pockets of annuals in gullies (including vegetables etc) would survive, as well as the oaks which supported large game.

We have an oak woodland and prairie on our property that we're conserving and restoring, and a Douglas Fir stand on our ridge which we have no plans of logging for the time being. They do require some thinning occasionally as the trees mature, and it's important to keep brush down to lower the wildfire risk.

This isn't a problem of "big money", but a failure of government. They reduced taxes and, shocking(!), that led to lower tax revenues.

> Oregon lowered taxes and maintained weaker environmental protections on private forestlands than neighboring states in exchange for jobs and economic investment from the timber industry.

> Despite such concessions, the country’s top lumber-producing state has fewer forest-sector jobs per acre and collects a smaller share of logging profits than Washington or California.

> If Oregon taxed timber owners the same as its neighbors, which are also top lumber producers with many of the same companies, it would generate tens of millions of dollars more for local governments.

Seems to be the trend in america... Tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations, with no consideration for what the impact will be in 10-30 years... Until we, as a nation, can get past this pattern we will never improve our climate/water/sustainability.

Though this goes beyond renewable/climate... Chip shortages are a national failure.. we allow companies to go rock bottom dollar to the point we have virtually zero capability to function industrially as a nation without other countries. Having some overseas products and imports is one thing, but when you have to import 90%+ of it, we're losing.

And the same can be said about mega corps... They do great things, but we should not allow them to grow so large they purchase other billion dollar companies to avoid competition... Capitalism doesn't work when a company gets so large they can suffer billions in losses for years to ensure they are the only one in the country.

We need to ensure the damage we do to the environment is not ultimately taxpayer funded expense... It's like a backwards subsidy.. sure we don't give them money to move in, but we bare the burden of the millions of dollars in recovery once they abandon the area or declare bankruptcy to avoid the clean up of the forests/rivers/etc.