Plans must reflect O&C lands' history.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Doug Robertson

This year the Bureau of Land Management will publish new management plans for the O&C lands in Western Oregon. These Western Oregon Plan Revisions (aka the WOPR) will incorporate comments from scientists and the public to make sure the management plan protects threatened and endangered species in Western Oregon.

To evaluate the WOPR, the public needs to know more about the O&C lands. These are not national forest lands.

The O&C lands are the remaining parcels originally granted to the Oregon & California Railroad Co. in 1866 and 1870 to build a rail line from Portland to the California border. In 1916 - after the lands had been in private ownership and on the property tax rolls for decades - the federal government took back the land that was still owned by the railroad because it had failed to live up to the grant requirements. These once-private lands, totaling 2.1 million acres, are located in 18 counties in Western Oregon and are managed by the BLM.

National forest lands were never in private ownership, never on the property tax rolls, and are managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

In 1937, Congress passed the O&C Sustained Yield Act. Keep in mind that land in federal ownership generates no property taxes and cannot be developed for commercial or industrial purposes. The O&C Act was passed so that counties would share revenue when timber on these lands was sold.

Timber production on the O&C lands has been reduced by about 90 percent since the listing of the spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, depriving counties of this critical revenue source. To protect the O&C counties from insolvency, the federal government passed temporary legislation providing safety net payments to replace the lost timber revenue. These temporary safety net payments are ending, so counties will once again have to rely on timber revenue.

The O&C lands are very different from the huge timbered tracts that make up our national forests. We have 11 national forests in Oregon. When driving from Roseburg to Diamond Lake, the huge expanse of forestland you see is the Umpqua National Forest, not O&C lands. When you drive up the McKenzie River from Eugene, the unbroken forest landscape you drive through is the Willamette National Forest, not O&C lands. And so it is with the Mount Hood, the Rogue, the Wallowa-Whitman, and the other national forests in our state.

In contrast, the O&C lands are mostly small, scattered blocks of forestland interspersed in a checkerboard pattern with private land, most of which has been managed for timber production for many decades. So the geography and physical characteristics of the O&C lands and the national forests are very different.

Another critical difference is that Congress has mandated that the O&C lands be managed for permanent timber production under the principle of sustained yield, cutting no more than is grown each year. The courts have made clear that timber production is the dominant use for the O&C lands under federal law.

By contrast, national forests are managed under the principle of multiple use. That means recreation, wildlife reserves, scenic corridors and research areas. Harvest of timber is one of the multiple uses, but unlike the O&C lands, timber production is not the dominant use.

Perhaps the most important difference is that revenue from the O&C lands is unrestricted and goes into the general fund of each O&C county. That means counties can use the O&C revenue for law enforcement, veterans' services, libraries, senior services, parks and other county services, according to local priorities and needs.

Revenue that comes to counties from timber harvested from the national forests is restricted to use on county roads. It cannot be used to support county general fund services as O&C revenues can.

The BLM's current WOPR planning process applies to O&C lands only, not national forest lands. Every year, 1.2 billion board feet of new timber volume grows on the O&C lands. The WOPR is expected to recommend harvest equal to about half of the new growth, meaning that the 80 billion board feet of timber currently standing on the O&C lands will increase by about 600 million board feet every year, creating wildlife habitat and protecting streams and water quality.

As you hear more about the BLM's WOPR, keep in mind it does not apply to the 16 million acres of national forest land in Oregon, but applies only to the 2.1 million acres contained in the O&C lands. Keep in mind, too, that the O&C lands are supposed to be for timber production, to generate revenues supporting all the many services the public expects from counties. The Endangered Species Act and other environmental protections apply on the O&C lands, but those protections must take into account the differences between the O&C lands and the national forests.

Doug Robertson is a Douglas County commissioner and president of the Association of O&C Counties.