November 9, 2008

Governor Ted Kulongoski
160 State Capitol
900 Court Street
Salem, OR 97301-4047

Dear Governor Kulongoski,

We, the Steering Committee members of Citizens for Public Accountability, urge you, as our elected protector of the great State of Oregon, to reject the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR) before the end of the 30-day public protest period, after which the BLM will release its Record of Decision.

The scale and severity of the BLM plan’s negative impacts, including carbon emissions and waterway degradation, will violate our current state and federal policies and plans, which provide minimum environmental protections (see the consistency review letter from environmental groups). Other agencies are not required and/or able to compensate for the BLM’s shirking of its responsibility under the current Northwest Forest Plan. Part of the bargain of the Northwest Forest Plan was that federal forests would carry most of the conservation burden and that would reduce the need to regulate activities on non-federal lands. If the BLM reneges on its commitment to fulfilling this vital conservation role, a cloud of regulatory uncertainty over non-federal forests will exist. Regardless of who owns the lands surrounding them, waterways and wildlife are legally in the public domain and must be protected.

Citizens for Public Accountability is a not-for-profit organization based in Lane County. We work to hold elected officials accountable to the public on a variety of social justice and environmental issues and have several hundred members. The WOPR clearly conflicts with several of the accountability standards listed in our mission statement:

• That our elected officials should decide all matters of importance to the public in open public meetings. To achieve transparency in your response to the BLM following your consistency review, we ask that you deliver your response, in which we urge you to reject the WOPR, to the public directly at the Nov. 14 Rally on the Capitol Steps.
• That public funds are to be spent only in the public interest. Neither taxpayer money spent implementing the WOPR nor taxpayer money spent mitigating the impacts of the WOPR is in the public’s best interest.
• That when public subsidies are provided to private companies, our elected officials have to demonstrate that the proposed expenditure of public funds is the most efficient and fair way to meet public goals. The WOPR clearly conflicts with the goals of our current plans and policies that elected officials and other official entities adopted upon compromise. WOPR expenditures do not meet the goals of these plans and policies.
• That decisions to expend public funds involve balanced and extensive information. Much of the information presented to the public has been unbalanced and withheld for some time (e.g. the reviews of scientists criticizing the bogus science on which the WOPR was based, brought to the public’s attention by Congressman Peter DeFazio, as well as the FEIS GIS data).
• That a high quality and healthful environment is developed and maintained for all citizens. The WOPR drastically cuts existing protections and does not add any new protection.
• That a fair and safe community is developed and maintained for all citizens. The WOPR’s sizeable contribution to climate change would be neither fair nor safe.

The WOPR is primarily payback from the Bush Administration to the timber industry, opening up 100,000 acres of remaining old growth to logging, and including 1,300 miles of new logging roads, subsidized by taxpayers who struggle to afford their own fuel costs. The Oregon’s timber industry is already well-subsidized, with private owners of forested lands of over 5,000 acres paying no tax to the state and counties on even worst-case clearcutting since 2001, when the legislature quietly rescinded this tax. Oregonians will be left with too little of their natural resources for a meager return from timber receipts to the counties (only 35% of the amount the counties will receive in the next four years from the county payments). About 40,000 households live within one half-mile of BLM land in Western Oregon. Citizens are fearful of clearcuts that would mar and destabilize the hillsides, of the new plantations that will increase fire risk, and of domestic water supplies that will dwindle or become expensive to clean and channel with the added sediment. Roughly 95% of the over 30,000 comments received on the DEIS supported protecting older forests and keeping BLM in the scientific framework of the Northwest Forest Plan.

While rewarding larger and unsustainable timber companies, the WOPR hurts small and sustainable forestland owners, who will not be able to compete as WOPR gluts the market with old growth. The BLM has ignored alternatives that these sustainable foresters and other rural citizens proposed during the public comment period. We should be keeping money in the local economy via incentives for good forest stewardship rather than for the greed of industry managers who are glad to move wherever else has cheaper labor and weaker environmental laws. The loss of jobs in fishing, recreation, and tourism, which rely on the old growth and healthy waterways that make Oregon special, would be greater than the short-term timber jobs created by the WOPR. The recreation and tourism industries, which contribute more than twice as much money as the timber industry to the Oregon economy annually, need to be given priority over short-term gain to the shrinking timber industry. Rather than relying on a minor, short-term fix, the state and county governments need to work harder to build a more sustainable economy for both rural and urban Oregonians alike. You are the only elected entity standing between the Bush Administration and our public forests, which contain some of the last centuries-old old growth stands in the U.S., buffers against regional and global climate catastrophe. As you well know as a leader in addressing climate change, deforestation accounts for about one third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. According to Oregon Wild, clearcutting from private forestry annually generates as much emissions as all of the cars and trucks registered in Oregon in a single year; WOPR would be the equivalent of adding another 1 million cars to the road in Oregon for 132 years. As NASA and the IPCC warn us, we have not the luxury of standing idly by while our rich forest carbon stores are converted into emission sources by clearcutting; we must immediately take advantage of the unique carbon storage capacity of Oregon’s old growth forests by protecting them and future old growth on public lands. If we do not seize this opportunity, an obligation really, we are risking tremendous costs of both money and human lives.

You are the only entity, besides the courts, standing between the Bush Administration and our public forests, which contain some of the last centuries-old old growth stands in the U.S., buffers against regional and global climate catastrophe. As you well know as a leader in addressing climate change, deforestation accounts for about one third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. According to Oregon Wild, clearcutting from private forestry annually generates as much emissions as all of the cars and trucks registered in Oregon in a single year; WOPR would be the equivalent of adding another 1 million cars to the road. As NASA and the IPCC warn us, we have not the luxury of standing idly by while our rich forest carbon stores are converted into emission sources by clearcutting; we must immediately take advantage of the unique carbon storage capacity of Oregon’s old growth forests by protecting them and future old growth on public lands. If we do not seize this opportunity, an obligation really, we are risking tremendous costs of both money and human lives. As Stern and other economists tell us, these costs will vastly outweigh the costs of preventing climate collapse.

Senator Ron Wyden, Representative Peter DeFazio, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, Eugene and Corvallis City Councils, and county elected officials have publicly criticized this unscientific, profit-driven Bush forest plan, the WOPR. We urge you to stand with other elected officials in your party who are concerned about the WOPR, and give the defeat of the WOPR a chance by extending the WOPR process into the more favorable Obama Administration. You have proven a leader in defending Oregon’s roadless forests from salvage logging and among U.S. governors in taking measures to reduce climate change. We urge you to leave a most positive legacy by holding the federal executive branch and their appointees to the BLM accountable and rejecting the WOPR, which would rob citizens of climate and economic security.

Sincerely,

Robert M. O’Brien
President of Citizens for Public Accountability
3525 Gilham Road
Eugene, OR 97408