Timber companies in the Northwest signed a deal with the devil this week.
Most of the biggest timber companies in the Northwest signed a deal with the devil this week. In this case, the devil is Governor Kate Brown…who has watched most years as hundreds of thousands of acres of her state went up in flames. The deal delivers big time for tree huggers and for the industry. But it cheats the citizens of the state of Oregon and it makes the forest fire problem worse. Timber companies got a promise that lawsuits and anti forest voter initiatives would end. And what did citizens and taxpayers like you and me get? Nothing much. Notification for a tiny slice of the population when aerial spraying happens. Conservation plans for private timberland that protect endangered species…which means less logging. Does the plan increase logging on state lands? No. So the jobs and the tax revenue and funding for the kind of clearing that would prevent forest fires won’t happen. But the environmentalists love this stuff. They don’t need forest jobs. They live in cities.
-Lars Larson