I would like to start by thanking the City Club
for the opportunity to speak. It is always a pleasure to return to Portland.
Although my husband and I are from the Seattle area and moved back this
summer, our home for the past five years has been just across the river
in Vancouver, and we already miss it.
I also must admit
to divided loyalties up here, being between a Husky and a Beaver. Both my
degrees are from the U.W., but I attended OSU’s football game last Saturday,
and am sorely tempted to jump ship.
I’m going to talk
about Oregon’s forests from a global perspective, starting with a few facts
about Weyerhaeuser. The company was founded here in the Pacific Northwest
over a century ago, and has grown to be one of the largest forest products
companies in the world.
- $14.5 billion dollars
in sales and revenues (2001)
- Ranked in Fortune 200
since 1956 (# 122 in 2001)
- 58,000 employees in 18 countries
- 7.5 million acres owned/leased in U.S.; 34.5 million acres owned/
licensed in Canada; 583,000 acres in joint ventures in the Southern Hemisphere
- The third largest landowner in North America, the world’s largest
owner of merchantable softwood timber
- More than 300
operating facilities
- The world’s largest producer
of softwood and hardwood lumber and engineered wood products
- North America’s 2nd largest producer of structural panels and
distributor of wood products
- The world’s largest producer
of softwood market pulp
- The 3rd-largest producer of
containerboard in the U.S.
- One of the largest producers
of uncoated free sheet and corrugated packaging in the U.S.
With all that, how important, then, is Oregon? I’m here to tell
you its very important, both to my company and to the world at large. It’s
important for two reasons: first, because it’s a terrific place to grow
and harvest trees. Second, because it’s a proving ground for forest policy.
Why not produce our forest products elsewhere, and leave Oregon’s
forests to grow to a ripe old age?
Because, in part,
not all forests are created equal. I learned in forestry school that northwest
Oregon and southwest Washington have the most productive forests in the
world. That was a bit of an overstatement—they’re merely the most productive
in the Northern Hemisphere. We can grow and harvest trees here at rates—sustainable
rates—that can meet a significant part of the world’s need for wood on a
relatively small footprint of harvest. If we stop practicing forestry here
and meet the world’s needs from slower-growing forests in places like the
Nordic countries, Russia, and interior Canada, then the footprint will be
larger—five to 10 times larger.
Our choices are not all
or nothing, of course. Because some forests are highly productive, we have
quite a few options in meeting world wood demand. For example, one option
we’re not using in Oregon is harvest from federal lands--timber sales off
the federal forests in Oregon have virtually ended since the spotted owl
controversy of a decade ago. USFS sales in Oregon were just under 3 billion
board feet in 1990; they fell over 80% to half a billion board feet in 1991.
And that was a high point. Sales off the entire National Forest system in
Oregon have averaged about 50 million board feet for the past four years.
Billions, or millions, sound like big numbers, but a board foot is about
the size of your dinner plate, and 50 million board feet per year would
keep about one small sawmill running.
I mentioned that
Oregon is a proving ground for forest policy. So far, I’ve been describing
an old policy model—sustainability in terms of timber harvest, and National
Forests in reserves. Parks and clearcuts, one of my colleagues calls it.
Jerry is probably wondering when I’m going to refer to old-growth forests
as “decadent,” or argue that clearcutting emulates forest fires.
I’m not. A “one size fits all” view of forest management is what
got us into trouble in the 1970s and ‘80s. We applied an intensive forestry
model to all lands, public or private. During the ‘90s we tried on other
“one size fits all” model, searching for the silvicultural “silver bullet”
that would buy us public approval and high harvest levels on all lands.
Fortunately, there appear to be signs that our “identity
crisis” is ending. The World Wide Fund for Nature sponsored a study last
year, called “The Forest Industry in the 21st Century,” in which they explored
the question whether fast-growing, planted forests might produce a significant
amount of the world’s wood supply in a small area. Now, they were thinking
of New Zealand, not Oregon, and don’t have their silviculture quite right
yet, but it’s still progress.
While environmental groups
are conceding that forest management might possibly be a good thing, Weyerhaeuser
and other companies are conceding that protected areas might possibly be
a valuable part of local land use planning for forests. In British Columbia,
for example, we participated in a Land and Resource Management Planning
process that allocated large areas of old-growth coastal rainforests to
reserves.
There is room for different styles of forest
management, meeting different objectives, in Oregon’s forests. In between
the bookends that I’ve described of intensive forest management and complete
preserves, there is also room for less intensive, more “natural” management
regimes, suitable for family forest owners, government agencies, and other
owners not seeking the competitive rates of return that a commercial landowner
seeks. This is also a suitable model in slower-growing industrial forests,
if costs can be kept low.
And, there is room for forest
management for conservation purposes, in which the removal of trees—and
making any money from them—is incidental to an underlying environmental
purpose, such as protecting or restoring forest health.
Which
is probably a good place to stop, and let the real experts take it from
here. I’ll be happy to answer questions later.
