The public kerfuffle over timber heir Kathleen Jones-McCann’s tax-and-permit-free compound on the McKenzie River reflects a deep, unresolved conflict over “who will own the forest?”

The phrase first became controversial in 2023. For the 22nd consecutive year, the World Forestry Center’s annual conference in Portland was presumptuously called Who Will Own the Forest?  . . . as if forests were inevitably someone’s property. Environmentalists finally rejected this problematic premise and generally raised hell. Alarmed, the timber-industry-aligned WFC organizers rebranded the conference CANOPY, saying it sought “a broader focus on how capital markets can drive sustainable forestry.” In other words, Big Timber and Wall Street had and would always “own the forests.” True to brand, the WFC is attempting to sell its 64-acre wildlife preserve in Sherwood for $997,000.

Until 2021, Jones-McCann’s family did “own the forest,”175,000 acres of it anyhow. This much private property gave them an outsized political sway, certainly. However, a simple assertion of their private property rights cannot adequately encompass the McKenzie River watersheds. This river is a spawning ground for threatened chinooks and bull trout, a global destination for fishing and rafting, and the water supply for 170,000+ people. What happens in the watersheds, permitted or not, concerns everyone downstream.

The McKenzie watershed thus resembles a “public trust.” Public trust is an ancient legal principle that preserves certain natural resources for public benefit. Public trust was asserted with the Oregon Beach Bill in 1967, when the state proclaimed beaches were public “from the first dune to the water.” Public trust doctrine also undergirds the famous Climate Kids lawsuit filed in federal court in Eugene.

The Jones-McCann affair cries out for the assertion of a public trust; not another sterile debate over “who will own the forests,” but rather an explicit formulation of the legal status of the rivers that drain those forests, and the rights of all the folks, flora, and fauna who don’t “own forests.” These interests transcend private property, capital and markets altogether. Oregonians must face them. In an age of unregulated resource extraction, we are all downstream.

Will Watson
Eugene