Two recent op-eds in Lookout Eugene-Springfield — one by Zeph Van Allen and the other by Michelle Holman — lament how the Lane County Watersheds Bill of Rights was crushed by cash from logging, oil, real estate and Koch‑connected groups that totaled 14 times the amount raised by Measure 20-373’s supporters.

Corporate shenanigans like this are nothing new in Oregon, of course.

In 2006, Oregon State University researcher Dan Donato published a study concluding that post-wildfire salvage logging hindered forest regeneration and increased future fire risks. OSU forestry professors aligned with logging interests petitioned the influential journal Science to retract the publication. The paper was published, however, and similar studies from 2007 partially confirmed it; salvage logging appears to impede forest recovery and increase fire risks.

In 2018, the Oregon Forestry Resources Institute, a state agency known as OFRI, tried to suppress OSU research that indicated logging, once thought to have no negative effect on global warming, was, in fact, the biggest source of climate pollution in the state.

OFRI struck again in 2019 when its director asked an OSU dean to cancel a scientific survey of public attitudes toward aerial herbicide spraying, saying the survey was sound enough, “but also fairly dangerous.”

When media outlets uncovered OFRI’s malfeasance, many decried it as a lobbying arm for the timber industry. It wasn’t abolished, but anyone watching current OFRI cable ads — which present dubious claims about logging as self-evident truths — might be forgiven for thinking it should be.

Will Watson
Eugene