Scott Swanson
The South Santiam Community Forest project continues to take shape as members of the Governor’s Oregon Solutions Team assigned to the initiative met last week in Sweet Home.
The meeting on Monday, June 10, included presentations on what various committees involved in the project are trying to accomplish and on two opportunities for funding that may be available down the road.
About 40 people, representing a wide range of federal, state and local interests – public and private – spent most of the day at the Community Center discussing issues such as how best to preserve Cascadia Cave, how to create increased tourism and recreation opportunities in the area and strategies for creating a working forest that would improve the local economy with various timber products.
The solutions team is working on a variety of concepts, among them the creation of a community forest corridor from Sweet Home to the Willamette National Forest, east of Cascadia, development of products from the forests east of Sweet Home and many smaller details that would be associated with those goals.
Oregon Solutions Project Manager Steve Bryant said members of three committees focused on those areas met again June 10.
The Cascadia Cave/Cultural Corridor Committee is focusing on identifying property that could be traded with the Hill Family holdings managed by Cascade Timber Consulting, which currently owns the land on which the ancient Native American cultural site is located. The stated goal is to turn control of the cave over to the U.S. Forest Service, which also owns land in the area.
Committee members are discussing what types of protection would be needed for the site, which has been a target of vandalism and souvenir hunters in the past.
“They’re asking what are appropriate kinds of protection and interpretation of that site that would help avoid further damage,” Bryant said.
The Working Forest Community Forest Environmental Restoration Committee has been discussing how the forest could be developed from a production standpoint.
“They’re starting to realize that they may not be able to put together a large tract of public working forest in that area,” Bryant said. “But they recognize that a lot of private lands are already extremely productive – the bulk of that from CTC properties.”
He said Thomas Maness, dean of the Oregon State University College of Forestry, who has been designated one of the leaders of the team, suggested that the committee look at opportunities to get more local uses out of logs that are currently being shipped overseas.
“What could be part of the focus is how do we get more economic gain from timber coming from private lands,” he said, suggesting that more dimension lumber may be able to be cut locally or other wood products developed.
At the meeting, Laura Tesler of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reported on the Willamette Wildlife Mitigation Fund, which the department receives from the Bonneville Power Administration per a 2010 agreement to settle BPA wildlife habitat mitigation obligations in the Willamette Valley. The agreement guarantees more than $117 million for fish and wildlife habitat conservation and restoration, protecting a minimum of 16,880 acres of native habitats.
Bryant said that the community forest project could benefit from that since the mitigation efforts include salmon habitat.
“It was intriguing in that there may be a possible match between that program and the forest corridor,” he said. “They’re chartered to essentially purchase land for habitat restoration. They’ve spent a lot of money to purchase a lot of land in the Willamette Basin. We would have to do a study to determine if we have land that would qualify.”
Proposals are made each January, which then undergo an 18-month review process to determine qualification, he said.
Also at the meeting, Harry Dalgaard of the Oregon Tourism Commission’s Travel Oregon outlined some of the programs available to rural communities to promote tourism.
He cited Travel Oregon’s work with Oakridge, which it helped in its conversion from a timber products-based community to a tourism destination. The Rural Tourism Studio, a “robust training program designed to assist rural communities in sustainable tourism development,” worked with Oakridge to make that change.
Bryant noted that Sweet Home and Oakridge are “similar as former timber communities.”
He said Dalgaard indicated “a high likelihood that they would, in the next couple of years, devote some resources to Sweet Home to help develop tourism and recreation opportunities.
“That was exciting,” Bryant said. “They have a lot of resources to bring to the table. They have dedicated dollars for tourism promotion and experts to identify opportunities.”
Sweet Home City Manager Craig Martin reported on the city’s progress toward qualifying for a RARE student from the University of Oregon to manage the community forest program (see related article below).
Martin said later he’s “encouraged” by the progress made thus far.
“We’re moving forward,” he said. “It’s a little slow, but a project of this scope, given the magnitude and the number of parties involved, takes a little longer. But in the end we’ll have a much stronger project. Hopefully, this precess will ensure the success of the project.”
He said the benefits for Sweet Home include tourism dollars and the secondary wood products “that maybe aren’t as attractive for industrial timber management, but somebody might be able to make some money out of items up in the forest.”
The other benefit of the project, he said, is the development of the 441 acres once owned by Western States Land Reliance Trust and managed by Dan Desler. Linn County foreclosed the WSLRT property at the end of 2010 for nonpayment of property taxes. The solutions team is interested in making that property the western “node” for the community forest corridor and proposed trail running east to the national forest.
“There are a lot of benefits to getting that property reclaimed,” Martin said of the WSLRT land. “That development will bring people in. It will be fairly substantial for Sweet Home.”