Timber Supply and Demand Resource Economics And Management

Timber demand and supply

Oregon's economy was particularly hard-hit by the recession. The state has one of the highest national unemployment rates. This has caused many people within the environmentally-friendly state to rethink their attitudes about forest usage, including politicians who were previously not sympathetic to the interests of the logging industry. Even liberals are calling for relaxation of logging laws to inject life into the flagging Oregon economy. Liberal Democrat "U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio said his bipartisan proposal to designate some federal land for logging and a preliminary Senate vote to extend forest payments may provide breathing room for Oregon timber counties on the edge of insolvency" (Mortenson, 2012). In the proposed measure, although old growth would be left alone or pruned on the Oregon & California Railroad land, the rest "would be logged over time; some of it on 60- to 80-year harvest rotations...

Oregon has lost its federal forest payments, which were originally intended to make up for lost revenue from land designated as national forests. "About a dozen Oregon counties face insolvency in a year or two if replacement funding isn't found. Curry County, in southwest Oregon, hopes to stave off collapse by putting a sales tax on the ballot" (Mortenson, 2012). The idea of a regressive sales tax is understandably unpopular, especially given Oregon's high rate of unemployment. Residents are already struggling to buy necessities.
Environmentalists who oppose the measure say that it is unlikely that they can marshal enough political support to defeat it. Legally, they are also in a quandary. The land, spanning 2.3 million acres over 18 Oregon counties, was originally "granted to a railroad company. When the company failed, the federal government…