Photo credit: Francis Eatherington
Deceptive advertising, inappropriate lobbying, suppressing scientific studies that didn’t support the logging industry’s practices. The Oregon Secretary of State’s recently released audit of the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI) confirms that this tax-funded organization repeatedly misled Oregonians by presenting itself as an educational group providing objective forestry information to the public. In reality, they used taxpayer money to promote the timber industry.
The audit makes clear that OFRI’s actions, as well as the composition of OFRI’s board, poor governance, lack of transparency, and lack of oversight have all conspired to violate the public’s trust, misinform, and set back action on the climate crisis. It’s past time for the Oregon Legislature to correct this by shifting OFRI’s public funding to investments in sustainable, climate-smart forestry, funding new research, and assisting small woodland owners with practices that increase our forests' ability to store carbon and provide clean water.
Tell your legislators you want them to read the audit and make sure OFRI is held accountable in the next legislative session (It’s quick and easy).
Oregon’s forests are some of our greatest treasures. Our state legislators must ensure ecological and economic perspectives are properly balanced in order to support successful stewardship of our forests for a livable future.
Now that the Secretary of State and the Oregon House (in HB2357) have called out the likely illegal damage OFRI-led coercion and intimidation have done to our understanding of forest carbon science by generating “a climate of fear” among OSU forest researchers, we also need to take a good look at the potential for strong support of well-funded and objective forest carbon research to have a positive impact on our forests and climate.
It’s only common sense that we should nurture forest carbon science outside the OFRI-OSU silo as a leading strategy for Oregon’s forest management policy. Properly understanding the value of our forests for carbon sequestration and storage could transform our rural economies while providing the manifold social and ecological benefits to human and natural communities from nurturing intact, functional forest ecosystems.
Support for the courageous legislators who were willing to openly challenge the political dominance of forest industry lobbyists during the 2021 session will be key: Representatives Andrea Salinas, Khanh Pham, Pam Marsh, Andrea Valderrama, Nancy Nathanson, Paul Holvey, and Brad Witt, and Senators Jeff Golden and Michael Dembrow, in particular.
Your Sierra Club will be working with Oregon legislators in 2022 to address these problems with OFRI.
Take action now to help set the stage for change.
Want to join the teams working on this and other forest-related issues?
Contact Carol at illinoisvalley@oregon.sierraclub.org.