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“Most of us bought homes here with the idea that being a forest that this would be here as long as we were here,� Orange, a painter, said. “We’re realizing now due to the state’s revenue concerns that that’s not always the case.�

The site near Orange’s property, known as Mothball Hill, is one of several clearcut timber operations proposed in the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Astoria District Office annual operations plan. The plan itself is nothing out of the ordinary — as the name suggests, the district publishes one every year.

This year’s response from the public, however, is.

In the final days leading up to the plan’s public comment deadline last week, two proposed harvests have drawn the attention of neighbors, and about half a dozen people spoke out at a recent Clatsop County Board of Commissioners meeting.

“Typically, the only feedback we get during that public outreach process is usually from the environmental stakeholders and the industrial stakeholders,� Astoria District Forester Dan Goody said. “We very rarely get local folks chiming in.�

The Mothball Hill operation would allow for a clearcut harvest on 99 acres across two units east of Astoria, bordering Orange’s and a handful of other property owners’ backyards. According to a pre-operations report, the harvest would rake in an estimated $1.2 million. The Davis Ridge operation, on the other hand, proposes a 168-acre clearcut on two units in Brownsmead with an estimated $2.2 million net value.

While the public reactions to the proposed operations elevate local environmental concerns, they also point to a larger conversation about how the state manages its forests and what recent regulatory changes could mean for the future of timber harvests. They also beg the question of what residents can reasonably expect if they choose to live next to state forestland.

An annual process

Beginning in the late 1930s, Forest Trust Land counties, including Clatsop County, gave land that had been overharvested and abandoned by the timber industry to the state for timber management. Now, one-third of the revenue from state timber sales goes back to the Department of Forestry, while the other two-thirds goes to local governments in counties that originally donated the land. Annual operations plans help local districts outline where those timber sales will be each fiscal year.

The agency’s work is guided under the umbrella of greatest permanent value, a principle that seeks to balance social, environmental and economic benefits. From there, it looks to the state’s forest management plan, the district’s implementation plan and local harvest volume objectives for more specific guidance.

Goody said decision-making is a long process, with planning and surveys often beginning up to two years in advance. Determining where to harvest is essentially a process of elimination.

“We look at the whole forest in a GIS computer screen, say, ‘Here are all our habitat conservation areas,’ and you preclude those from the clearcut harvest. Here are all our stream buffers, or all our geotechnical areas in places that might have landslides,� he said. “You start taking all that stuff away, and then you see what you have left for potential harvests. And you line that up with our harvest objective, which is roughly 50 million board feet a year, and that pretty much dictates where we harvest.�

But this year, there’s also another consideration at play: the state’s habitat conservation plan.

Over the past few years, Goody said the Department of Forestry has found itself in a transition zone, following both the current forest management plan and strategies under the draft habitat conservation plan. The habitat conservation plan, which the Oregon Board of Forestry narrowly advanced in March, designates habitat conservation areas for threatened and endangered species across roughly 640,000 acres of state forests, primarily in Clatsop and Tillamook counties.

While the plan offers the Department of Forestry greater protections against Endangered Species Act-related lawsuits, it also means fewer portions of state forestland are available for timber harvest. In Clatsop County, Goody said around 40% of state forestlands fall into habitat conservation areas. Harvesting in those areas is limited to cuts that would actively improve habitat.

“That took a lot of choices off the table,� he said.

The district is now looking more intentionally at where to harvest in the remaining 60% — and if Mothball Hill and Davis Ridge are any indication, that can include areas near people’s homes.

The Astoria district office first began implementing elements of the draft habitat conservation plan strategies during the 2023 fiscal year. Following the transition, Goody said the district’s harvest objectives dropped from 73 million board feet to around 50 million board feet per year. With the reduction in volume comes a reduction in value.

Based on modeling for the habitat conservation plan, Clatsop County has estimated it could lose up to 35% of timber revenue because of the decline in timber harvests, or more than $8 million annually.

“The counties are our primary financial stakeholder in our management, and so with a reduction in harvest is a reduction in money that goes to the county and local taxing districts,� Goody said. “So where we can, we are focusing on higher-return timber sales to minimize that financial impact to the counties.�

‘This is the wrong place’

For any given harvest, the Department of Forestry has to follow certain rules, like performing surveys and maintaining stream and slope buffers. When it comes to checking those boxes, Goody said this year’s proposed operations are pretty typical. The main difference is their proximity to people’s homes.

To concerned neighbors, that’s no small distinction.

“This isn’t something that I’m totally against, like most reasonable people,� said Trask Bergerson, of Bergerson Tile & Stone, whose property abuts Mothball Hill. “I just didn’t really expect it in my backyard.�

Proximity isn’t the only concern, though. Residents have also voiced apprehension about landslide risks, potential chemical sprays and impacts of clearcutting on nearby fish-bearing streams.

The northwest corner of the Mothball Hill site rests between the mouth of the John Day River and the Columbia River, and portions of the Davis Ridge operation border Gnat Creek. Both bodies of water provide habitat for threatened and endangered fish. Although pre-operations reports for the sites indicate the Department of Forestry intends to establish stream buffers, that doesn’t necessarily assuage neighbors’ worries.

Orange said he keeps an organic garden and fruit trees on his property, and his wife owns an apiary business. Bergerson and his wife also keep an organic garden, and have recently been looking into digging a well on their property. Contaminated water or pesticides wouldn’t bode well for any of those operations.

“This is the wrong place,� Orange said. “It’s way too close to neighborhoods, it’s way too close to national protected areas, it’s in a watershed — a salmon-bearing watershed. It’s the wrong place.�

Denise Moore, a Brownsmead resident and licensed massage therapist whose property abuts part of the proposed Davis Ridge operation, feels similarly. On a recent Friday morning, she walked along her property line with a handful of neighbors, stopping at a massive tree just past the southern edge of her 3 acres, near a stream that eventually trickles into Gnat Creek.

Moore isn’t sure what might become of the stand near the stream if a clearcut was approved, but she worries older trees like this one might not be spared. According to pre-operations reports, certain trees at the proposed Davis Ridge site are estimated to be up to 83 years old, and a few acres at Mothball Hill contain trees as old as 103.

“We need to protect what little bit of this is here,� she said. “There’s plenty of other places that they can harvest that don’t impact a valuable waterway.�

But according to Goody, that’s part of the problem: there aren’t plenty of places to harvest — or at least, not as many as there used to be. While a stand of 80-year-old trees is closer to maturity than a stand of 20-year-old trees, it also grows much more slowly and provides more timber volume per acre. Part of adapting to revenue needs is being thoughtful about those trade-offs.

“Those are the balances we’re making all the time when we’re thinking about these things,� Goody said.

Communication challenges

In recent weeks, residents have met with North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection, a Rockaway Beach-based environmental group that has formed an Astoria chapter, to discuss next steps. One idea that has emerged is to conduct independent surveys as a baseline to compare with the Department of Forestry’s pre-operation reports.

Orange said the idea is driven partially by a lack of transparency.

Orange, Bergerson and Moore all have had the same experience: no one from the Department of Forestry notified them that a clearcut had been proposed next to their properties, before or during the public comment period. And according to the rules, no one technically had to. The annual operations plan is a public document.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, and this is really a polarizing topic — but it doesn’t really have to be,� Bergerson said. “We can have reasonable conversations, life’s about compromise. We’re really just asking to have a reasonable conversation, and inform us as property owners, homeowners, let us know what’s going on. And it hasn’t felt that transparent.�

After hearing about the proposed cuts through the grapevine a couple of weeks before the public comment deadline, residents requested a meeting with the Astoria district office and Anna Kaufman, Astoria chapter coordinator for North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection. The agency denied the request and offered the group the public comment form as an alternative.

“If there’s an issue between our ownership and their ownership, you know, that becomes a real property issue,� Goody said. “And that’s nobody’s business but the two parties involved, which is why we don’t like to engage with a third party to help facilitate any issue resolution.�

Goody said he isn’t opposed to conversations with individual landowners, though. As the agency wraps up the annual operations plan process, it's having discussions about communication improvements for next year, including evaluating whether residents should be notified of proposed cuts near their homes prior to plan approval.

Typically, Goody said most of the district’s work with landowners actually happens after a sale is in the pipeline. Once the Department of Forestry reviews public comments, it works to get the plan approved as close to July 1 as possible. After that, it still has to finalize individual sale plans in Salem before any cutting can take place.

For approved operations, agency staffers meet with adjacent homeowners to find ways to minimize impacts, like identifying which trees they might be able to keep in place to reduce visual impacts in people’s yards. They can also answer questions about specific trees of concern, riparian areas and whether they intend to use any chemicals at the site.

“We do want to work with the landowners and work with them where we can,� Goody said.

Nevertheless, neighbors wish they’d had more advance notice. To Moore, the conversation doesn’t necessarily have to be about opposing every single timber sale — but she does want to see more open communication about how the Department of Forestry makes its decisions.

“There’s a place for management absolutely — I’m not opposed to that at all,� she said. “I think this is an important industry in our community. But the practices need to be really looked at.�