Throughout March, a giant image of clear-cut forests will confront Portland commuters as it rolls around the city on the side of a MAX train.

That’s because Oregon Wild has relaunched its “Welcome to Oregon, Home of the Clear-Cut” campaign in a big way, using a MAX train car and 20 TriMet buses to show Portlanders what’s happening in Oregon forests.

While Oregon Wild is a nonprofit based in Portland, its campaign is aimed at elevating the voices of rural Oregonians. They are outraged over the impact industrial clear-cutting is having on their drinking water sources and the habitat that surrounds their homes, said Jason Gonzales, the organization’s forest and watershed campaign organizer. Gonzales has spent the past seven years living in the heart of the Oregon Coast Range and organizing with other rural Oregonians on environmental issues.

“Welcome to Oregon, Home of the Clear-Cut” was originally launched in 2013, when Oregon Wild took out ads in the form of giant postcards that would hang at the Portland and Eugene airports, showing travelers images of clear-cuts when they got off their planes. While the ad ran briefly in Eugene, the Port of Portland, which operates Portland International Airport, rejected the campaign.

In response, Oregon Wild teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon and filed a lawsuit. In June, the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court decision barring the port authority from rejecting ads for political reasons.

The ruling also applied to public transit, so when deciding whether to move forward with the airport ads, Oregon Wild saw an opportunity to get more bang for its buck with TriMet.

Street Roots spoke with Gonzales in the days leading up to the campaign launch to find out why Oregon Wild has undertaken this bold campaign now and what it wants Portlanders to know about Oregon’s forests.

Gonzales, a lifelong environmental activist, lives about halfway between Eugene and Florence on a 150-acre forest property that borders both publicly and privately managed forests. He became concerned about Oregon’s forest practices after witnessing the impact clear-cuts and aerial spraying was having on his watershed and on his neighbors, he said.

Environmental watchdogs like Oregon Wild can be perceived as anti-logging extremists, but Gonzales stresses that this campaign isn’t about stopping logging; it’s about finding more ecologically responsible ways to extract wood products from our forests.

From his time working as a logger and in Oregon mills, Gonzales said, he’s learned there are ways to do forestry without going to the extremes of clear-cutting, and that’s what Oregon Wild is advocating for.

Jason Gonzales, of Oregon Wild, stands in his front yard in Walton, in the Oregon Coast Range, with his dog, Truffles. Courtesy photo by Stephanie Gonzales

Emily Green: What is it that you want Portlanders to know about clear-cutting in Oregon?

Jason Gonzales: There are a few components to it. One is that clear-cutting is rampant in Oregon. When I do events or talk to people in Portland, and even sometimes in Eugene, it’s always shocking how often people say, “We don’t clear-cut in Oregon anymore, do we?” I always have to ask that person if they’ve gotten out of the city in the last five years.

I think that what happens is when people are on the highways or when they’re on the coast, they may not necessarily look up very much, and they’re focused on what’s right around them. One of the messages for the city-based folks is that a lot of this state is still being clear-cut on a regular basis. They think that this is something we fixed with the famous timber wars of the ’90s, when a lot of public lands got better protections, but that other half of Oregon’s land that’s private is still being clear-cut.

The second component is, right now there’s a huge push from the logging industry to use cross-laminated timber and mass timber products that are being use in Portland’s buildings and to paint them as this new green product. It’s something that we really want to challenge.

(Cross-laminated timber is formed when multiple layers of lumber are fused together with glue under high pressure and high temperature, making a building material that can be used in place of steel or concrete in tall buildings.)

Up until two years ago, to have a new project certified as LEED certified and as a sustainable building project, the wood sourcing had to come from forests that were certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as FSC-certified logging. About two years ago, with a major push from the logging industry, that requirement was actually removed, and there’s no longer a real sustainability requirement when it comes to wood sourcing for LEED or other sustainably certified buildings.

Right now there’s a number of examples in Portland where not only is the cross-laminated timber or mass timber or wood skyscraper idea being pushed really hard, but the city itself, with leadership from (Mayor) Ted Wheeler, along with support from the governor’s office, is really pushing this idea that these buildings are a benefit and that they’re sustainable because wood products are better than concrete or steel.

To be honest, I would really like to be celebrating this with them. From a climate perspective, building with wood that is well harvested, that is sustainably managed in a real ecological and socially responsible way, should be something that we celebrate as better for the planet than building with concrete or steel. However, as long as Oregon has some of the weakest forest practice regulations in the region and a lot of this wood is being sourced from clear-cuts that are harming watersheds in rural Oregon, we can’t celebrate that.

This is a reminder to Portlanders that just because an industry wants to call something green or sustainable, doesn’t mean that it is. And we want to make sure that folks are paying attention to that this coming month.

FURTHER READING: Clear-cutting moves up to No. 1 emissions source in Oregon

E.G.: The image on the MAX train is pretty dystopian. Whereabouts in Oregon might people see large swaths of land that have been wiped clean like that?

J.G.: In my experience, you see it anytime you head to the coast from the valley. There’s a lot of places that have been hidden behind gates, that are probably the worst of the worst, or that are hidden far up these really complex logging road systems.

There’s nowhere that’s really hammered quite as heavy as a few specific places: The Jetty Creek Watershed right above Rockaway Beach, where around 90 percent of the watershed has been clear-cut just in the last 15 to 20 years. We just today shared on social media a GIF that I made that’s a 16-year time-lapse of Southwest Clatsop County, it went from Seaside, Arch Cape and Cannon Beach, that shows this really devastating level of logging where you can really see over a 16-year period almost the entire landscape becomes in a state of either being clear-cut or recently clear-cut.

This image shows a time lapse of southwest Clatsop County, Oregon. Over 16 years, most of the landscape is clear-cut. Image by Jason Gonzales/Oregon Wild via Google Earth

Other areas in similar condition would include the Siletz Gorge, especially the upper Siletz Gorge. But we also see it a lot just a few miles north or south of our major coastal routes because the highways are really great corridors to move the logs, but they do try to keep the most clear-cut landscapes a little bit out of view. I very often turn off and head north or south from the coastal highways to look for these places.

Near the Portland area, one of the most visible examples, where you can see it from the car as you’re driving, is when you head west on Highway 26 and head down Highway 53, that goes through the upper Nehalem. That’s an area where I think people would see.

But the best way for folks from Portland that don’t get out a lot to have a chance to see this is to pull up Google Earth and look at any portion of the Coast Range, other than the Siuslaw National Forest, and I think they’ll see exactly what we’re showing in those pictures just using satellite imagery, which these days are really up to date. Usually those images are taken within the last year.

MORE IMAGES: A bird's-eye view of Oregon's clear-cuts

E.G.: Are there enough sustainable, or FSC-certified, forests in Oregon to support a growing cross-laminated timber industry?

J.G.: That’s a tough question. Oregon has less FSC-certified acres than any of our neighboring states. And this is a major problem. There’s the supply problem and the demand problem. The reason there’s not many FSC-certified acres in Oregon is because we have a model currently where more of these small woodlot owners are being eaten up by the Wall Street corporations.

One of things that we’d like to see is, instead of the state of Oregon spending money to call cross-laminated timber “green” – giving tax breaks to Weyerhaeuser because they own over 5,000 acres and spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money letting the Oregon Forest Resources Institute brag about the clear-cutting practices that we do have, (such as replanting trees after a clear-cut) – we would like to see the state of Oregon and the logging industry in Oregon do more work to support folks like Hyla Woods and Zena Forest Products and the others in Oregon who are trying to do a better job by their forests and watersheds.

There’s a systemic need from our industry and from our government to do a total 180 and instead of trying to cut down on our FSC acres, to build them up. The FSC operators that I work with in the state are really good folks. They’re always out there trying to spread the good word of better stewardship, and they are just really met with resistance and attacks from the industry and a state that’s too willing to defend the status quo of clear-cutting and spraying.

E.G.: Are there any large-scale FSC forests in our state?

J.G.: There is. The biggest one is way down south in Central Oregon near the border. There are a couple large scale ones, and there’s a lot of interest from some foresters in becoming bigger operations that are FSC certified.

We decided to pay a lot of attention to cross-laminated timber and its potential to be a better product because D.R. Johnson (Lumber Co.), the sole producer of cross-laminated timber in the state of Oregon that’s certified to have their wood used in tall buildings – they have an FSC branch.

A lot of operators in the state, on the production side – the mills and the producers – for a lot of them to convert to an FSC facility could be challenging with our current laws and incentives. Oregon should offer better incentives to families and companies that want to do better, not punish them for it.

In this particular instance, we actually have a pretty good opportunity to really push this industry and say, here’s a product that you could be doing better with and the manufacturer is right there with the ability to have this branch of their operation produce a stewardship certified product. With the cross-laminated timber, we can efficiently see a better product being used in Portland buildings on a pretty rapid timeline.

E.G.: What’s the difference between an FSC-certified forest and a typical industrial forest?

J.G.: It’s not as big as I’d like it to be. The reality is FSC certification is lacking in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of reasons to suggest it could be much better, and so for us, it’s an opportunity for us to say, look, this isn’t perfect, but it’s better than what’s going on in a lot of places. But what it does mean is much less use of chemicals and aerial spray, much less frequency of clear-cutting, and much more support for things like water protections, large riparian buffers, smaller clear-cut openings and diversification as you’re planting, so we’re not just keeping more and more of our forests in this state of monocrop tree farming.

E.G.: The ad on the MAX train prominently displays a Web address, ClearCutOregon.com. What will people find at that website?

J.G.: People will find more images of clear cuts and clear-cut streams, of clear-cut communities. They’ll find memes and shareables that they can use to help us spread the word on social media, a lot of facts and figures about what’s going on with clear-cutting in Oregon, and links to other websites where you can hear the stories of Oregonians who’ve been negatively impacted by clear-cutting and aerial spraying, such as the Rockaway citizens in Rockaway Beach with the Jetty Creek situation, and all up and down the coast and Coast Range.

They can also find stories from the good folks at Hyla Woods and other foresters that are really trying to do a better job, so that we can really give them the opportunity to also say, look, we’re not anti-logging here; we are really pro better logging.

FURTHER READING: Is it time for a cultural shift in how we think about logging, forests?

E.G.: How can people get involved if they want do something about this?

J.G.: We will have a petition for people to take action (at ClearCutOregon.com). We’re looking at putting printable postcards (on the website) so people can have their own postcard-writing parties with their friends and family, and send their concerns by mail to Oregon’s elected officials and their representatives. They will learn how to contact me and other organizers in the state that will help them organize in their own communities.

E.G.: Oregon Wild’s ad will be going by the Oregon Convention Center on a MAX train when certain events are taking place there. Can you tell me a little more about that?

J.G.: Coming up in the middle of March, we have the Mass Timber Conference at the Oregon Convention Center. This is a convention that draws elected officials and decision-makers from all over the region. There will be a lot of people with a lot of power there, but it also attracts a lot of architects and designers who want to be doing good things in their community with sustainable green building, and it will also attract a lot of people from within the industry who may really believe what they’re doing now is the best way – so we think this is a great opportunity to expose them to our side of the story and our messaging.

E.G.: Are there any other issues behind the campaign?

J.G.: In this portion of the campaign, which is very Portland centric, it’s really easy for logging corporations to point a finger at a group like Oregon Wild and say, “These city-based environmentalists don’t know what they’re talking about.”

But this campaign is really driven by rural Oregon. One of the things that people will find on ClearCutOregon.com is links that will take them to another website that we work on called Oregon Forest Voices, which features the stories of people whose lead we are following on this campaign.

For Oregon Wild, I am the person who works on these issues, and most of my work and my life are based in rural Oregon logging communities. I work with people whose families have been logging for generations. I work in towns where the entire modern history is tied to logging and the cultural heritage is closely tied to logging. Everywhere I go, I find these people are the most concerned about clear-cut logging and aerial spray.

What’s funny is we felt the need to run this campaign in Portland because when I’m on the Oregon Coast in these logging towns with folks who are living out in industrial forest lands, they’re very concerned about clear-cutting and aerial spray, and it’s on their mind every day to fight it. But this is something our population centers have really stopped paying attention to, so this is an opportunity for us to remind those folks in the city that it’s actually rural Oregon whose water needs to be protected.

Portland and Eugene have great water sources that come from well-protected forests. Rural Oregon is literally running out of drinking water due to clear-cutting and aerial spray. Everywhere I go out in rural Oregon, I find people who are worried about the impacts of industrial logging on their drinking water, on their favorite fishing holes, and on their community and their community economies as well.

One of the things I run into out there is a lot of support for our work from businesses that either rely on tourism or recreational fishing to pay the bills. These are the Oregon Coast’s biggest industries at this point, and these industries are all directly threatened by the status quo with industrial clear-cutting.

It’s really easy for Portland-based lobbyist firms that work for these clear-cutting corporations from Wall Street to say, “We can’t have more regulations that would hurt rural Oregon.” It’s really easy for them to say that from high-rises in downtown Portland, but when you actually go out into rural Oregon, what I find is people that are looking for a new way forward, that are looking for an economy of tomorrow and not yesterday, and who are really looking to protect their watersheds.

Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follower her on Twitter @greenwrites.

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