Commentary: Federal politics loom over Oregon’s long enviro traditions

If Oregon has a “brand,” protection of its environment has to be integral to it. Probably no political figure in the state’s history more represents it to the rest of the world than former Republican Gov. Tom McCall, the champion of pioneering Oregon laws that kept beaches publicly owned, charged deposits on bottles and cans to reduce litter and blocked cities from sprawling.

More than for anything else, McCall is known for his crusades — not always perfect but often effective — to protect the natural condition of the state. While other western states, including Idaho and Wyoming, have been the scene of hard-fought contests over preservation against development and use, Oregon for generations has weighed in clearly on the environmental preservation side.

The Trump administration has begun weighing in on the other side, and Oregon likely will be putting a lot of civic effort into maintaining its course. While some efforts from the national capital — such as Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s call for mass selloff of federal lands — have hit speed bumps, others are underway. 

The argument in favor of that new direction, implicit or explicit, will involve expansion of resource industries and the jobs that have been attached to them. Forest industries were for generations the bedrock of the Oregon economy, supplying much of its wealth and many of its jobs.

It is a smaller component today. The state’s forest sector today takes in about 62,000 direct jobs, a large number but just about 3% of jobs overall. The economic  impact of wood products now is less than that: By one recent estimate, the subcategory of “logging” — as opposed to manufacturing wood products, work in nurseries and associated work — accounts for 5,736 jobs. 

The number of Oregon mill jobs fell by about 500 over the last year, and one reason given for that was a lack of timber supply. But specific types of timber would be needed to supply the more specialized mills of today: Not just any stock would do. Even if more forests were opened to cutting, the number couldn’t increase dramatically soon, because a large economic infrastructure would have to be built up to support it. And even if those problems could be solved, the weak demand for timber and in recent years difficulties finding an adequate work force would remain as major obstacles. 

Whatever the rationale, the pressure against preservation from the nation’s capital is clear and accelerating.

The most dramatic recent instance is the Trump administration’s published intent to scale back — exactly how much is unclear — the roadless rule from 2001 affecting vast stretches of forested land in backcountry areas nationwide, including in Oregon. The Sierra Club said the change “threatens nearly 58 million acres of undeveloped backcountry forestland, jeopardizing crucial drinking water sources for communities across the nation.”

That includes 2 million acres of land now protected from development in Oregon — a big chunk of the 14.5 million acres in the 11 national forests in the state, and some of the most prized recreational areas. 

That follows up on a pair of presidential executive orders earlier this year aimed at increasing timber production on national lands and bypassing rules that protect critical wildlife habitat. 

There’s much more from the White House affecting the Northwest specifically, such as the abrupt reversal of a long-negotiated deal — the Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement — to restore salmon runs along the Snake River. 

More narrowly, the Friends of the Columbia Gorge said last month that “The Trump administration’s FY26 budget proposes redirecting roughly $387 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund’s (LWCF) federal land acquisition budget to fund “deferred maintenance” — that is, repairs to trails, visitor centers, and infrastructure, in addition to logging — directly contradicting the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) that President Trump himself signed into law in 2020.”

Taken together, this along with still more examples amounts to a massive reversal of national policy developed over decades and in some cases even in the first Trump Administration. It’s easy to lose track of the larger developing picture amid the wash of daily news. 

Resistance to it in the Northwest is just beginning to develop. But it will emerge visibly soon.

In addition to a supportive political environment, Oregon has an especially large number of environmental action groups (owing in part to the large and often influential Friends network) but much of their activity — the Oregon Environmental Council is a good example — has been focused on state government activity, where reception to their efforts has been relatively (albeit not always) positive. 

Expect the focus to change to the national level, alliances to shift, and legal and political conflict to ramp upward, in the next few months if not weeks. The environment is about to become a flashpoint in Oregon in a way it hasn’t been in decades. 

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