Oregon Mudslides Prompt Renewed Debate on Land Use
12/27/96
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Oregon Mudslides Prompt Renewed Debate on Land Use
Tom Brune, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
Copyright 1996 The Christian Science Publishing Society.
Friday December 27, 1996 Edition
SEATTLE -- The mudslides that killed at least five people in Oregon last
month have created a controversy in the perennial Pacific Northwest
battleground over the logging practices of timber companies.
Mudslides are a relatively common and natural occurrence in this part of
the world. But environmentalists warn they will be more frequent and severe
because of the clear-cutting of forests on steep slopes.
"This kind of unsafe logging is just plain wrong," says David Bayles of the
Pacific Rivers Council in Eugene, Ore.
Timber companies and the public agencies that regulate logging practices
respond that the link needs further study. They also say that people who
settle in areas near steep terrain that were once uninhabited cause just as
big a problem.
"We have a history of landslides in the Pacific Northwest prior to any
man's activity," says Chris West, vice president of the Northwest Forestry
Association.
State officials note that the house that was buried in the Nov. 16 mudslide
was built on an alluvial fan, or the endpoint of an earlier slide. As early
as 1986, a state official said the site had a "high potential for slide
damage."
But the question environmentalists have raised is whether the clear-cut
above the house made the slide more likely to happen.
Clear-cutting and road construction may make a landslide occur as much as
five to 20 times more often than on a forested site, says Gordon Grant, a
researcher with the US Forest Service in Corvalis, Ore.
After a winter storm in February caused extensive flooding and landslides,
environmentalists collected anecdotal evidence that found that 70 percent
of the hundreds of landslides originated in areas that had been clear-cut,
Mr. Bayles says.
Bayles and leaders of 67 other environmental groups have called for a
moratorium on logging on steep slopes.
Timber industry representatives and Oregon Forestry Department officials
say that demand is "premature." "We cannot tell landowners they cannot
harvest their trees," says Lou Torres, the department's spokesman. "We can
only require them to harvest in a certain way."
Meanwhile, the Forestry Department is conducting a study of the February
and November winter storms to examine the connection between clear-cuts and
landslides. It comes at the confluence of three trends that have roiled the
land-management world.
*Timber companies increasingly are harvesting on steep terrain in areas
that once were passed up because restrictions limit logging on public
lands.
*More people are moving to the Northwest, pushing new development into
areas that put people at high risk.
*A climatologist is forecasting that a 20-year drought cycle is coming to
an end, and a 10- to 20-year wet cycle is about to begin.