Roy Woo

[March 5th, 2003] Some people labor for years without achieving our coveted Rogue of the Week award, but the new custodian of Oregonians' state-owned timberland, Acting State Forester Roy Woo , has earned the honor after just two months.

Woo heads the Oregon Department of Forestry, which oversees the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests an hour's drive west of Portland. Given the absence of federal land in the area, these woods represent the only habitat around for endangered critters like the spotted owl.

Woo is proposing to make a bad situation worse, by doubling ODF's average yearly timber cut in the Tillamook region.

Almost exactly one year ago, a WW investigation showed a documented pattern of ODF managers overruling the concerns of their own biologists in order to allow loggers to cut down as many trees as possible ("The Coast Is Clearcut," WW, March 6, 2002). The rush to cut might seem understandable, since ODF keeps one-third of the money generated by timber sales. But the profit comes with a cost.

For example, an area dubbed Cougar Monster is just north of the nest of a couple of spotted owls called the Hopinhome pair. According to ODF documents, this is the only good owl habitat for miles around. Still, the agency planned to ignore biologists' concerns and turn Cougar Monster into moonscape--until environmentalists' protests forced it to put its clearcut plans on hold last year.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists asked ODF for a tour to make sure the owls are not threatened. ODF has refused to take feds to the Cougar Monster site and, instead, plans to ask the state Board of Forestry this week to approve a "thinning" project to cut trees in the Cougar Monster area. Even though ODF staff biologists have warned Woo the owls are likely to move north, he is backing the thinning plans and also an 80-foot wide road through the middle of the potential owl habitat.

In other words, ODF has the owls cornered. This could be bad news for Woo if, as some believe, the proposed thinning risks violating the federal Endangered Species Act. For the birds, it could mean a death sentence.