Logging trees is often controversial. Why would some people support logging and some people not support logging?

It seems more and more there are fewer conservation organizations who speak for the forest, and more that speak for the timber industry. Witness several recent commentaries in Oregon papers that are by no means unique. I’ve seen similar themes from other conservation groups across the West in recent years.

Many conservation groups have uncritically adopted views that support more logging of our public lands based upon increasingly disputed ideas about forest health and fire ecology, as well as the age-old bias against natural processes like wildfire and beetles.

For instance, an article in the Portland Oregonian quotes Oregon Wild’s executive director Sean Stevens bemoaning the closure of a timber mill in John Day Oregon. Stevens said: "Loss of the 29-year-old Malheur Lumber Co. mill would be ‘a sad turn of events’" Surprisingly, Oregon Wild is readily supporting federal subsidies to promote more logging on the Malheur National Forest to sustain the mill.