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A proposal from the Coquille Indian Tribe approved by the Coos County Board of Commissioners could — in a few years — help plug the $6 million hole in Coos County’s budget.

The proposal asks for management of the about 59,000 acres of federal Coos Bay Wagon Road forests located within the county be turned over to the tribe. The federal government would retain ownership. Revenue from timber harvests off those lands would be split evenly between the county and the tribe.

Read full article HERE

Local control and local revenue sounds good for the local economy!

Whirled Circulator wrote:Local control and local revenue sounds good for the local economy!

Is that a circular reference?

Bad conservation idea! As a Native American this idea has to be off the table. Seeing how the timber industry has destroyed Oregon's timber, rivers and the economy, how could any Native American enity suggest clear cutting to save the economy. Oregon has the same inferior genetically altered tree growing on every mountain top, to be ground into sawdust.

This would be a bad idea. Haven't we learned anything from the last time the Tribe managed public forest land!


Timber company clearcuts Coquille Tribal Forest
Description:
In 1997 the Coquille Indian Tribe was given 5,400 acres of land that had been public forests managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in western Oregon. In 1999 the Coquille Tribal Council released their plans to clearcut 328 acres in just their first project. The Tribal Council were required to follow all the same environmental protections that the adjoining BLM land followed. For instance, they couldn't harm endangered Salmon in the watershed. In December 2000 Judge Rothstein found that clearcuts on 170 federal timber sales in the Pacific Northwest degraded watersheds for salmon, which the Endangered Species Act did not allow. The Coquille Forest clearcuts were stopped before they could get started. But the Tribe chose not to thin or selectively log instead of clearcut. They sold 102 acres of trees to Lone Rock Timber, who to cut them down in the spring of 2001. When the judge reviewed these plans they were stopped again. They were simply not allowed to further degrade the watershed by clearcutting. The court ruling was upheld by the 9th circuit court of appeals in April 2001. But then in September 2001, a property rights group used Judge Hogan to strip endangered fish of ESA protections. The 9th circuit court of appeals stayed Judge Hogan's ruling on December 14 and endangered fish were protected again. If anyone took advantage of the brief lifting of protections, they had to stop logging again on December 14. Lone Rock Timber had taken advantage of this brief loophole and were even caught ILLEGALLY LOGGING on December 19. They got a stop-cutting order on December 20 to force them to stop a second time. But on December 31, Lone Rock Timber was discovered illegally logging again --clearcutting in unit 5. Because of the holidays, another Temporary Restraining Order from the District Court could not be gotten until January 3rd at 11:45 a.m. Incredibly, Lone Rock Timber even defied this court order and continued logging until 4:00 p.m. A lot of trees can be cut down in just a few hours. Maybe they even finished it off.


http://pictures.care2.com/view/1/156392106

Great job at plagiarism Janice.

Do we really want to go into politics about native americans not knowing how to use land? When white people first came to our country they treated the lands very badly. Cutting done trees and killing animals, and then wasting. Why don't people do their homework before speaking!

If you have information that the article I posted is not true I would like to know about it. I simply did research on the last transaction where the tribe managed federal land and logging. If you know more about this incident post it.

If we are to determine how this potential future management of 57,000 acres will be handled by the Tribe we must look at their track record.