From yesterday’s Mail Tribune in Jackson County, OR comes this news:
[F]orestlands in Western Oregon produced 3.8 billion board feet of timber in 2004…That marks an 11 percent hike from 2003 and the highest total harvest since 1992, when these 19 counties west of the Cascades pumped 4 billion board feet of timber into the wood-products industry.
Just to put the recent uptick in context: though the recent increase in logging certainly raises lots of thorny and troubling issues, timber harvests are still far below their highs in the 1960s through 1980s. Take a look, with data courtesy of the Oregon Department of Forestry:
