Clearcutting & Its Impacts

The Society of American Foresters defines “clearcut” as “1. a stand in which essentially all trees have been removed in one operation…” In western Oregon, clearcuts are usually implemented on a 40-60 year rotation - meaning that after each clearcut, trees are replanted and then cut again 40-60 years later, though this timeframe has been shrinking as economic pressures to liquidate timber for investment firms grows.

Clearcutting is the dominant form of logging on private industrial timber lands and state forest land in Oregon. Extensive clearcutting has occurred across hundreds of thousands of acres of privately-owned timber lands for the past century, and continues today.   This has some devastating impacts on our forested ecosystems - converting healthy, functioning, and diverse forests into monoculture tree plantations. 

Clearcutting was also extensive on federal public lands in the 1960s-1980s. Today, most logging on federal public land in Oregon has been focused on thinning or selective harvest and not clearcutting in the past 15 years.

While it may be the most efficient way of generating income from chopping down trees, clearcutting has many negative impacts. These include: 
  • Degrading water quality that impacts drinking water for 1.8 million Oregonians.
  • Removing important wildlife habitat and natural forest components like dead standing and down trees.  
  • Building roads that change natural water flow and contribute to stream pollution - harming salmon habitat. 
  • Depleting forest carbon stores and adding to global warming pollution. 
  • Fragmenting and removing wildlife habitat.  ​
  • Harming scenery, recreation, and quality of life that draws people to visit and live in Oregon. 

Most importantly, clearcutting impacts Oregon's communities. Clearcut logging increases the frequency of landslides that can disrupt travel, waterways, and damage homes;  damages drinking water sources for rural Oregonians; and degrades the quality of life for residents who live with clearcuts in their backyards. 

The video below shares the story of Rockaway Beach Oregon, and how they responded to clearcutting in their community. 
Clearcuts on Private and Public Land: Different lands, different values
There are significant differences in management practices and policies on private industrial timber lands, state lands, and federal public forest lands in western Oregon. Learn more about clearcutting and other forest management for each of these types of forest lands.
Private Land
Private timber lands are generally managed for timber production, with short rotation clearcutting the dominant practice. In Western Oregon, there are 7.3 million acres of private timber land. The vast majority of Oregon’s harvested timber comes from these lands.
State Forests
The Oregon Department of Forestry manages about 821,000 acres of forest land in the state, on six large State Forests and other scattered lands. These forests are either owned by the Board of Forestry or the State Land Board, and money generated from logging goes to county governments and schools in the state. 
Federal Public Land
Federal public lands are managed for “multiple use” to provide clean water, fish and wildlife habitat, recreation, as well as timber.  Within the Northwest Forest Plan area in Oregon, there are 7.1 million acres of public land managed by the USDA Forest Service and 2.6 million acres managed by the USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM).