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Loggers' main goal: stay in woods Cutbacks haven't devastated timber towns, prof finds BY BETH QUINN ASHLAND -- For Southern Oregon's modern Paul Bunyans, logging isn't what they do but who they are. And many will endure punishing commutes and shrinking paychecks as long as they can continue to work in the woods. "Part of being Paul Bunyan is that your identity doesn't come from how much you can spend at the mall," says Southern Oregon University Professor Victoria Sturtevant. "What's really important to them is to be able to maintain homes and to be able to live in their communities." Among their communities are Butte Falls and Prospect, where the rural sociologist is studying the social impacts of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Sturtevant helped design that plan as a member of the Federal Ecosystem Management Assessment Team that offered President Clinton 10 options for saving what remained of the Pacific Northwest's ancient forests and timber industry after a decade-long forest war. The president chose Option 9, which slashed timber sales from the 1980s high of 5 billion board feet per year to an annual cut of 1.2 billion board feet. At the time, many local officials and timber industry analysts predicted his choice would devastate timber-dependent towns. But Sturtevant's preliminary research suggests that didn't happen. She began by talking with millworkers who lost their jobs when Croman Corporation and Burrill Lumber closed their companies. "We found that most of those people could see the train wreck coming but they were paid so well," she says. "A lot of them were relieved when the jobs were finally over so they could get on with their lives." For many, getting on with their lives meant retraining for jobs in other industries. But when Sturtevant sent a graduate student into the Cascades to interview loggers, her findings were radically different. Nine out of the 12 men in their 30s to 70s who sat down for in-depth interviews are still working in the woods. Some have seen their pay decline by 50 percent. Others spend hours each week commuting to distant jobs. "They want to stay. They don't want to get out of the woods," she says. Her findings match those of sociologists who studied loggers in Idaho and California, and suggest 1994s doomsday fears underestimated the resiliency of individuals and communities that had survived earlier boom-and-bust cycles. That resiliency doesn't surprise Beverly Brown, the Grants Pass author of "In Timber Country," an oral history of forest workers recorded in 1989 and 1990. "After I did that book I wasn't worried about disaster. God, people are adaptive. And people want to be happy," she says. "They aren't sitting around in front of the fireplace moping, no matter what the politicians say." Distant and uncaring politicians, greedy timber corporations and weathervane federal resource managers came in for scathing comments in the taped interviews, which Sturtevant listened to later. In the aftermath of the forest plan, most loggers that were interviewed admitted their dismay with clearcutting and expressed support for the light-touch forestry required by current environmental laws. "I was in tears at the end of some tapes because the people were so articulate and thoughtful. They think through these issues. They're not dumb," she says. Many would like to work with environmentalists to make sure the region has healthy forests and sustainable timber but feel shut out of the debate. "What the environmentalists have done is compete with the logger, and they should've worked with the logger," one logger said. That's the goal of the community-forestry movement, which Brown advocates through the Jefferson Center, a nonprofit organization that helps forest workers find a place at negotiations over forest policy. Brown believes that cooperation between environmentalists and forest workers is needed before there can be a lasting peace in the forest war. "The majority of the people who love working in the woods want to do it right," she says. "Our friends and neighbors could go back into the woods if we got this package together." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA