A circuit court judge in northwest Oregon dismissed a tiny school district’s case against the state over new limits on logging that could lead to reduced funding for the district.
The Jewell School District, a single school serving 124 students in Clatsop County, funds its current $4.3 million budget entirely with timber revenue from state forest harvests. Clatsop County is one of 13 Forest Trust Land Counties that has, for about the last 80 years, gotten a kickback from timber harvests on state forests within the counties.
District leaders argued that the Oregon Department of Forestry will cause it and the forestry department serious financial harm by allowing a habitat conservation plan to move forward that would reduce logging about 35% in the Clatsop State Forest. The Western Oregon State Forest Habitat Conservation Plan, approved in March, will scale back logging an average of 20% on 630,000 thousand acres of western state forests for the next 70 years to protect 17 threatened or endangered species…