"The outcome of the Corvallis Forest Stewardship Plan” was decided behind closed doors before this public process even started," Malcolm Anderson charged during his impassioned testimony at the September 25 public meeting of the Corvallis Forest Stewardship Plan Update Task Force.
Anderson, a certified arborist from Philomath, called the work of the city-manager appointed task force "political theatre" designed to justify Public Works continued industrial logging of the Corvallis Forest, the source of the city's highest quality drinking water.
The task force has been meeting publicly since November 2022, with Public Works staff writing both the updates and the meeting minutes. Anderson stated, "No amount of public testimony or peer reviewed scientific evidence against this continued resource extraction has seemed to make any impact on the process."
"Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any concrete changes at all to the updated stewardship plan that would restrict their industrial forestry approach. No restrictions on harvest age or size of trees, no restrictions on road building, no mandate to maintain certain levels of water quality against run off created by continued logging, no rules about preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species that logging has brought to the watershed.," he said.
Anderson then addressed task force members directly, stating, "I would encourage you to reexamine your own role in this process and whether you can better serve the health of the forest by engaging with Public Works to make a better plan with more concrete protections for the older stands in the Corvallis Forest than has been possible so far."
You can read Malcolm Anderson's September 25 testimony in full here.