Labor Exploitation in Forestry and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP Series, Part 2)

This is part two of our series on the Forest Service’s major proposed changes to the Northwest Forest Plan.  

As most of our listeners know, the 30 year old Northwest Forest Plan provides critical protections to over 24 million acres of public land in Oregon, Washington, and California.

The Forest Service has proposed sweeping changes to the Plan through their recently released Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, and public comment is open until March 17th. The DEIS would, among other things, give them wide latitude to drastically increase industrial scale logging, including in Mature and Old Growth forests.

In part one of this series, we explored one most important, and also complex, aspects of the proposed changes - meaningful Tribal inclusion.  I highly recommend you listen to that episode if you haven’t yet. You can find wherever you're listening to this episode!

We are going to focus on two other key components of the plan, fire, and the fight to protect mature and old growth forests, in upcoming episodes.  And in the meantime, you can find guides on how to submit comments to the Forest Service in the links below.

Today we are going to explore an often overlooked issue in the Northwest Forest Plan, and Forestry in general - Labor.  And more specifically, the exploitation of immigrant labor in our forests and timberlands.

I’m joined by Manuel Machado from Oregon State University.  Manuel has done a lot of research into labor issues and exploitation of workers in the forestry sector.  

Comment Writing Guides!

• Northwest Forest Plan DEIS Engagement toolkit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MOAORP7b1YenBZsZj27qfBJiJU4b6oXAX6vXKtqdQ-w/edit?usp=sharing
• Recommendations for Tribal Sovereignty and Environmental Justice in the Northwest Forest Plan Amendment Draft Environmental Impact Statement: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/nwfpjustfutures/resource-guide-for-making-public-comment/

 

Support the show