Timber harvesting on the Elliott began in 1955, and between 1960 and 1988 averaged 50 million board feet per year (the green horizontal line). The spike in harvesting after 1962 came from blow-down damage from the Oct. 12, 1962 Columbus Day storm. The gap between the green line at 50 million board feet and the orange lines represents a loss of revenue from curtailing harvests due to endangered species listings. This graph was prepared in 2015. Harvesting has stopped completely since then.

In October 2011, the State Land Board approved a Forest Management Plan that would have increased timber harvest to about 40 million board feet per year. In January 2012, Cascadia Wildlands, the Audubon Society of Portland, and the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit regarding habitat in state forests, including the Elliott, for the marbled murrelet, a seabird protected by the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit halted or deferred some timber sales until it was settled in February 2014. The terms of the settlement of the case indefinitely scaled back timber harvest levels and associated revenues.

In FY 2013, the Department of State Lands lost $3 million for schools, as their expenditures to the Department of Forestry and their litigation costs exceeded their revenue by $3 million. This was the first time in 227 years of school trust history that a state has spent more than they have made from the school lands. This resulted in taking $3 million from the Oregon Common School Fund.

“Continued losses are projected into the future.”

ELLIOTT STATE FOREST, “An Asset of the Common School Fund,” Department of State Lands, revised June 2014, p.2.

A small volume of timber was sold since the settlement and was harvested before the end of 2016. Since 2016, no trees have been harvested.

The Department of State Lands writes: "No timber sale or harvests have been completed since ODF management of the forest ended in June 2017."

Here are three possibilities for future harvesting:

1. Current DSL management plans

The Department of State Lands writes: "No timber sales are expected in the next two years."

2. OSU Elliott State Research Forest Proposal (ESRFP)

The OSU ESRFP would permanently place roughly two-thirds of the forest in reserve with strong legal restrictions to guarantee these areas are not logged or reduced size; one-sixth would be assigned to "intensive" forest management on a 60-year rotation schedule, and one-sixth would be assigned "extensive" forest management that would harvest half as much per acre as the "intensive" areas. The total estimated harvest volume would be 17 million board feet per year (Page 22). This would be about one-third to one-fourth of the annual growth on the forest.

3. The Giesy Plan for an Elliott State Educational Forest

The Giesy Plan would use active management on half the Elliott State Forest to produce income for Oregon School Fund and would place half the Elliott in a no-touch reserve to maintain and improve old-growth habitat conditions for endangered species. The total estimated harvest volume would be 50 million board feet per year, about 80 percent of the annual growth on the forest.