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News Release

Oregon Department Of Forestry Announces Top Forest Operator For NW Oregon In 2024 (Photo) -11/13/24

RAINIER, Ore. – R.D. Reeves Construction, based in Rainier in Columbia County, has been chosen as Operator of the Year for Northwest Oregon. A regional advisory committee to the Oregon Board of Forestry selected the logging company earlier this fall. R.D. Reeves will be recognized in Salem at the January meeting of the Board along with two other regional honorees:

The award recognizes forest operators who, while harvesting timber or doing other forestry work, protect natural resources at a level that consistently meets or goes above and beyond requirements of the Oregon Forest Practices Act *. That law requires people to manage forests responsibly and protect streams and water quality, protect and enhance habitat, and reduce landslide risks. The law also requires landowners to replant forests after harvesting. 

Northwest Oregon

R.D. Reeves Construction was nominated by ODF Stewardship Forester John Krause for consistently acting to prevent any sediment from reaching streams or wetlands during harvest operations.

“In their decades of working in rainy northwest Oregon, they have always been on top of ensuring silt fences, hay bales and other methods are employed to prevent even the slightest chance of sediment making its way into a stream,” said Krause. 

He added that the company has also been diligent about learning and following new Oregon Forest Practice rules that provide greater protections for streams in the form of wider buffers and equipment limitation zones. “They went above and beyond the requirements,” he said. 

Watch a video about the company’s work at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUsBwxBZiEo

Merit Awards were also given to five other companies for work done in Northwest Oregon forests.

  • Card Logging Company, Inc., based in Eugene for harvesting an ice-storm-damaged stand of timber in the Coast Range. Card used tethered logging and hand cutting to protect a stream buffer while minimizing disturbance to a neighboring retreat center.
  • Chilton Logging, Inc., nominated for harvesting a steep mountainside wedged between the East Fork of the Hood River and Green Point Creek near Hood River.
  • Haley Construction Company of Lebanon, Ore. for installing a 125-foot-long bridge that replaced an in-stream low-water crossing through salmon-bearing Elk Creek, eliminating vehicles in the creek. The project involved safely transporting the long beams along a narrow, twisting two-lane road.
  • Mt St Helens Reforestation, Inc. for reforesting with millions of new seedlings Weyerhaeuser land in Clackamas County that had burned in the Riverside Fire, one of the Labor Day megafires of 2020. The firm’s crews planted in four years what had been thought would take at least five.
  • Weyerhaeuser’s Springfield Tree Farm and its employee logging and road-building crews for salvage logging after a January 2024 ice storm. They logged the steep hillside of immature trees just outside Springfield next to a busy county road and near homes and the McKenzie River in order to reduce fire risk and reforest. 

ODF Forest Resources Division Chief Josh Barnard said, “There were so many great nominees to pick from this year, it made the work of the selection committees very hard.”

Barnard said nominees showed they could meet the challenge of working under new rules that came into effect this year. The updated Oregon Forest Practices Act rules provide more protection for forest resources, such as wider stream buffers and limitations on equipment use around tributaries of fish-bearing streams. 

“We saw a lot of innovative technology and techniques being used to protect water quality. On challenging harvesting sites, the Operators of the Year showed extraordinary care and diligence to protect resources and meet landowner objectives. We’re proud to recognize those efforts.”

* Oregon enacted the Forest Practices Act in 1971 as a national model for forest management laws. The law focuses on ensuring responsible forest operations and protecting natural resources in forestland. The Act has been updated many times based on new scientific information and values to create a balanced approach to natural resource management.

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