Oregon Forest Facts tells the story of Oregon’s forests through data, charts and graphs. It fills a need for accurate and current information about Oregon’s forests in an easy-to-access format.
Nearly half of Oregon is forestland. Oregon’s forests vary by species composition and ownership. Douglas-fir trees dominate the forests in western Oregon, ponderosa pine in eastern Oregon and mixed conifers in southwest Oregon. In terms of ownership, the federal government manages 60% of Oregon forests; private owners, including Native American tribes, manage 36%; state and county governments manage 4%.
Oregon’s forests are managed to reflect the varied objectives and practices of a diverse array of landowners. These include the federal government, which owns the largest portion of Oregon’s forestland, as well as state, county and municipal governments, private timber companies, nonprofits, tribes and small woodland owners. Federal lands are managed primarily for ecosystem values such as threatened and endangered species habitat conservation or recreation. State lands tend to be managed for multiple uses, including recreation, water, wildlife habitat and timber. Private timber company lands are managed primarily for timber production while also providing wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities.
While the federal government manages most of the forestland in Oregon, only a fraction of Oregon’s timber harvest happens on federal land, and most of that is from thinning. About 72% of the total state harvest comes from private timberlands.
Oregon forest landowners may choose to gain recognition from independent, third-party forest sustainability certification systems by meeting certain standards for sustainable forest management.
America’s three largest certification systems are the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).
Forest certification gives wood product consumers, architects, engineers and builders an added level of assurance that the products used in their construction projects were produced using responsible and sustainable forestry practices.
In 2024, about 5 million acres, or 46%, of the private forestland in Oregon was certified. An estimated 1.3 billion board feet of timber is harvested each year from certified forestland in Oregon. Here’s a breakdown of how much timber is estimated to come from forestland certified under each system:
While timber harvest on federal lands sharply dropped in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainly due to changes in federal forest management emphasis following the listing of the northern spotted owl and several fish as threatened species, timber harvest levels from public and private forestlands over the past 20 years have remained relatively stable. The Great Recession (2007-09) and the collapse of the housing market brought a severe contraction in the U.S. demand for lumber. Consequently, Oregon’s timber harvest levels reached a modern-era low in 2009, with the smallest harvest since the Great Depression in 1934. By 2013, the harvest had rebounded to roughly pre-recession levels.
The 2020 Labor Day fires led to a short-term increase in timber harvest due to post fire salvage logging on private land. This is reflected in the 2021 harvest levels of 3.9 billion board feet. However, long-term annual timber harvest is expected to decrease by 100 million to 250 million board feet per year from 2026 to 2065 due to loss of future growth on trees killed by wildfires in 2020.
From 2011 to 2021, Oregon’s forests grew an annual average of 2.6 billion cubic feet of wood volume. About 1.1 billion cubic feet was harvested and 800 million cubic feet ended up in trees that died from natural causes. Overall, there was a net change of 725 million cubic feet, meaning Oregon’s forests grew more wood than the amount that was harvested from them.
When forest growth, harvest and mortality are broken down by ownership category, differences in public and private forest management become apparent.
Oregon has led the nation for many years in producing softwood lumber and plywood typically used for homebuilding. Oregon’s softwood lumber output of about 5.1 billion board feet in 2024 accounted for about 14% of total U.S. production, while Oregon plywood mills accounted for about 28% of total U.S. plywood production in 2023.
Some Oregon companies manufacture value-added engineered wood products such as cross-laminated timber (CLT), glulam and mass plywood panels (MPP). Of the 77 engineered wood manufacturing plants operating in the U.S., 18 are located in Oregon.
Clean water is crucial to all Oregonians. Most of Oregon’s municipal water originates in forested watersheds, including those managed for wood production. The cleaner the source water stays, the less treatment and filtration it will need as it is prepared for human consumption, and the better fish and amphibian habitat it creates.
Loggers and forestland owners are required to leave areas of uncut trees and vegetation along the borders of streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands. This rule is most stringent for waterways where fish are present, and those that are sources of drinking water. These areas are called “riparian management areas,” “RMAs,” or simply “stream buffers.” Within these buffers, timber harvesting is either prohibited or severely restricted.
The width of required stream buffers was expanded in 2024, the result of legislation following agreements reached during the Private Forest Accord negotiations between representatives from the timber industry and major conservation groups. Protective buffers along fish-bearing streams were increased overall, and range from 75 to 110 feet in width, depending on the size of the stream and whether it contains certain species of fish. The goal of the newly expanded stream buffers was to increase and improve habitat for native Oregon fish, as well as four species of amphibians and one frog.
Forest practice laws also require stream buffers for some ephemeral headwater streams. These are streams that are seasonal, or sometimes present during significant rainfall, but are dry at other times of the year.
The width of the required no-cut buffers varies by stream size and location. The buffer requirements also vary between western and eastern Oregon, as seen below:
Oregon’s 2024 fire season was record-breaking. More than 1.9 million acres burned across the state, the most acreage burned during a single season in the last 30 years. Lightning and human-caused fires ignited during extreme heat strained Oregon’s fire resources as firefighters battled six “megafires” (wildfires greater than 100,000 acres) during the 2024 fire season. Other states and Canada sent firefighters and resources to assist the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), which serves as Oregon’s largest fire department, protecting private forestlands as well as some public land.
As the number of acres burned each fire season in Oregon has gone up, so have the costs of fighting those fires. In 2024, the Oregon Department of Forestry’s (ODF) gross costs for fighting large fires were about $318 million, far exceeding the agency’s 10-year average (2014-2023) gross annual costs for fighting large fires of around $76 million. ODF’s net costs for fighting large fires also went up to $132 million in 2024, well above the 10-year average for net costs of about $34 million.
To help address the challenge of worsening fire seasons and the rising costs of fire suppression in Oregon, ODF is leading a 20-Year Landscape Resiliency Strategy to improve forests and rangelands to reduce wildfire risk. ODF developed the plan with private, local, state and federal partners to target about 13 million high-risk acres.
In 1971, Oregon became the first state to pass a comprehensive law to regulate forest practices and safeguard water, fish and wildlife habitat, soil and air. The rules of the Oregon Forest Practices Act are continually reviewed and updated to keep pace with the most current scientific research.
The rules most recently changed in 2022, in response to the Private Forest Accord agreement between the timber industry and conservation groups. Some of those new rules are included below.
Some states, including Oregon, have comprehensive legislation and regulations-commonly called "forest practices acts"-to encourage forest sustainability.
This map of the United States shows which states were classified in 2022 as having regulatory systems like Oregon's governing forestry practices. The map also shows which states have non-regulatory systems that rely on voluntary best management practices and which states are considered quasi-regulatory because they don't require best management practices but enforce environmental infractions. In addition, some states require licensing or registration for foresters.
Through the process of photosynthesis, forests naturally sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as solid carbon. Oregon’s forests store an estimated 3.2 billion metric tons of carbon. This stored carbon is found throughout the forest in carbon “pools.” These include:
In addition to carbon storage in the forest, about 50% of the dry weight of wood is carbon. That means long-lived wood products made with timber from Oregon’s forests, such as lumber and plywood used to construct homes, offices and other structures, also store carbon.
Oregon’s forest sector includes a wide variety of employment, from forestry, logging, millwork and cabinetmaking to engineering, hydrology, business management and academic research. Here’s a rundown of Oregon’s forest sector jobs in 2023, by type of employment.
Tens of thousands of Oregonians are employed across a variety of forest-related jobs. (For a complete breakdown of the job figures, see page 14.) These forest professionals help care for our forests, conserve fish and wildlife habitat, protect water, sustain forests for future generations, and make innovative forest products.
About 3% of Oregon jobs are part of what is known as the “forest sector.” The sector encompasses a diverse array of careers that include firefighters, ecologists, foresters, wildlife and fish biologists, and more.
Forest sector jobs pay relatively well, with an annual average wage of $71,900. These jobs are especially important in Oregon’s rural counties, where forest sector employment accounts for 6% of all rural employment, compared with 2% of all metro area employment. (For more information about the number of forest sector jobs by county and wages, see page 15.)
Like other industries, Oregon’s forest sector has been affected in recent years by a statewide labor shortage. The forest sector is looking at several opportunities to improve the forestry workforce, such as by providing forest operator training programs.
