Yuge Call to Action II 3/20/2026

Luke 16:3 (King James Version)

Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

President Trump is a once in a lifetime President and his bold offer to release the O&C lands in Oregon is a once in a lifetime opportunity. After fifty years of Environmental fanaticism to turn the most environmentally friendly industry from a perpetual gold mine into burning lead, Trump is offering a chance to pick up the gold. Not only is there gold but it replaces itself every twenty years and cleans the mine at the same time.

A forest must be managed properly to be healthy which requires thinning, cutting and regrowing. Back in the 60s and 70s there were no wildfires burning up hundreds of square miles or reaching blast furnace temperatures.

Those forests were cut, cleaned and planted with fire breaks, fire roads, and clear cuts which made more breaks. There was no fuel for the blast furnaces which sterilize the ground making the land barren for decades if not centuries when it is the most fertile forests in the world today.

A healthy forests is not only more fire resistant, but they also provide grass and low growing vegetation for wildlife and holds water for rivers and streams. Forests filter the water cleaning the water as well as releasing it into the air keeping the air humid for growth and health of the trees.

Trees of course breathe in the CO2 in the air and change it into oxygen making the air cleaner as you know hiking through forests with the oxygenated air. Younger trees produce more oxygen than older trees which is why young forests provide the most oxygen and are the healthiest.

There are plenty of examples of wildfires going through old, mismanaged state and federal lands and stopping cold when it runs into a private managed forests. Although clear cuts may not look the most beautiful after a cut, the cleared forests allows the grasses to grow for deer and elk as well as the rest of the forest wildlife. It allows the ground to fallow and recharge itself for another round of trees while making a firebreak as the trees begin to grow back. It may not look beautiful to a person driving by but the deer and elk think it is a pretty place to feed.

President Trump has offered Oregon a chance to take the handcuffs of the Sierra Club off its hands. This is an opportunity to provide home grown lumber to help make homes more affordable while providing jobs for Oregonians to own their own homes. With Forests4Oregon’s homestead land proposal for first home buyers you can have the best of both worlds, free land and low lumber costs.

The Envirofanatics are going to scream cutting the trees will cause Climate Change and kill the Spotted Owl. Both of these are frauds as there is no manmade Climate Change from CO2 which is being proved over and over.

The Spotted Owl is being hunted by the larger Barred Owl and will likely go extinct whether another tree is cut or not. Some studies have shown they may be saved by second-growth forests but those studies are not shown. Either way they cannot stop the Barred Owl from hunting them into extinction.

Write and call the BLM today and make your voice heard you want to take your state back from fifty years of enslavement for no reason. Show your support for President Trump from 3000 miles away and call the BLM to allow lumber mills again in the most beautiful state in America. Call to protect the forests from the mismanagement and destruction from the Sierra Club elites in San Fran and NY and stop them from destroying Oregon. We have one chance lets take it.

Pray for Oregon Forests

Guest Writer Bob Zybach for Lane County Commissioner

Wildfire Prevention From 1952 to 1987, western Oregon saw just one major wildfire. Since then, hands-off poli cies have fueled annual megafires. Bob supports proven strategies to protect our communities and precious forest resources. Catastrophic wildfires are not inevitable. For much of the last century, active forest management kept them rare. But decades of hands-off OREGON Fish&Wildlife JOURNAL Page 39 policies have left our woods overgrown and our communities at risk. Bob knows we can do better. And he knows what needs to be done. Bob supports a much more active approach: stopping small fires before they become big ones, backed by year-round, locally based forestry crews. Just as important, access roads and trails must be kept open so firefighters and equipment can reach a blaze quickly.

Strategic thinning, targeted prescribed burns near towns, and reducing fuels around legacy old-growth all help cut the risk of megafires. These tools also mean fewer weeks of hazardous smoke, cleaner air, and better habitat for fish and wildlife. From the 2020 Old-Growth Restoration. Forester Tim Bailey next to a “culturally modified tree” (“CMT”) or “medicine tree,” likely last peeled by a Klamath or Molallan Indians before 1855.

Holiday Farm Fire to 2022’s Cedar Creek smoke, Lane County has seen and felt the cost of inaction. Bob’s plan is rooted in proven practices that will keep people safe, protect our forests, and save many millions of taxpayer dollars. For more information, please go to: www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachforLane/Platform/Wildfires.html

Funding for Schools & Roads Restoring responsible land use means more revenue for local schools, safer roads, and strong rural services. This can and should be done with out raising tax rates on Lane County families. When our public lands were managed re sponsibly, timber receipts funded Lane County’s schools, roads, and rural services without new taxes. For decades, this revenue built class rooms, kept buses running, and maintained safe bridges. That system collapsed when harvests dropped. Federal “replacement” programs have never come close to making us whole.

Bob’s answer is to restore sustained-yield management and recreational opportunities, which will protect sensitive areas while putting the rest back to work. In practical terms, that means more predict able funding for teachers, repairs for rural roads, and resources for sheriff’s deputies and emergency services.

All of it will be generated here, from work done by our own people. approach respects both the land and the taxpayer. It builds a stable foundation for essential services so families and businesses can plan for the future with confidence. For more information, please goto: www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachforLane/Platform/SchoolsRoads.html

Old-Growth Restoration It’s not just the economic benefits that Lane County is missing out on. Bob will prioritize pre serving true old-growth forests from disease and fire by implementing wise stewardship. True old-growth forests are irreplaceable, and their greatest threats today aren’t careful logging, they’re disease, insect infestations, and catastrophic fire.

Bob’s plan starts with identifying and mapping these stands so we can protect them. That protection involves removing ladder fuels, thinning overcrowded younger trees, and maintaining healthy buffers so fire can’t race into these areas. It’s about stewardship, not neglect. Meanwhile, intensively managed industrial plantations should provide most of our timber, leaving legacy trees and the habitat around them to be preserved for future generations.

This balance keeps our mills supplied while safeguarding the rarest parts of our forests. Lane County can lead the way in showing how economic use and environmental protection work hand in hand, ensuring our oldest trees re main standing for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. For more information, please go to: www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachforLane/Platform/OldGrowth.html

Update:

Last week, on September 11 -- the earliest date allowed -- I formally applied as a candidate for District 5 Commissioner with the Lane County Board of Elections.

From the beginning my intent has been and will continue to be to inform voters and other western Oregon commissioner candidates about the new forestry job, business, and county income opportunities being promoted by the current administration. For too many years, opportunistic nonprofit organizations and their legal teams have been spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dol lars to “protect” our forests and so-called “wild lands” from logging projects, road maintenance, weed control, or even salvaging dead trees for useful products and jobs. This isn’t “protection,” this is abandonment.

At best, this form of management might be termed “benign neglect,” but the predictable -- and well documented -- results of horrific wildfires, millions of dead animals, bankrupt businesses, broken families, ugly landscapes, and deadly air pollution are not benign in any way. The mystery is why this has been allowed to continue, and for so long. We know how to fix this, and residents of East Lane County are in an excellent position to do so.

I plan on spending the next several months focused on all 2026 western Oregon county commission races promoting the legal requirements -- and their ethical responsibilities -- regarding the 1897 Organic Act, the 1905 Mission of the US Forest Service, the 1937 O&C Act, and the 1960 Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield (“MUSY”) Act (see below).

Since 1960, most federal regulations regarding management of our federal forests, coupled with litigation directly related to those regulations, have predictably led to the catastrophic wildfires, millions of dead wildlife, tens of thousands of lost homes, dozens of destroyed towns, widespread rural business failures, broken families, and deadly air pollution of the past 25 years. 1897 Organic Act.

This act says: “No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favor able conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.” 1905 Forest Service Mission Statement. The creation of the Forest Service in 1905 famously included the directive: “where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question will always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

The subsequent “Act of May 23, 1908” (16 U.S.C. 500) required the Forest Service to give 25% of its profits to the counties in which their lands were located, to be used specifically for county roads and schools. 1937 O&C Act.

This act mandated the Bureau of Land Management to manage O&C timberlands for the “sustained yield” of timber products, water, recreational opportunities, and income to the 18 western Oregon counties in which they were located. Initially the counties were given 75% of sales, but this was reduced to 50% in 1953, where it remains today. 1960 MUSY Act.

This act required the conservative management of National For est rangelands, water, recreation, and wildlife, along with the “sustained yield” of timber, as renewable resources for future generations. None of these laws have been repealed and all of them have been steadily neutered OREGON Fish&Wildlife JOURNAL Page 45 through a long series of bureaucratic regulations and related litigation.

This largely began with the creation of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in Washington DC on the same day in December, 1969; the restructuring of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973; and the odd inclusion of large-scale nonprofits in the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) in 1980.

The 1990 ESA listing of spotted owls, the 1994 Clinton Plan for Northwest Forests, and the 2001 Roadless Rule -- and the environmental litigation that accompanied these actions -- have predictably led to the wildfires, smoke pollution, dead animals, and dying communities that characterize our National Forests today. Federal welfare programs in the forms of Pay ment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) and Secure Rural Schools Act of 2000 (SRS) have only made things worse. SRS and PILT are entirely funded by US taxpayers and can be ended at any moment. They are being given to western Oregon counties that used to put hundreds of millions of dollars into state, county, and federal coffers -- not have to depend on them. Congress can end these subsidies at any time. They are only a fraction of former timber income, and our rural schools, towns, roads, and forest recreation opportunities clearly reflect this loss.

As regular readers of Oregon Fish & Wild life Journal know, I have spent several decades studying and writing about local history, wild fires, forest management, and reforestation. Beginning in the early 1990s I began regularly warning -- and scientifically predicting -- these fires and widespread rural unemployment if we adopted the Clinton Plan and all of the regulations and litigation that went with it.

Without a meaningful result. The joke I tell for this failure is based on the Greek myth of Cassandra. She had been given the gift of accurate prophecy by a God, but then also given the curse that no one would believe her. When her predictions came true and Troy burned despite her clear warnings, she became a madwoman.

The punchline is that when no one listened to my consistent predictions and warnings of catastrophic wildfires resulting from changed federal policies, I became a politician. And that’s pretty much how it happened. As a political candidate, I think this mess can be fixed if enough people want to do it. Our parents and grandparents showed us how. We need to get off the dole and back to work.

The most critical effort at this juncture should be a return to local self-sufficiency -- not depend on others to pay our teachers and fix our roads while we let our local resources rot and burn. This needs to stop. I don’t know if running for office can help, but I think it’s worth a try. Nothing else has worked, but the blue-sky over Washington might be a sign

Campaign Website: https://www.zybachforlane.com/funding-for-schools-roads