Hidden in the Understory: Immigrant Labor & Forest Management in Southern Oregon

Over the past three decades, debate over the management of public lands has become an increasingly contentious topic. The fight for spotted-owl habitat in the early 1990s and Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan once more vaulted the issue of timber extraction from national forests into the public arena. As the cut from federal lands was dramatically reduced, other questions surfaced: What was the future for displaced timber workers? How might land management agencies in the West be affected? In what ways might forest management be tied to community health?

Amidst such resource conflict, there was a rise in specific visions of community forestry in the U.S. Government agencies started to work more collaboratively with the public and participation became a tenet for many resource management projects. Community forestry scholarship started referring to "healthy forests" in the context of local participation and a sense of place, with the underlying motto being "healthy forests support healthy communities and vice versa".

Conceptions and practices of both community forestry and environmental politics, however, have overlooked the immigrant Latino workforce that manages our public lands. These immigrants are excluded from policy discourse and resource management. This presentation will explore a broader social history of labor in Southern Oregon, the Latino community's hyper-visible and yet invisible place in the Rogue Valley, and the changes to forest management in the area.

The colloquium will be led by Brinda Sarathy of Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management.