• Elwha Dam Removal
• Coal In The Northwest
• Voices of Coal
• Clean Water: The Next Act

If you live in Southern Oregon, join EarthFix Journalist Amelia Templeton on SOPTV Tuesday at 8 p.m., when she will host the hour-long live program, “Local Focus: Dollars and Trees.”

If you don’t live in the area you can still catch the program by coming back to EarthFix next week for excerpts from the show, as well as to share your thoughts about the conversation and the future of Northwest forests and the communities most connected to them.

“Dollars and Trees” airs as Oregon Counties are preparing to receive their last payments this year under the expiring Secure Rural Schools Act. Local schools and roads are losing funding. A dozen counties could go bankrupt.

Timber receipts could make up some of the loss, and a trio of elected officials has proposed creating a timber trust using Bureau of Land Management land. Local Focus will ask policy-makers: should logging increase on federal forests? Can timber revenue save the counties? And at what cost to wildlife and clean water?

Panelists will include:

• Richard Whitman, Natural Resource Advisor to Governor John Kitzhaber

• Doug Heiken, Conservation Director, Oregon Wild

• Dennis “C.W.” Smith, Jackson County Commissioner

• Jennifer Phillipi, President, Rough and Ready Lumber Co

Some of the key questions these panelists will be asked include:

Which Oregon counties are hardest hit by the expiration of secure rural schools, and what capacity do they have to find revenue elsewhere?

How will counties be impacted by the expiration of the Secure Rural Schools Act, and what steps can they take to avoid bankruptcy?

What are the consequences of returning to a system where southern Oregon counties share the revenue from timber sales on public land?

You don’t have to wait ‘til Tuesday to weigh in. Share your thoughts below or over at our Facebook page. And you can share how you would be affected by more logging on public land through EarthFix’s Public Insight Network.