The Big Foot-print: Two Industries, One Honest Conversation, by @Mikeymike426

Introduction

Deep within the temperate rainforests of Oregon, among the mountains that seem to go on forever, hides something ancient, something elusive that can only be found in the states of Oregon and Northern California. Slowly the forestry industry has been closing in on them, and one by one they will be uncovered. The truth is… Discoveries like this don't happen often, but when they do, they drive a community, create jobs, and build generational wealth.

At this point, you're probably thinking, is this nut talking about Bigfoot? And while I might be a bit of an enthusiast, the answer is no.

I'm talking about nickel.

Geologically speaking, nickel laterites are only found within the United States in Southern Oregon and Northern California, within the Klamath Mountains. Sulphides can be found elsewhere, but fun fact, there is currently only one operating nickel mine in the United States. That wasn't always the case though as Oregon was home to the largest nickel mining operation in the US for almost forty years, and America's only nickel smelter until the 1990s. Since then, it's all but been forgotten.

The Nickel Industry Oregon Forgot

Nickel Mountain sits near Riddle, a few miles west of Interstate 5 in Douglas County. The deposit had been known since the nineteenth century, but large-scale commercial production began in 1954, when the Hanna Mining Company opened the mine and its associated smelter.

For decades, the operation employed hundreds of people in stable, year-round jobs. It produced ferronickel for stainless steel and other industrial uses at a time when the United States placed a high value on domestic mineral production.

The mine also gave the region something rural communities often struggle to attract: an industrial employer that could support families through more than one generation. Its wages circulated through local stores, schools, restaurants, equipment suppliers, and service businesses.

The operation did not last forever. It experienced economic shutdowns beginning in the early 1980s as nickel prices collapsed and competition from new mines in other countries increased. Mining ended in 1987, and the smelter closed permanently in 1998.

The closure of the mine was a quiet economic disaster for the surrounding region. It also came at almost the same time as the contraction of Oregon's timber industry. Two industries that had supported rural communities for decades were shrinking together, but only one became central to Oregon's political identity.

Timber's Long Shadow

To understand why mining remains so difficult to discuss in Oregon, you must understand the cultural movement that grew out of industrial forestry.

For much of the twentieth century, timber shaped the identity of Western Oregon. Logging built towns. Mill wages paid mortgages and supports local businesses and timber revenue funded schools, roads, and county services in places with few other large employers. But It also transformed the land.

More than a century of industrial harvesting cleared old-growth forests, expanded road networks, damaged streams, fragmented habitat, and produced a public backlash that became one of the most influential environmental movements in the country.

For many Oregonians, the spotted owl conflict of the late 1980s and early 1990s became the moment when an entire way of managing the forest was forced to change. And make no mistake, that change was necessary. Much of the Pacific Northwest had been managed for short-term timber production in ways that biologists, tribal nations, fishermen, and ordinary residents recognized as unsustainable. Stronger habitat protections and limits on old-growth logging were overdue.

Those protections did some good, even if the work remains unfinished, Northern spotted owl populations are still declining, and many salmon runs remain threatened despite great success in restoring balance. While the laws did not solve every ecological problem, they forced agencies and companies to account for consequences that had long been treated as someone else's responsibility.

However, every cultural frame has a blind spot.

When the visible enemy is clear cutting, every industry that touches the land starts to look the same. Mining gets placed in the same mental category as the timber practices of the 1960s and 1970s, even though the industries disturb land in different ways, operate under different regulatory systems and mining disturbs far less land than timber harvesting.

Today, the Hanna Nickel Mine near Riddle is barely a memory for most Oregonians under the age of forty. In keeping with the theme, it might as well be Bigfoot! You know, something people have heard about but assume never really existed.

How Timber Shaped Oregon

The timber industry arrived with Oregon's first sawmills in the 1840s and became one of the state's defining industries by the early twentieth century.

The federal Oregon and California Railroad lands, commonly known as the O&C lands, supplied much of the timber that fed mills from Roseburg to Coos Bay. Harvests reached enormous levels during the middle of the twentieth century and by the late 1970s and early 1980s, Oregon's timber industry employed roughly 80,000 people.

The scale of that history is still visible today! Just pull up a satellite image of Western Oregon and look at the O&C counties. The patchwork of recent clearcuts, second-growth stands, roads, and remaining older forest tells the story of industrial forestry more clearly than a chart ever could. Drive between Canyonville and Glendale, and the same history is visible from the highway.

The industry's contraction came quickly though. The turmoil surrounding the endangerment of the northern spotted owl, the Northwest Forest Plan, mill automation, consolidation, recessions, and international competition all played a part. The remaining mills became larger and more productive, but they required fewer workers. Rural counties that had depended on mill payrolls were left searching for replacements. In fact, that history still shapes school enrollment, public services, housing markets, and small-business activity across Southwestern Oregon.

Unfortunately, despite the lessons learned from the past, many of the old arguments are returning.

In February of 2026, the Bureau of Land Management announced that it would revise the plans governing approximately 2.5 million acres of O&C and Coos Bay Wagon Road lands in Western Oregon. The planning area is not the same thing as the acreage that will eventually be logged, but the revision could lead to a substantial increase in timber harvesting.

The proposal has obviously reopened familiar conflicts over rural employment, habitat protection, federal land management, and county revenue. And yet, mining is barely part of that conversation, even though Southern Oregon sits over mineral resources that could support some of the same communities with a fraction of a footprint on the land.

What Counts As A Footprint?

It is tempting to place the BLM's 2.5 million-acre planning area next to the projected acreage of a single mine and declare the comparison over. That would be rhetorically powerful, but it would not be fair.

In the same way that not all land covered by a forestry plan will be logged, Mining claim boundaries are not the same as acres that will be excavated. Exploration properties such as Red Flat, Cleopatra, and Eight Dollar Mountain do not yet provide enough public detail to state the final disturbed acreage of a future mine with confidence and a responsible comparison should wait for an actual mine plan, but that doesn’t mean we can’t draw comparison.

A mine's footprint would include the pit or excavation area, processing facilities, waste-rock storage, tailings management, roads, water infrastructure, and any land disturbed by supporting operations. The analysis must also examine water consumption, downstream fisheries, habitat fragmentation, transportation emissions, reclamation, and the possibility of treatment obligations after closure.

Those are all valid concerns and so while a mine can occupy a relatively compact area creating concentrated risks. Smaller does not automatically mean safer.

Forestry has a different pattern of impact. Its footprint is spread across a much larger region and repeated over successive harvest cycles. It includes logging units, roads, stream crossings, erosion, habitat fragmentation, trucking, and the cumulative effects of returning to the same landscape over time.

The question is not which industry has no impact as neither qualifies. The question is how much land each industry disturbs, how intensely it disturbs it, how long the effects last, what risks it creates for water and habitat, and what economic value it produces for the communities being asked to accept those risks.

On the basis of value, timber harvesting raises $4,000 to $14,000 per acre, depending on many factors. But a nickel laterite deposit, 20 feet thick and grading 1.0% nickel raises $4-$5 million per acre. A timber operation would have to be 1,000 times larger to produce the same revenue per acre as a nickel laterite deposit.

Regulation Is Part of the Footprint

A modern nickel project in Southern Oregon would face federal and state environmental review, water-quality requirements, endangered-species consultation, reclamation planning, and financial bonding. And make no mistake! Those requirements matter. A financial bond is intended to ensure that reclamation does not become the public's responsibility if a company fails or completes the project and walks away. In the same way, water monitoring can identify changes during operations rather than years after closure and progressive reclamations allows portions of a mine site to be restored before the entire operation shuts down.

None of those safeguards guarantees a good outcome but it ensures proper corporate governance and holds them accountable in their practices. But a project that cannot address those concerns should not receive a permit and in the same breath I’d say that a project that can address them should not be rejected simply because it involves mining.

Technologies have come a long way in mining, practices have changed and lessons learned from the past have heavily influenced the way in which we extract minerals and process them today. At least in Oregon, the standards would be much higher, regulations more enforced and responsible practices adhered to unlike in places like China and Indonesia.

Conclusion

Oregon's environmental movement has much to be proud of. It changed how the state thinks about forests, rivers, wildlife, and public land. It also established an important principle in that economic activity should be judged by its full public cost, not just by the revenue it produces.

In saying that, Southern Oregon nickel should also be judged according to disturbed acreage, water risk, waste management, habitat effects, reclamation, and the durability of its economic benefits and not just how many permanent jobs a project would create, what those jobs would pay, how long they would last, and how much revenue would remain in local communities.

If a proposed mine cannot protect water, secure adequate bonding, respect tribal interests, and demonstrate a credible closure plan, it should not be built, but If it can meet those standards, Oregonians should be willing to consider it as a viable option for economic development.

The fact is that nickel will continue to be mined elsewhere. Recycling, substitution, and new battery chemistries can reduce demand, but they cannot yet satisfy it. The choice is not between mining and a world without mining. The choice is between different sources, different standards, and different footprints. Oregon just so happens to benefit from several near surface deposits that could truly reshape the economy, provide leverage for the state as a whole and contribute directly to critical mineral supply chains essential to green technologies.

Southern Oregon's nickel is not mythical and the willingness to debate it honestly should not be either.

Authored by: Mike Coyle