Dave Schott shook his head upon learning Tuesday morning that Greenpeace activists were blockading a timber sale on federal land near Glendale.

"It’s very frustrating," he said. "It’s so shortsighted it’s ... well, I can’t say that. It’s very frustrating.

"People from Greenpeace represent such a small portion of the population, yet they generate more publicity than they warrant," he added later.

As the longtime owner of Forestglen Lumber Co., a Medford lumber brokerage, Schott, 56, has made it his business to keep tabs on industry related news.

Moreover, as the new executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association, effective June 1, Schott has become the lead spokesman for the local industry.

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"They call themselves environmentalists but I think people in the timber industry are every bit as environmentally concerned about the future heritage as they are," he said.

"(Environmentalists) are more aptly called preservationists. They’ve demonstrated they don’t want anything cut period (off federal forestlands). If they had their way, they would do what they could to inhibit utilizing private lands."

Schott replaced Dave Hill, who stepped down last month to pursue other interests.

SOTIA is a Medford-based trade association of about 90 companies involved in the timber industry. Members include loggers, manufacturers, timberland owners and associated businesses.

Born in Medford, Schott is the son of the late Bob Schott, a lumber wholesaler who founded Forestglen in 1956.

Dave Schott has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Oregon and is a graduate of the Willamette University law school. He served as a Jackson County deputy district attorney for three years, beginning in 1973.

But his heart was in the wholesale lumber business, the profession he returned to in 1977.

"I love the industry," he said. "They are hardworking, honest people. There is no question there were some questionable logging practices in the past. There is nothing worse than a bad logging show."

But he figures most loggers today have forest health in mind.

As a lumber broker, Schott purchases lumber from sawmills, selling it to small to medium retail outlets throughout the country.

As a result, he figures he has a broad perspective on the industry, both on a regional and national scale.

"We have seen so much production lost over the years from sawmills," he said of mills in Jackson, Josephine and Klamath counties.

"Now there is only one true sawmill as we know it left in Jackson County and one in Josephine County," he said. "Whereas 20 years ago there were 10 to 15 of them.

"It’s a constant battle with the environmental movement to secure an adequate timber supply," he added.

If the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan’s often-touted goal of providing an annual cut of 1 billion board feet of timber from federal land was achieved, or nearly achieved, there would be sufficient raw material to keep sawmills running, he said.

Wood is one of the few renewable resources in the region, he said.

"I don’t think they (environmentalists) know what good science is with regards to maintaining healthy forests," he added later.

For instance, he believes that salvage is needed on the Siskiyou National Forest land burned by the 2002 Biscuit Fire to reduce the fire danger.

"As a lot of this manzanita, laurel and brush grows, and some of these small dead trees start falling, we are going to have a fuel load we’ve never seen anywhere before," he said.

The Forest Service’s salvage proposal calls for leaving about 93 percent of the burned area untouched, he said. The proposal, which includes logging about 370 million board feet of fire- killed timber, has been rejected by most environmental groups.

"Environmentalists profess to want green, old-growth forests but they are doing just about everything they can to keep it from happening," Schott said.

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com