For Immediate Release
May 12, 2026
Contacts:
Nick Cady, Legal Director, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746
John Persell, Senior Staff Attorney, Oregon Wild
Janice Reid, Conservation Chair, Umpqua Watersheds
Meriel Darzen, Senior Staff Attorney, Crag Law Center
Yoncalla, OR — In response to illegal logging of old-growth forest recently documented in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Blue and Gold timber sale located in the Oregon Coast Range, conservation organizations Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild and Umpqua Watersheds filed a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction in District Court to stop any further cutting. Volunteers documented the logging of old-growth trees, some of which are estimated to be 250-years old and are required to be protected by the BLM’s own rules, while camping near the contested area in the lower Umpqua River watershed this past weekend.
“The Bureau of Land Management initially denied that this old-growth forest even existed in the project area, but this was proven untrue by our volunteers and agency whistleblowers. After being caught in that lie, BLM pivoted and assured the Court that the agency would take measures to protect these unique legacy trees,” said Nick Cady, Legal Director at Cascadia Wildlands. “This unsurprisingly was also a fabrication; the BLM simply cannot be trusted to oversee our public forests.”
The conservation organizations initially filed a lawsuit against the Blue and Gold timber sale, which proposes to log 3,200 acres of public forest, in September 2024, argued the case in November 2025, and have been awaiting a decision from the District Court. The recent observation of the illegal old-growth logging and subsequent filing for a restraining order comes on the heels of a discovery that BLM had fabricated or manipulated the underlying timber sale data to make the project appear feasible. The motion filed today will expedite a ruling.
Plaintiffs have alleged numerous violations of federal environmental laws in their case, including the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Central to the claims are impacts to old-growth forests and species that require older forest habitat for their survival, including the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet, both which are listed on the federal Endangered Species Act. The unit where old-growth logging was recently documented is home to an occupied northern spotted owl site, which BLM is failing to protect despite its obligations under the bedrock statute.
“These remaining parcels of old-growth forests in the Coast Range are critical for the habitat values they provide, the clean water they filter, and the carbon they store to help mitigate climate change,” said Janice Reid, Conservation Chair of Umpqua Watersheds. “Unfortunately, the Bureau of Land Management is shirking its legal duties to protect the old-growth with its mission to ramp up the cut.”
Per its own forest management plan, the Bureau of Land Management is not legally permitted to log old-growth forests, and specifically those trees established before 1850 and larger than 40” wide at breast height. The logging documented this past weekend included trees that fit this criteria, including some up to 67” in diameter.
“Even if the agency can somehow explain why logging these ancient trees is allowed under its plan, it was required to let the public know as part of the project planning process, and explain what the effects of cutting those trees would be on the surrounding forests and habitats. BLM instead said the forests were much younger, obfuscating the impacts that we are now seeing as these ancient trees are being cut,” said Meriel Darzen, Senior Staff Attorney at Crag Law Center, which represents the plaintiff organizations along with their own in-house attorneys.
Additionally, former agency personnel who worked on the Blue and Gold timber sale have come forward, stating that the agency intentionally misrepresented the age of the forests to facilitate the illegal logging of this unique block of old-growth.
“The BLM is failing to uphold even the most basic safeguards for our largest and oldest trees. They’re cutting down old-growth when they think the public isn’t paying attention,” said John Persell, Senior Staff Attorney for Oregon Wild. “This is just a preview of the destruction we’ll see across western Oregon’s ancient forests as the Trump administration pursues its reckless logging agenda.”
Even as the Bureau of Land Management is attempting to push through reckless timber sales like Blue and Gold under existing policy framework, the Trump administration is working to revise the agency’s 2016 Resource Management Plans for 2.5-million acres of western Oregon forests. It is hoping to quadruple the cut with the revision and make logging the sole focus of these lands over other values, such as recreation, habitat, carbon storage, and clean water.
The organizations are represented by attorneys from Crag Law Center, Cascadia Wildlands, and Oregon Wild in the matter.
The declarations with the documentation of the old-growth logging can be found here and here.
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Photos for press use. Find high-resolution photos of the illegal logging and the threatened forests in the Blue and Gold timber sale here. Photo credits: Cascadia Wildlands.
