Throughout the years, Cascadia Wildlands has grown into a regional conservation leader.
We have worked with partners to protect hundreds of thousands of acres of once-threatened wild forests, save imperiled species from extinction, stop fossil fuel developments, and shift management priorities for millions of acres of public forests from extraction toward restoration. We are indebted to our volunteers, donors, public interest attorneys, co-plaintiffs, and the greater movement for a wild Cascadia.
Our Victories
Warner Creek
This seminal direct action campaign ultimately protected a northern spotted owl reserve from logging after it was torched by arsonists in 1991. The nearly year-long road blockade on the Willamette National Forest helped spawn other civil disobedience against lawless logging in the region and ultimately compelled the formation of Cascadia Wildlands.
Hardesty Mountain
Threats to this prominent recreation-focused roadless area located between Eugene and Oakridge on the Willamette National Forest made the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management’s logging proposals over the years an easy target. Successful organizing campaigns helped protect this special area first from the Judie timber sale in 1997 and later the John’s Last Stand timber sale in 2015.
Red Tree Vole Surveys
The all-volunteer Northwest Ecosystem Survey Team (NEST) helped put the red tree vole on the map. A primary food source for the imperiled northern spotted owl, this arboreal, mouse-size mammal nests in the canopy old forests in western Oregon and is required to be surveyed for and protected by federal land management agencies when discovered. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have never been very efficient at finding this elusive critter, so NEST would climb trees, locate nests within proposed timber sales, submit their data to the agencies, and Cascadia Wildlands would work to ensure the occupied, threatened areas were buffered from logging — sometimes through diplomacy, sometimes through litigation.
Over the years, NEST surveyed dozens of timber sales, and their efforts were successful in protecting thousands of acres of once-threatened forest. Proposed timber sales located southeast of Eugene, such as Straw Devil, East Devil, Clark and Pryor, were just a handful of projects that were ultimately protected due to the discovery of red tree vole nests.
Elliott State Forest
When Cascadia Wildlands first started monitoring the 82,500-acre Elliott State Forest in 2001, it quickly became clear that this is where the worst old-growth clearcutting on public land was taking place across the region. Unable to make inroads with the state of Oregon to change the management paradigm on the forest, Cascadia Wildlands and partners filed an Endangered Species Act lawsuit in 2012, which resulted in a legal injunction that ground old-growth logging in occupied marbled murrelet habitat to a halt.
This legal leverage allowed Cascadia Wildlands to help usher in a new management paradigm for the Elliott, which is now focused on forest research, carbon storage to mitigate climate change, older forest habitat protection, Tribal knowledge, species recovery, and recreation.
Jordan Cove LNG Project and Pacific Connector Pipeline:
A 15+ year-long, community organizing and legal battle resulted in the cancellation of this proposed liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal on the spit of Coos Bay and an associated 232-mile Pacific Connector Pipeline being cancelled in 2021. If built, this facility would have become Oregon’s largest` emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.
Marbled Murrelet Safeguards
Much of Cascadia Wildlands’s coastal forest conservation work revolves around recovery of the imperiled marbled murrelet, a seabird that requires inland old-growth trees for nesting and rearing young. Listed on the federal Endangered Species Act as “threatened” since 1992, the primary threat to murrelets is habitat loss due to logging. Cascadia Wildlands led a coalition effort to successfully petition the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to uplist the species from “threatened” to “endangered” Oregon’s state Endangered Species Act list in 2021.
Cascadia Wildlands et. al v. Scott Timber
This case set important legal precedent marking the first time a private timber company in Oregon had been held accountable in court for violations of the federal Endangered Species Act. The court held that a private timber operator in the Oregon Coast Range was violating the Endangered Species Act when it proposed to clearcut old-growth forests occupied by marbled murrelet. The week-long trial relied heavily on the testimony of volunteer surveyors from Coast Range Forest Watch, who documented marbled murrelet activity in the threatened forest.
Mature and Old-growth Forest Protection
Since our founding, Cascadia Wildlands and partners have stopped scores of mature and old-growth timber sales, protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of once-threatened forest. Reckless timber sales we helped make disappear through grassroots organizing and litigation campaigns include : East Fork Coquille, North Winberry, Clark, Moose, Whitecastle, Pedal Power, Flat Country, and IVM, all located in our favorite watersheds in western Oregon, like the Willamette, McKenzie, Santiam, North Umpqua and Rogue.
Gray Wolf Recovery
Cascadia Wildlands has been intimately involved with the recovery of gray wolves since their return to Oregon in 2007. When there were just a few dozen wolves in the state, we brought a successful state Endangered Species Act lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for trying to kill members of Oregon’s first wolf pack to establish in over 65 years — the Imnaha Pack. We ultimately reached a settlement that created a stronger roadmap for recovery across the state.
Cascadia Wildlands is also a founding member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition, which is made up of organizations working to recover wolves across the Pacific West. Additionally, Cascadia Wildlands has a regular presence in the Oregon legislature, advocating for strong wolf protections and opposing incessant efforts to weaken safeguards.
Wild Salmon Protection
In 2013 Cascadia Wildlands and wild salmon advocates helped pass comprehensive legislation in the Oregon legislature that outlawed suction dredge mining in designated essential salmonid habitat. This reckless practice involves using a powerful hose to vacuum the streambed in search of gold flecks, which can negatively impact aquatic health by trapping and killing aquatic insects, fish eggs and juvenile fish, and altering salmon habitats.
Following the lead of Oregon and with strong advocacy by Cascadia Wildlands and partners, Washington lawmakers passed a bill in 2020 to outlaw the practice in the Evergreen State.
We continue our wild fish advocacy through efforts to improve fish passage and safeguard riparian habitats.
Devil’s Staircase Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers
Cascadia Wildlands worked with conservation partners, stakeholders and members of the Oregon Congressional delegation to create new Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers. After an over 10-year campaign, the Oregon Wildlands Act was signed into law in 2019, establishing the 30,500-acre Devil’s Staircase Wilderness in the Oregon Coast Range and protecting 256 miles of new Wild and Scenic Rivers across the state, 140 of them located on the famed lower Rogue River in southwest Oregon.
These are only some of our many successes over the years — and we couldn’t have done it without supporters like you. Consider joining WildCAT, our volunteer crew or sign up for our email list for updates!
