Webinar: Elliott State Forest Update — Dec. 8 @ 5:30pm
Register here. Learn about the history of the Elliott State Forest.
VICTORY! Court Halts Roadside Post-fire Logging Project
November 5, 2021 — Today for the second time this year, a federal court halted U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) plans to carry out extensive post-fire roadside logging. In granting a preliminary injunction, the court stopped planned commercial logging along 400 miles of roads within the Willamette National Forest. Federal District Judge Michael McShane’s order states: “Given the immense scale of this Project, which allows the felling of trees along 404 miles of forest roads, Plaintiffs [Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, and Willamette Riverkeeper] have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the claim that the Forest Service may not use the road repair and maintenance [Categorical Exclusion] to avoid [National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)] review,” page 11. The Forest Service will be largely precluded from commencing logging until the court has heard and decided on the case, likely in early 2022.
Press Release: Wildlife Advocates Convince Feds to Keep Lynx Protections, Write Long-overdue Recovery Plan
November 1, 2021 — Today, a coalition of conservation organizations secured a legal settlement that will aid threatened Canada lynx recovery: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will abandon plans to remove Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for the struggling snow cat in the contiguous U.S. and initiate recovery planning for the species after nearly 20 years of delay. Today’s agreement stems from a legal challenge wildlife advocates brought against the Service for its failure to prepare a recovery plan for threatened Canada lynx over this extended period.
Hundreds of Businesses Across Oregon Urge Congress to Pass the River Democracy Act
September 29, 2021 — A growing number of businesses from across Oregon support Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley’s River Democracy Act (S.192), and are urging Congress to pass the bill. The legislation that will protect roughly 4,700 miles of rivers as wild and scenic was crafted with the input from Oregonians all across the state.
BLOG: Reporting Back from the Oakridge/Westfir Field Visit
By Danielle Curtis, 2021 Summer Legal Intern On an uncharacteristically rainy morning in mid-June, myself, along with my fellow Cascadia team members, pulled into the Middle Fork Willamette Ranger Station. Here, we would meet with representatives from Oregon Wild, as well as a number of Willamette National Forest District Rangers and fuel planners. The purpose … Read more
BLOG: Legal Interns Set Sights on the Murrelet
By Elie Steinberg & Marty Farrell, 2021 Summer Legal Interns In a time where billionaires set their sights toward the stars (or rather, just outside of earth’s atmosphere), we set our sights closer to home, towards the mossy branches of Oregon’s coastal mature and old-growth forests. On the branches of these forests, the marbled murrelet, … Read more
Press Release: ODFW Uses Tax Dollars to Kill 3.5 Month Old Wolf Pups
August 2, 2021 — The Oregon Wildlife Coalition, an alliance of nine wildlife conservation organizations, has learned that the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) needlessly slaughtered two 3 ½ month-old wolf pups from the Lookout Mountain pack by helicopter over the weekend. As allowed by ODFW’s weakened wolf conservation and management plan, the pups were killed to appease the livestock industry, making it clear that Oregon aligns its wolf management with states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska. The killing of defenseless pups underscores how the removal of federal wolf protections allows state agencies hostile to wolf recovery to undermine the decades long species’ recovery efforts. Pups this age are entirely dependent on the older wolves in their packs to bring back food: they do not participate in hunts.
Know Your Zone: Eugene/Springfield Emergency Preparedness
Eugene Springfield Fire has developed Emergency Evacuation Zones to be used in case of an emergency (i.e. severe weather event, wildfire, flooding, etc.) requiring evacuation. The Evacuation Zones allow community members, emergency services, emergency managers, and 9-1-1 to be on the same page when initiating a mass evacuation due to an emergency. The interactive map … Read more
VICTORY! Marbled Murrelet Gains Increased Protections in Oregon
July 9, 2021 — The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission today approved a petition filed by five conservation groups to give marbled murrelets more protection by reclassifying them from threatened to endangered under the state’s Endangered Species Act. The 4-3 decision comes two years after an Oregon judge ruled that the commission had violated state law by denying the petition without explanation in 2018.
Press Release: CW Appeals ODOT’s $87,000 Bill for Post-Fire Hazard Tree Removal Public Records Request
July 6, 2021 — Cascadia Wildlands appealed the $87,756.60 estimated bill issued by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) in response to the organization’s public records request seeking documents related to the agency’s hazard tree removal activities following the 2020 Labor Day fires.
DeFazio Letter Requests Immediate Protections for Gray Wolves
July 1, 2021 — Earlier this week, Rep. Peter DeFazio sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland and Principal Deputy Director of the USFWS, Martha Williams urging emergency reinstatement of Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves. With Idaho and Montana recently passing laws that will allow devastating … Read more
