Category: Press Room

Press Release: Cascadia Wildlands Receives Historic $500,000 Grant

January 31, 2022 — Nonprofit conservation organization, Cascadia Wildlands, announced today it is the recent recipient of a $500,000 grant from the Evergreen Hill Education Fund, an advised fund of Oregon Community Foundation. The grant will be used to bolster the organization’s effectiveness toward protecting the region’s wildlands, waterways, species and climate, specifically through the addition of a multi-year legal fellow, a strategic communications position, increased office space, and other organizational enhancements.

Press Release: Groups Offer Reward for Info on Wolf Killed Illegally

January 13, 2022 — Conservation groups announced today a $16,500 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the illegal shooting death of a two-year-old collared female wolf in Wallowa County in early January. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Turn in Poachers (TIP) division also offers a potential $300 reward for information regarding illegal wolf killings.

Press Release: Post-fire Logging Halted on the Willamette National Forest

December 3, 2021 — Today, a federal judge enjoined post-fire logging on the Willamette National Forest near Detroit Lake and Breitenbush hot springs. The Forest Service was converting previously approved restorative thinning projects into post-fire clearcuts without any public notice or environmental review, despite the significant new information and conditions created by the fires.

Press Release: Jordon Cove LNG Pipeline Project DEAD

December 1, 2021 — Pembina, the Canadian company that tried to impose a fracked gas pipeline and export terminal on communities across Southern Oregon, today filed a formal request asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to cancel its permit for the project.

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.  

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.

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.