FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2025
CONTACT: Madeline Cowen, Grassroots Organizer Cascadia Wildlands, madeline@cascwild.org, 206-653-4959
PHOTOS: to be updated throughout the day and evening of April 22, 2025 HERE.
Roseburg, OR — Today, Earth Day April 22nd, 2025 activists rallied in opposition to a Bureau of Land Management plan to log old-growth forests on federally-managed public lands in the Umpqua River watershed. Conservation groups filed suit against the Bureau of Land Management in September 2024 over the controversial Blue and Gold logging project. The non-violent rally, organized by Cascadia Wildlands and Umpqua Watersheds, coincides with an auction of several of the logging units within the project dubbed the Yellow Panther Sale. The protest is focused on the project as a whole.
Originally proposed under the Biden administration, the Blue and Gold project targets thousands of acres of the last remaining old-growth forest in the region. The project is in an area that is ecologically significant for the imperilled spotted owl and marbled murrelet. Science shows old-growth forests are more resilient to wildfire, while logging increases wildfire risk for decades. Conservationists and community members opposed the project then, as they do under the Trump administration.
“Today, our community is telling the federal government that we will not tolerate illegal old-growth logging on public lands,” said Madeline Cowen, Grassroots Organizer for Cascadia Wildlands. “Logging old-growth and mature forests increases risks to communities — everyone should be angry about this project.”
The Trump administration has shown their support for industrial logging projects, issuing executive orders to increase industrial logging on federal lands. Researchers have sounded the alarm pointing to science showing that aggressive logging in backcountry forests and old-growth forests increases wildfire risk.
Certain areas of the Blue and Gold Project fall under this category, with well-spaced, age-varied trees throughout the project. A former Bureau of Land Management contract surveyor who worked within the project concluded that trees in and around the project likely reach and exceed 1000 years in age. Cascadia Wildlands volunteers who surveyed the area recorded similar findings. This differs from what the agency claims is present in the project, with the Environmental Assessment, stating that the trees “range from 40 to 140 years old.”The EA found “no significant impact,” a finding that conservation groups are challenging.
The project has some of the last remaining unlogged, carbon-storing older forests in the region.The Bureau of Land Management plans to aggressively log and build roads in old-growth habitat essential to imperiled species and fire resilience. Agency road building plans are one of the loopholes used to log old-growth trees that would otherwise be illegal to remove in most circumstances.
“We are protesting because this project targets old-growth forests in Douglas County,” said Francis Etherington, a longtime forest advocate and local resident. “Motivated by arbitrary timber targets, the government is putting our communities, clean drinking water and wildlife habitat at greater risk.”
Further information:
More information about the Blue and Gold project can be found in ProPublica’s investigative piece, Despite Biden’s Promise to Protect Old Forests, His Administration Keeps Approving Plans to Cut Them Down.
PHOTOS of threatened forests within the Blue and Gold project area from summer and fall of 2024.