National Forests

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Blog: Loaf(er)ing around the North Umpqua

by Jaclyn Hise and Amanda Martino, Cascadia Wildlands summer legal interns      Our first overnight field excursion as summer interns was visiting the Loafer timber sale in the Umpqua National Forest in the southern Oregon Cascades near the Umpqua Hot Springs. The units to be logged span both sides of the North Umpqua River, … Read more

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: The Abuse of “Ecological Forestry” on our Public Lands in Western Oregon

By Nick Cady, Legal Director   The conservation community in the Northwest was incredibly excited by Cascadia’s legal victory over the White Castle timber sale.  Not just because of the couple hundred acres of old growth forest that were saved from clearcutting, but because of the potentially important precedent the case set concerning logging old … Read more

Win for Wolves in Alaska

The Federal District Court in Alaska just issued an Order granting our motion against the Tongass National Forest, stopping four old-growth timber sales in Southeast Alaska for a second time because of concerns related to logging effects on wolves, deer, and subsistence hunters.   So raise a glass! The Scott Peak, Traitors Cove, Overlook and Soda Nick timber … Read more

A Trip to Washington DC

By Francis Eatherington   During the week of June 16, representatives of Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, and KS Wild traveled to Washington DC to discuss two bills, one from Senator Wyden and one from Representative DeFazio. Both mandate an increase of logging on western Oregon BLM lands.   We had over 21 meetings with agency staff, senators … Read more

We are Salmon

By Bob Ferris When reading Tim Egan’s recent op-ed in the New York Times on salmon I was reminded of an “aha” moment I recently experienced at the Tongass talk I gave for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Science Pub.  Towards the end of the talk I asked the crowd of 90 or … Read more

Tag the Tongass

By Bob Ferris   Roughly 1.2 million people visit the 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest each year, but few of them seem to know it.  In their minds they are making stops at places like Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan on Alaska’s picturesque Marine Highway.  They see bears, wolves, salmon, deer and eagles in what they … Read more

Who Wants to Bet the Farm on This Tired Old Horse?

By Bob Ferris   As a wildlife biologist who has spent most of his professional career working with critters, I have to admit that I am fairly new to forestry issues. Moreover, the O&C issue is a particularly gnarly one.     But I can read graphs and have spent a long time interpreting and … Read more

BLM: Make Up Your Mind on Brush

By Francis Eartherington   When BLM logs our public lands, they determine how logging is done by using a “prescription.” The prescription might be thinning, or it might be clearcutting, or it could be hardwood conversion (e.g., clearcutting alder stands) or density management (thinning in a messier way), or something called Variable Retention Harvest (clearcutting … Read more

Crony Capitalism on the Tongass

by Gabe Scott Where is the Tea Party when we need them? I’ve been spending a lot of time lately with two thick Environmental Impact Statements — for the Tonka Timber Sale, and the Big Thorne Timber Sale — out of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. These fellas are a blast from the past, a nostalgic … Read more