by Gabe Scott, In-house Counsel

Lone Rock Timber and BLM, shame on you.

In what looks like a classic timber grab, Lone Rock Timber has demanded rights to log a swath of huge old-growth trees on public, BLM land. Claiming they need a road to access a part of one of their active clearcuts, Lone Rock marked to cut a wide swath of public old growth, and BLM rubber stamped it.

The context is that legacy of frontier land fraud—the checkerboard O&C timberlands. This particular travesty is located up Susan Creek off of the famed North Umpqua River east of Roseburg. The area is naturally spectacular, but the backcountry above the river is largely a giant tree farm for corporate forestry. Every other square-mile section is owned by BLM, the rest by private timberland owners, in a checkerboard pattern. All of it is managed for forestry, and most of it has been clearcut.

The private owners are logging now on a forty-year rotation.

The forest on the chopping block is a 70-150 ft wide swath — about 4 acres — through the kind of ancient forest we dream about. Right up against truly savage clearcuts a mile-square and more, the public stand remains a deep, dark, ancient forest. It’s the sort that, when a grouse hoots, it carries and echoes in that haunting way. My mind longs for a wolf, or at least an eagle or even a raven to call, but none does. This cathedral is an island in a sea of clearcuts.

I counted at least fifteen giant old growth trees marked to cut within Lone Rock’s claimed right-of-way. Fifteen great big mothers, some of whom probably beat Columbus to America.

That’s giving benefit of the doubt on every marked boundary tree, many of which were themselves ancient. And that’s not mentioning the snags, and the many old-but-not-ancient trees, and the gorgeous madrones and great big alders and unexpected, emerald-green meadows.

And in return, Lone Rock accesses a tiny sliver of plantation abutting that beautiful stand. I counted rings on one typical stump —yep, forty on the nose.

Lone Rock and BLM claim they have the legal right to do this because they want a wide road and big turnaround to more easily access one of their active plantation clearcutting units. There is a rock outcrop, they say. It’s hard to get around with these new machines, they say.

Big hole in their story—the trees they can’t get to, they were able to get to to clearcut forty years ago. That’s how it’s plantation now.

Further investigation by intrepid sleuths uncovered Lone Rock sharing maps of existing roads to the very stand.

I visited the site last Thursday and what I saw was a company going hogwild, clearcutting the snot out of a hillside, having no trouble at all yanking the cut trees onto trucks to haul to market. I saw these roads with my own eyes. I listened to their machines work all day tearing up the hill just below the stand they say they can’t access.

How a logging company that logged a stand forty years ago thinks they can’t do it today is an interesting story. If you wonder where the logging jobs went, here’s your answer.

Forty years ago they had cable yarders and tractors and skylines and choker setters and fallers who would scramble around the hill in cork boots to do the job.

Now it’s done by a couple guys pulling levers in air-conditioned boxs. Logging by machine is more profitable. What used to take a crew now only takes one.

Progress!

The public accommodates that job-killing mechanization by letting them plough more and more roads through our old-growth reserves. But sure, go ahead, blame the spotted owl for economic trouble in timber country.

Lone Rock can cry us a river about access to their land.

Those very same right-of-way agreements lock us, the public, out of accessing our land. The deal is so slanted that even BLM employees in the field couldn’t take a spur to a nice spot for a picnic—they can only drive the roads when they are working on a logging project.

They say this is just the way it is, but that answer is not good enough for us.

Cascadia and other local activists have been dogging this outrageous proposal. We’re doing what we can to save this forest, but honestly it is an uphill fight. Presence of spotted owls, wet weather, better access in other ways… none of it seems to matter at all to them. We’ve implored BLM officials directly, but they claim their hands are tied by reciprocal right-of-way agreements.

We hold out hope that Lone Rock will do the right thing and log their trees the old fashioned way. But, if the best we can get out of this situation is to learn a lesson, then lets learn the lessons.

The lesson is that BLM’s interpretation of these reciprocal right of way agreements on tens of thousands of acres of public and private forestry land amounts to a blank check for private logging companies. All the careful forest planning BLM does, can be undone in a moment at the whim of a logging company who claims they want to build a road. The situation is rich with potential for fraud, and BLM is uninterested in policing it.

The sad legacy of the O&C land frauds continues.

(All photos of the contested area by Cascadia Wildlands)

The post Blog: Old Growth Timber Grab on the North Umpqua first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

For Immediate Release

Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands (314) 482-3746

Medford BLM Old-Growth Timber Sale Faces Legal Challenge

Groups Oppose the Government Returning to Old-Growth Logging

Today a coalition of conservation organizations representing tens of thousands of Oregonians filed a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) seeking to halt the “Lower Grave” old-growth timber sale located on the Grave Creek tributary to the Rogue River.  This illegal logging project proposes to log fire-resilient old-growth forests currently serving as a critical refuge for the northern spotted owl, Coho salmon and red tree voles.

“The last thing the Grave Creek Watershed needs is more old-growth logging, more clearcutting and more logging roads,” said George Sexton, Conservation Director for KS Wild. “Our public land managers should be bringing communities together to restore forests, but the BLM appears intent on going back to the days of ripping up watersheds and slicking off native forests.”

The timber sale marks a sharp departure from the BLM’s prior restoration efforts in the Rogue River Basin aimed at undoing past damage wrought by rampant clearcutting and extensive road construction over the previous century.  Medford BLM had been successfully implementing “dry forest restoration” timber sales based on the recommendations of foresters Drs. Norm Johnson and Jerry Franklin. These dry-forest restoration principles allowed to the BLM to offer substantial timber volume for sale, while increasing the resistance of these forest stands to large fires, largely without controversy.

“Our organizations repeatedly stressed to the BLM that there was a way for them to design this project to generate timber for sale and protect the large old-growth trees,” said Nick Cady with Cascadia Wildlands.  “The BLM replied that its mission was to maximize the cut.  That is not the agency’s mission. The BLM is placing no value on wildlife, clean water, and forest health that Oregonians hold dear.”

The BLM admits that the timber sale will increase fire hazard in the “regeneration harvest” logging units in which over 95% of the old-growth trees will be removed and replaced with dense tree-farms. The sale will also result in the “take” of a newly established spotted owl pair and its juveniles.

“The Lower Grave timber sale is based on the wrong priorities. This logging will degrade rather than restore our public forests that have already been logged too much,” said Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild. “BLM’s top priority should be careful restoration of the public values that flow from our public forests, including clean water, recreation, climate stability, fish & wildlife, and quality of life that underpins our diverse economy.”

###

The post Suit Filed to Prevent Old-Growth Logging Near Rogue River first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

“The appellate court today threw out an unprecedented, unworkable, and backward decision that could have forced the Bureau of Land Management to violate its duties to manage these lands for water, air, wildlife, and people, not just clearcuts,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney at Earthjustice. “This ruling should discourage logging companies from demanding to cut 100- year-old forests because no one person and no particular private logging company is entitled to log wherever it wants.”

The post Press Release: Logging Industry Lawsuit Thrown out by Federal Appeals Court first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Contact:
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746

Judge Rejects “Eco-Forestry” Clearcutting on O&C Lands

Controversial “variable retention regeneration harvest” clearcuts in White Castle timber sale declared illegal; conservationists win on all counts.

A US District Court judge has ruled in favor of conservation groups Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands in their legal challenge of a controversial clearcut logging project on public lands in Douglas County. At stake in the case was the Bureau of Land Management’s “White Castle” logging project which proposed clearcutting 160 aces of 100-year old trees using a controversial methodology developed by Drs. Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson referred to as “variable retention regeneration harvest” sometimes referred to as “eco-forestry.” In her ruling, Judge Ann Aiken found that the BLM’s environmental review fell far short of fully considering the full range of harm that could result from clearcutting.

“This ruling proves that BLM can’t just re-name a clearcut something else and then expect it to suddenly be acceptable,” said Sean Stevens, Executive Director of Oregon Wild. “The White Castle timber sale was a test to see if eco-forest clearcutting could pass legal muster or public scrutiny, and it failed.”

Attorney Jennifer Schwartz argued on behalf of the conservation plaintiffs and repeatedly highlighted the scientific dispute surrounding the project and “variable retention harvest,” especially its implementation in older forests and spotted owl critical habitat. The Court ultimately determined that “The [spotted owl’s] Recovery Plan, the [spotted owl’s] critical habitat proposal, comments from the public and scientists, and Franklin and Johnson’s own reports demonstrated the existence of ‘a substantial dispute’ casting ‘serious doubt upon the reasonableness’ of BLM’s decision to harvest forest stands over 80 years old.”

By the BLM’s own admission, the White Castle sale was intended as a prototype for greatly expanding clearcutting on other BLM O&C lands, a factor that weighed heavily in the judge’s ruling. The judge found the precedential nature of the project worthy of greater scrutiny: “Project materials describe the pilot projects as test of new harvest methods and ‘new policies’ that could supplant BLM’s current ‘risk-adverse strategy’ of avoiding regeneration harvesting and other ‘active management’ methods.[] Approval of the White Castle Project will not have binding impact on future projects, but it will, by design, shape BLM forestry methods and strategies moving forward.

“The scariest part of this project was its potential to set the tone for logging across 2 million acres of Western Oregon BLM,” said Nick Cady, Legal Director of Cascadia Wildlands. “The project was mired in scientific uncertainty and was the obvious result of political pressure to bail out county politicians by returning clearcutting to our public forests. I hope this ruling convinces the BLM to revisit its intentions for our public lands.”

The proposed timber sale lies within publicly-owned forest in the South Myrtle Creek watershed, near the community of Canyonville. The Roseburg BLM District proposed the controversial “eco-forestry” logging method as justification to clearcut over 187 acres, including 160 acres of trees over a century old.

Bulldozing roads and other destructive activities associated with the project would also have targeted additional trees over 150 years old. Federal biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have acknowledged nearly 200 acres of habitat for threatened wildlife would be damaged or destroyed by the logging. In her ruling, the judge found the likely effects of this clearcutting to require the BLM to conduct a much more rigorous environmental analysis than they have done thus far.

Despite the fact that BLM has been largely meeting its timber targets for the last 15 years, primarily through non-controversial thinning of young forests, the agency has recently pursued more controversial projects as a way to increase logging. BLM claimed that clearcutting the White Castle forest would benefit the environment by removing mature trees in order to favor shrubs and brush, even though such habitat is not rare like old forest. As part of the same planning process, Roseburg BLM carried out a similar and related clearcutting project in younger forests, known as Buck Rising. Conservationists did not challenge the Buck Rising project in court but they were not pleased with the results.

“BLM claims that since they intend to retain a few patches of standing trees , it isn’t really a clearcut,” said Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild. “Anyone who has seen the aftermath of logging at Buck Rising would have a difficult time explaining the difference between acres of stumps and rutted earth created by eco-forestry and those created by old style clearcutting.”

A copy of the legal decision can be found here.

Photos of the White Castle forest can be found here.　(please credit to Francis Eatherington)

Photos from the BLM’s Buck Rising clearcuts can be found here.　(please credit to Francis Eatherington)

The post Cascadia Wildlands Defeats White Castle Clearcutting in Court first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Fellow intern Rance and I recently joined Cascadia Wildlands’ Conservation Director Francis Eatherington on a public tour of the Buck Rising timber sale on BLM land east of Myrtle Creek, Oregon.  The tour was organized by the BLM Roseburg District office in order to demonstrate the results of the timber sale and gain feedback from the public.  Officially, the project is called the Buck Rising Variable Retention Regeneration Harvest (VRH), and is one of four demonstration projects currently underway on BLM lands in Western Oregon.  The demonstration projects are mandated by the Secretary of the Interior in order to increase logging on O&C lands.  The Buck Rising project was initially proposed and sold as a thinning project that would cut and harvest 60 year old trees originally planted as a plantation to accelerate the development of

late-successional habitat necessary to the survival of the Northern Spotted Owl – habitat now drastically underrepresented on public lands in Western Oregon.  In order to appease political pressures for increased logging on O&C lands, however, the Buck Rising thinning project was re-sold as a secretarial demonstration project.  The project’s silvicultural prescription, VRH, was developed by Drs. Johnson and Franklin, professors of forestry at Oregon State University.

While some clumps of trees were retained, most retention occurred in buffers along riparian areas.  In non-riparian areas, only 10% of trees were retained.  The BLM stresses the ecological benefits of early-successional habitat development, including flowers, nectars, fruits, and forage herbs for wildlife, and refuses to call the harvest a clearcut.  Many concerned members of the public, however, noted the lack of snags and remnant dead wood necessary to healthy and natural early-successional habitat development.  Cascadia Wildlands’ own Francis Eatherington continually noted how one of three BLM project objectives includes creating forage foliage for elk and deer, yet within a mile away on private

industrial timber land, timber companies recently petitioned ODFW for a public deer hunt in order to curb the abnormally high deer populations feeding on the omnipresent early-successional conditions on their post-clearcut plantations.

The post Observations from the BLM’s Buck Rising Timber Sale Field Tour first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

The post A Trip to Washington DC first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Roseburg, OR — Earlier this week, neighboring landowners discovered a mudslide in the “experimental” Buck Rising clearcut logging project on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management in Douglas County.  The type of clearcutting used in the project has been the model for US Senator Ron Wyden’s plan to double logging levels on O&C lands in Western Oregon.

In addition, the BLM is copying Buck Rising’s clearcut logging practices in a half dozen other logging projects around Western Oregon, including the controversial White Castle forest.  That clearcutting plan has already drawn a legal challenge from the conservation groups Oregon Wild and Cascadia Wildlands.  A group of tree sitters has weathered winter storms in one corner of the White Castle sale in an effort to save a stand of old-growth trees from the chainsaws.

The post Wyden-style Clearcut Causes Mudslide on O&C Lands first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

The post Senator Wyden is Holding a Hearing on the O&C Lands Today: He Should be Hearing From You first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Click here to read the letter to Senator Jeff Merkley.

The post Cascadia Wildlands and Allies Send Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley Letters About O&C Logging Bill first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

• The destruction of almost 200 acres of forest habitat for threatened wildlife.
• Failure to conduct a complete analysis of likely environmental damage from clearcutting.
• Failure to consider environmentally responsible alternatives, including thinning smaller trees instead of clearcutting older forests.
• Failure to consider the existing clearcuts that scar the watershed.  Though BLM claims the logging is needed to create open patches and young forest, their own data shows that 27% of the forests on federal lands in the region are under 30 years old.

The post Roseburg BLM Clearcut Logging Plan Challenged first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.