Cascadia Wildlands and partners have been working for over two decades to ensure strong protections for the outstanding streams, mature forests and imperiled wildlife on the Elliott State Forest located northeast of Coos Bay. We now have an important opportunity to comment on the draft Forest Management Plan for the recently established 82,000-acre Elliott State Research Forest. This plan will guide forest activities on the Elliott for the next decade, and it builds upon the collaborative work that has been done over the past several years.
We need you to weigh-in on this plan before July 28.
On the positive side, the state is proposing to add a 6,000-10,000-acre Climate and Biodiversity Management Area. This is an area that, in addition to protections already secured across the forest, would be managed primarily for carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. It puts more of the Elliott into a higher level of protection and recognizes the important role that our forests play in helping blunt climate change.
On the negative side, the draft plan reduces protections in the already-designated, 33,000-acre Conservation Management Area (CMA) located on the west side of the forest. It is important that the Department of State Lands hear from you that there can be no rollback of protections in the CMA.
Thank you for taking action today, and please feel free to personalize your comments.