Oregon WildBlog

This piece originally appeared in the Eugene Weekly on February 27, 2020.

Where in Oregon can you find peaks over 9,000 feet and a canyon more than a mile deep… within a few miles of each other? Where can you chase wildflowers in bloom 7 months of the year, see golden eagles soaring, hear the howl of wild wolves, and fish for salmon that traveled hundreds of miles? For lovers of all things wild and beautiful, Wallowa Country is calling your name!

Last week, two dozen conservation groups and timber companies announced an agreement to chart a new course toward meaningful reform to Oregon’s outdated logging laws.

This post originally appeared as a column in the Eugene Weekly on January 16, 2020. There are still a few spots open in the February 8, 2020 snowshoe hike with Oregon Wild - click here to sign up!

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The impacts of industrial forestry, especially clearcuts, on salmon are well known. Clearcutting the upper reaches of watersheds heats the cold water salmon need to survive, as do Oregon’s scientifically insufficient buffers along larger waterways. Roads and denuded slopes also cause artificial peak stream flows in the decade after clearcutting that can scour out fish eggs, and increase sediment runoff into waterways, filling them with mud and debris that cloud clean water and make it harder for salmon to feed.

This time of year (late fall, early winter) can be challenging as far as where to go on a hike. If you’re like me, it takes a real mental effort to gear up and go outside when it’s cold and rainy. But just because it’s foggy in the Willamette Valley doesn’t mean it is everywhere. Surprisingly, it can be really nice on the Oregon coast this time of year - I recommend watching the weather there and then going for a hike where it is usually warmer than the valley - and sometimes even sunny!

The energy in the air was palpable. Over 100 people left their places of work for a lunch hour forum at the Mazamas building in SE Portland to show their support for Wild & Scenic Rivers in the presence of Oregon’s two Senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. Organizing parties were nervous about good turnout for this pre-holiday, weekday event, but all doubts disappeared long before the event began. Standing room only - and the Senators hadn’t even arrived. Mingling with the expanding attendees, it became clear how many diverse interests were represented.

The redwoods in Stout Grove were skyscrapers of trees, towering over our bicycles like great living monoliths. Beneath them, we seemed inconsequential--silly almost--trying at times to awkwardly ride with faces upturned seeking glimpses of the green peaks.

The 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest in the central Oregon Coast Range, is home to the only significant old-growth forest remaining on state-owned lands in Oregon, providing important habitat for old-growth dependent wildlife and salmon.

What good are laws if they do not serve their intended purpose?

This is a Guest Blog, written by Micha and Dan of Myrtle Glen Farm, outside of Coquille, Oregon  

Currently, a clear-cut along the East Fork of the Coquille River is putting to test the laws that dictate the Oregon Forests Practices Act.  These outdated laws are supposed to prevent sedimentation in rivers, protect landslide prone areas from washing out roads, and keep waterways shaded and cool for salmon and steelhead spawning.  

You may have recently seen a statistic floating around in the news or on social media lately that 80% of the forest acres burned in Oregon were on federal public lands. This line has most recently been aggressively trotted out by logging corporations and their PR firm, Portland-based Gallatin Public Affairs, to attack efforts to protect clean drinking water. Gallatin even managed to tell an especially pants-on-fire whopper through several rural newspapers and OPB's Think Out Loud claiming that federal public forests are completely “unmanaged.”