A Deal for the Devil?

Roseburg Forest Products considering land trade to push Devil's Staircase Wilderness closer to passage.

The Devil’s Staircase Wilderness proposal may get a little more salmon habitat if Roseburg Forest Products (RFP) agrees to a possible land trade.

Devil’s Staircase, also known as Wassen Creek, is an area in the Coast Range of unlogged old-growth forest. The creek provides habitat for native coho and chinook salmon, trout and steelhead runs. The unstable soils in the area make it less than ideal for logging but have no affect on the wilderness value of the land.

Last summer, Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sen. Wyden introduced companion bills, H.R. 2888 and S. 1272, designating the 29,650-acre Devil’s Staircase Wilderness, named for a difficult to access waterfall deep in the rugged forest. The bills are making their way through Congress, and the proposed wilderness has been given support by both the BLM and the Forest Service.

According to Josh Laughlin of Cascadia Wildlands, one of the many groups supporting the wilderness proposal, much of the salmon spawning habitat in that area is not actually in the public lands proposed for wilderness protection; it’s on private lands owned by RFP. “It’s been clearcut 20 to 30 years ago,” Laughlin said, “but it’s where the spawning takes place.”

According to an October 2009 American Forest Resource Council newsletter, RFP has been concerned about the wilderness proposal because “as designated, however, it nearly land-locks one section of Roseburg Forest Products timberland and would likely make logging on other adjacent private timberland more difficult.”

The newsletter said that RFP has been working with DeFazio’s office to address these concerns. Laughlin and others hope RFP might be interested in a land trade that would give Devil’s Staircase the spawning habitat owned by RFP and give the timber company other land in exchange. “It’s win-win for everyone,” he said. “We get this and they get a plantation that’s not connected to interior habitat.”

RFP however, is not saying much. Mark Wall, RFP’s Oregon forestry manager said, “I can only confirm that RFP is not working with Cascadia Wildlands or any other group on a land trade of any property we own near the proposed Devils Staircase Wilderness. Beyond this statement of fact, my company has no further comment.”

For more on the wilderness proposal, and hikes out into it, go to www.devilsstaircasewilderness.org — Camilla Mortensen