A forest of responses

BLM receives nearly 30,000 comments on the WOPR.

The National Wild Turkey Federation loves it. Eugene City Councilor Bonny Bettman doesn’t. Some Lane Community College teachers worry it will ruin a special place they take their students. Several Oregon counties don’t see how government services can survive without it.

They are among the 30,000 individuals, government agencies, elected officials, unions, and environmental and recreation groups who have responded to the Bureau of Land Management’s plan to increase logging in Western Oregon forests.

The proposal, titled the Western Oregon Plan Revision, will overhaul the way the BLM manages forests on the 2.2 million acres it oversees from Portland south to the California border.

Federal rules require the agency to invite public comment on its management strategies, and this week the BLM put the bulk of the comments it has received online.

Making the comments easily available to the public was an unprecedented move by the BLM, said agency spokesman Michael Campbell.

The BLM had heard from many groups, including news outlets, that wanted access to the comments, he said.

The most transparent and cost-effective way to do that was to post them online, he said.

Many comments came in the form of pre-printed post cards with a message calling for permanent protection of older forests.

Another set of pre-printed messages warned that the plan does not harvest enough trees to provide for the financial well-being of the counties in which the forests are located.

They came from as far away as Iceland and from the heart of Western Oregon: little towns like Talent and Cave Junction and Lorane as well as big urban centers like Portland, Salem and Eugene.

Some people took the time to write individual letters objecting to increased access for off-road vehicles in the plan.

Those letters were countered by off-road enthusiasts who want more access to BLM property.

Some messages were polite: “We hope this lovely old growth grove can remain as a late successional management area for the continuing benefit of Lane County students now and for generations to come,” some LCC teachers and staff wrote in a letter that wasn’t an official communication from the college.

Others were more pointed: “Once Bush is OUT, which we are working on ... You will be stopped. Go tell your Industrial Tree Farm friends that we are PREPARED THIS TIME, YOU WILL NOT DESTROY OUR FORESTS AND WILDLIFE TO FATTEN THE POCKETS OF BIG TIMBER.”

Federal law requires that the BLM respond to “substantive” comments about its management plan, Campbell said.

And there are plenty of those: lengthy analyses on the impact of increased logging on watersheds, comments on the financial effects of the plan, concerns about its effects on wildfire.

Some of the most serious critiques come from other federal agencies, such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

The agency, which is charged with protecting species at risk of extinction, expressed concern that the logging plan will undermine conservation efforts for northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets.

Other government entities raising questions about the plan include the Environmental Protection Agency, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Eugene Water & Electric Board, which cited its concern about the how the BLM’s proposed alternatives might affect the quality of drinking water in the McKenzie River watershed.

Bettman, the Eugene city councilor, wrote that the BLM’s preferred alternative, among other concerns “would unravel the protections of the landmark Northwest Forest Plan” and “reduce protection for wildlife and streamside reserves.”

Tugging the BLM in the other direction is the Association of O & C Counties, a nonprofit group representing counties with a high percentage of BLM forests.

That group believes that a recent Supreme Court decision gives the 1937 law requiring the BLM to manage forests for timber production precedence over the Endangered Species Act, which requires the agency refrain from harming listed species.

Cataloging the comments and responding to them will take several months, Campbell said.

“It’s now time for us to take all this information and coordinate and balance what we’ve heard from Fish & Wildlife, EPA, and NOAA Fisheries with the mandate we’ve been given to manage for timber,” he said.

Among all that coordinating, Lane County residents Kate and Max Gessert hope the BLM protects a small grove of older trees just off Wolf Creek Road several miles from Crow.

The couple first stumbled on the place when looking for good mushroom foraging opportunities a few years back.

While the mushrooming wasn’t all that great, the trees were beautiful, mature Douglas fir in the 90- to 110-year old range mixed in with hemlock and cedar.

But a couple of trees the Gesserts found there were much older, 300- to 400 years old, that the couple have taken to calling The Grandmothers.

Kate Gessert has brought groups of Lane Community College students studying both English and civics to the site.

Students have had important breakthroughs out in the woods she said, but that’s not the only value she sees in the big old trees, which are surrounded by stands of much younger conifers on privately owned forest lands.

The older trees can play a beneficial role in climate change, she said.

“There’s an intricate natural beauty, but there’s intrinsic value, too,” she said.

BLM officials say the grove along Wolf Creek is currently part of a reserve that won’t be cut, but the management plan is still in flux.

The proposal will be finalized for review sometime this summer with implementation slated for the end of the year.

See the plan and the comments, online at www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/index.php.