Taking a stand for a preserve

What to do with a forest at risk from the BLM's WOPR. Declare it a park yourself. One man's mission to protect the forest he loves.

Fergus McLean isn't bothering with whatever bureaucratic process it takes to create a public park. He's just gone ahead and declared one in an expansive stand of huge old trees on federal land in the Coast Range.

He nailed a sign — black paint on white board — to a tree about a half mile northwest of the gas station at Low Pass on Highway 36 in honor of a fellow tree planter who died a couple of years ago and who loved the woods. It reads Jeffrey Mentzer Old Growth Park.

The thought of a park — even an impromptu one — honoring Mentzer was a little overwhelming for his brother Fred Mentzer, who helped McLean with the sign on Friday.

"He loved the woods. We loved the woods," said Menzter, also a long-time tree planter.

The trees in question rise up on hills on either side of the highway, halfway between Mapleton and Junction City, and they are some of the tallest McLean has ever measured in more than two decades of working in the woods planting trees and surveying.

At first, McLean thought he'd come upon a Douglas fir 314 feet tall, a number approaching the current record — a 329 foot Doug fir northeast of Sitkum. But subsequent measuring with the tools of the trade, a relascope and a range finder, showed the tree was more like 285 feet McLean said.

He estimated its age at 500 years.

It was one of many big trees on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management tract that skirts the highway through the Coast Range.

McLean is making his unofficial park designation as the BLM considers tripling logging on its Oregon forests. The logging plan, prompted by a lawsuit from the timber industry, is opposed by many environmental groups. The agency is taking public comment through January.

The stand of trees that McLean treasures is off limits to logging under BLM rules, part of the network of federal forests reserved under the Northwest Forest Plan for the northern spotted owl. But under the BLM's new proposal, the trees would become part of BLM's loggable harvest base, in which trees would be clear-cut on an 80- to 100-year cycle.

Besides the big sign visible from Highway 36, McLean also posted smaller signs. One points with an arrow to a narrow trail east of the highway, with the words "deep woods experience." Another sign, on the west side of the highway, points the way to the huge tree.

Standing among the massive trunks and draping sword ferns, McLean said he posted the signs because the trees are stunning and they're at risk if the BLM gets its way.

The stands of trees are important in part because they're easy to get to from a public road, he said. BLM forests are a checkerboard pattern of one-mile squares mixed in with private property, so that much BLM land is inaccessible behind gates.

"Pretty soon, it's all going to be gone and people won't know what was here," McLean said.

But a BLM spokesman said it's too soon to assume these particular trees will be cut. The BLM has drafted three options calling for different logging levels. The BLM's preferred option would open the trees up for logging. The public has through Jan. 11 to comment.

"This is the time to have those discussions, because no decisions have been made yet," said BLM spokesman Alan Hoffmeister. While Hoffmeister said he appreciated McLean's motives, posting signs on BLM land requires a permit. "You just can't put up a sign up on public lands," he said.