FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bush Administration Pushes Forward With Unpopular, Controversial Logging Plan

Plan Targets Last Remaining Old Growth Forests in Oregon

The Bureau of Land Management releases its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions. Conservationists call the plan a dangerous turn backwards toward conflict.

In a last ditch effort to ramp up old-growth logging in western Oregon forests before they leave office, the Bush administration released today the final version of the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR, pronounced: “whopper”). The plan covers 2.6 million acres of forest in Oregon administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The WOPR would eliminate current protections for thousands of acres of Oregon’s last remaining old-growth forests

"At a time when we have more consensus than ever on a positive vision for the future of our forests, the Bush administration is attempting to ram home a controversial, unscientific, last minute, old-growth logging plan," said Jonathan Jelen with the conservation organization Oregon Wild. "This plan brings us back to the controversy of the 1980s and ignores the science of why we need to protect the last of our old-growth forests."

The draft WOPR plan released last August generated almost 30,000 public comments, the majority of which opposed the plan. Despite the great public interest, the BLM is not inviting comments on the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the WOPR released today.

Instead, the WOPR has been sent to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski’s office for a 60-day consistency review period. Governor Kulongoski is charged with ensuring that the WOPR corresponds with pre-existing state plans and laws, including initiatives for salmon recovery, wildlife conservation, land use goals, clean air and water, and global warming emissions reduction.

"Clearly this plan doesn’t match up with Oregon’s goals for the future," added Sean Stevens, a spokesman for Oregon Wild. "The WOPR would pump millions of tons of additional carbon into the atmosphere, make it harder for salmon to find suitable habitat, and rob future generations of Oregonians of their natural forest heritage. The Governor needs to reject this plan to protect the interest of our state’s citizens."

The 2,000-page plan calls for tripling the current harvest levels established under the Northwest Forest Plan. Written in 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan sought to find a sustainable balance between timber harvest and forest conservation after decades of devastating logging on federal lands. Specifically, the FEIS WOPR would allow nearly a third of BLM’s remaining old-growth forest to be clear-cut, slash streamside buffers critical to healthy salmon runs in half, and drastically reduce the capacity of our forests to store global warming pollution.

The WOPR is the offspring of a backroom settlement between the Bush administration and the logging industry. The Bush-led Justice Department cut a deal before the judge ever had a chance to rule on the merits of the timber industry’s specious claims. The proposed plan comes at a time when forest stakeholders are increasingly turning to common sense restoration-based thinning projects on publicly-owned land.

"We have seen the success of projects that focus on restoration," Jelen adds. "If we continue this common sense approach we can restore and protect old growth, salmon, and clean water while also getting wood to local mills and producing jobs. With the WOPR, we’re heading down the same dead-end road towards more conflict over logging, while producing little in the way of real economic benefit."

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