FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Conservationists Ask Court to Block WOPR, Old-Growth Clear-Cutting

Groups seek to overturn last minute Bush policy

Groups file amended complaint with US District Court of Oregon challenging legality of Western Oregon Plan Revisions.

Oregon Wild, together with local and national conservation organizations, today again asked a federal court to strike down the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR)—a last minute Bush administration plan that will drastically increase old-growth clear-cutting in western Oregon Bureau of Land Management (BLM) forestlands. The groups, represented by Earthjustice, assert that the BLM violated the law by failing to consult with federal scientists to determine whether WOPR logging would harm endangered species and failed to consider the best available science in the planning process.

“Oregonians today expect that our clean water, old-growth forests, wild salmon, and rare wildlife will be protected as a legacy for future generations,” observed Steve Pedery, Conservation Director for Oregon Wild, the lead plaintiff in the case. “The Bush WOPR plan needlessly endangers those values.”

The WOPR is the offspring of a backroom settlement between the Bush administration and a logging industry lobby group, the American Forest Resources Council (AFRC). WOPR removes western Oregon BLM forests from the science-based management of the Northwest Forest Plan. Federal scientists have raised serious doubts about the adequacy of the WOPR in protecting clean water, rivers and streams, and forest habitat for endangered species.

The WOPR includes a number of environmentally harmful provisions, including:

• The addition of 180 million tons more carbon to the atmosphere compared to an alternative where forests were allowed to grow. This is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 1 million cars driven for 132 years.
• Slashing in half important existing protections for rivers and streams, putting clean drinking water for communities and vital fish habitat at risk.
• An increase in logging on publicly-owned BLM lands by 400%, with more than two-thirds of the total timber volume coming via highly destructive clear-cuts.
• Slating almost 100,000 acres of old-growth forest for logging. Approximately 90% of Oregon’s old-growth forests have already been lost to short-sighted logging practices.

The WOPR comes at a time when loggers, conservation groups, rural communities, and federal agencies are increasingly finding consensus around restoration-based thinning projects on federal public lands. Such projects focus on thinning in the hundreds of thousands of unnaturally dense tree plantations and former clear-cuts scattered across Oregon, and avoid logging in old-growth and sensitive roadless areas.. The Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon’s Coast Range has served as a prime example of how restoration and job creation in the woods can coexist, and is one of the Northwest’s leading timber producers.

“Loggers and conservationists have found common ground in the Siuslaw, where we are generating wood for local mills while protecting and restoring our forests, wildlife, and clean water,” continued Pedery. “And we are doing it without cutting down century-old trees and without the controversy and conflict generated by plans like the WOPR.”

View the amended complaint to the US District Court of Oregon.
See the FEIS WOPR and the Records of Decision here: http://www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/

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