FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Salazar Announces New Direction for Oregon Forests, Will BLM Heed Call?

Conservationists hope increased cooperation between BLM and USFWS leads to better management

Interior Department announces list of timber sales for next year, plans for new cooperation between BLM and USFWS. Conservationists look to encourage ecologically sound thinning sales.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today instructed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to work with increased cooperation towards “a better way of doing business” in Oregon’s forests. The new direction comes just months after the Obama administration canceled the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR), a Bush-era logging plan that would have drastically increased old growth clear-cutting in western Oregon. Secretary Salazar also released a list of proposed timber sales the department would like to see move forward.

“The public rejected clear-cutting decades ago,” observed Pedery. “If the Obama administration wants to avoid conflict and controversy, they should rein-in BLM clear-cutting, and instead of expanding timber targets they should focus on what is economically rational and scientifically defensible.”

The list of sales released by Interior includes a number of forest thinning and restoration sales generally supported by Oregon Wild. However, a handful of the logging projects proposed include clear-cutting and some involve logging that could negatively impact salmon and other threatened wildlife Two of the proposed projects were previously ruled illegal by federal judges (Class of ’98 and Sweat Pea).

Oregon Wild has urged Secretary Salazar to look to the Siuslaw National Forest in Oregon’s Coast Range as a model for reforming the BLM. Once a flash point for clashes over unsustainable logging, the Siuslaw is now managed to restore hundreds of thousands of acres of previously logged lands. This restoration-based approach has steered clear of old-growth logging while providing millions of board feet of smaller diameter wood for local mills. In fact, the Siuslaw is consistently among the largest timber producers in the Pacific Northwest, and is becoming a model for other National Forests in the region.

The success of the Siuslaw is based largely on cooperation with various stakeholders, an end to old-growth logging and clear-cutting, and a solid scientific foundation. It remains to be seen if the increased communication between BLM and USFWS requested today by Secretary Salazar will replicate the successful collaboration of the Siuslaw.

“We hope this new era of cooperation between BLM and USFWS does not mean that wildlife biologists are expected to rubber stamp ill-advised old-growth logging projects.” commented Doug Heiken. “We need to design restoration logging projects that truly protect endangered species.”

The Salazar proposal, which includes plans to clear-cut approximately 1,000 acres on publicly-owned BLM lands, would expand logging by 40 million board feet above what was offered in the last year of the Bush administration. While conservation groups applauded Salazar’s endorsement of forest restoration and thinning projects, they expressed alarm over including clear-cut logging in the category of “ecologically sound” forest management. They also question whether it makes sense to expand logging targets for taxpayer-owned lands at a time when timber prices are at historic lows.

“It looks like the Obama administration and Secretary Salazar are making an effort to reform the BLM and move beyond conflict in Oregon’s forests,” said Steve Pedery, Conservation Director for the group Oregon Wild. “Increased coordination between the BLM and the USFWS is a good start, but bottom line is that the BLM must begin to place as much value on wild salmon, clean water, and old-growth forests as they do on logging volume.”

See the Oregon Wild “report card” on a July list of sales issued by the Interior Department (some of these sales were included in the proposed list today)

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