For Immediate Release

New Website Highlights Stories of Oregon's Harmful Forest Laws

EUGENE, OR — Today, environmental groups Beyond Toxics and Oregon Wild launched a website highlighting the consequences of practices allowed under Oregon’s industrial logging laws on Oregon’s rural residents. The site features stories of families collected from more than ten different Oregon counties detailing family members, drinking water, property, and businesses impacted by aerial herbicide sprays and other harmful logging practices. 

Oregon Forest Voices (http://www.OregonForestVoices.org) was developed in response to the failure of the Oregon State Legislature to recognize and resolve the concerns of rural Oregonians whose property, drinking water, and personal health have been negatively impacted by pesticides drifting and dropping from helicopter sprays. The website has stories, videos, and interactive maps to guide users to the stories told by families, land owners, and farmers.

 “The web site will help Oregonians understand the devastating effects of drifting herbicides,” said Lisa Arkin, executive director of Beyond Toxics, one of the groups that worked on forestry herbicides in the last legislative session. “Oregon laws don’t protect people from drift and volatilization of these chemical gases, so Oregon now has case after case of sick children, blinded horses, dying pets and contaminated drinking water. The practice of helicopters flying all over Oregon, dropping chemicals that cause cancer and disrupt our hormones has got to stop.”

"Not only does this site tell the urgent story of Oregonians who are being poisoned in their own homes, it also highlights many other problems industrial logging brings to rural Oregon,” said Oregon Wild Conservation Director Steve Pedery. “Streams so hot fish can't survive, drinking water systems devastated by erosion from steep slope logging, and the many other ways that King Clearcut is a bad neighbor. Oregonians know we can and must do more to protect families, drinking water, and forests from the damaging effects of Oregon’s weak logging laws."  

Oregon Wild and Beyond Toxics recently took the first steps to introduce state-wide ballot measures to stop aerial herbicides sprays and address the problem of clear-cut logging on steep slopes above drinking water streams. Learn more about this effort at http://www.OregonForestVoices.org.

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