The Last Chance timber sale by the Bureau of Land Management would auction off up to 8,500 acres of forestland at the intersection of Douglas, Jackson and Josephine counties. George Sexton from the non-profit KS Wild said the agency’s continued focus on logging is hurting efforts to improve forest resiliency.
The view from London Peak Trail near the proposed timber sale North of Grants Pass, May 2, 2017.
Courtesy of Greg Shine / Bureau Of Land Managment
“It’s unfortunate that, on one hand, the BLM is implementing some prescriptions that would reduce fire hazard, while, on the other hand, they’re implementing other logging prescriptions that would increase it,” said Sexton.
The BLM did not respond to requests for comment. In its report, the agency said the commercial harvests it proposes would reduce the likelihood that wildfires can spread through the tree canopy, and would encourage growth of larger trees that are more resistant to fire.
“Where implemented, these changes to the fuel profile would indirectly increase wildfire resistance and reduce wildfire hazard over the No Action Alternative,” said the BLM in its environmental assessment.
KS Wild and the other environmental groups, Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild, are also concerned about the impact of these forest treatments on the threatened northern spotted owl. The lawsuit claims that the Last Chance project would affect thousands of acres of critical habitat for the owl.
The project contains provisions to retain greater portions of the forest in northern spotted owl habitat. It said the proposed commercial logging in so-called “late-successional reserves” is meant to promote the development of prime owl habitat.
However, the plan also acknowledges that the treatments it proposes would, in many cases, delay the growth of these forests into northern spotted owl habitat by up to 20 years. The BLM argues that active management of these forests is the best way to ensure they develop into high-quality habitat.
Sexton said while the BLM doesn’t use the word clearcut anymore, it’s clear that’s what will happen here. He pointed to a table in the BLM’s environmental assessment on the hydrological effects that calculates the “equivalent clearcut area,” a hydrology term used to describe parts of the watershed where water behaves the same as if the land was completely treeless. That table shows almost 2,000 acres designated as ECA under the BLM’s proposal.
Sexton said they’ve successfully been able to work with forest managers like the U.S. Forest Service to implement more sustainable treatments elsewhere.
“The point of this legal challenge is to try and move the BLM from logging practices that remove old growth forests and increase fire hazard, and get them kind of on board with the rest of the stakeholders who are trying to increase forest resiliency and decrease fire hazard,” he said.
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