Ponderosa

Let’s have a conversation about the appropriate size of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, the appropriate role of the Antiquities Act, and how the O&C Act is being implemented. But, if we are going to have an honest conversation, let’s start with the facts.

Salvage logging, cleaning the forest floor, and replanting will rejuvenate the forest and provide forests for our grandkids and their grandkids. Now is the time to contact your representative and suggest they support House Resolution 3715. If we don’t start managing our federal and state forest, we won’t have any forest to manage in the future.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision in Barnes v. FAA upheld an agency finding that constructing a new airport runway does not require an EIS. This is a stark contrast to recent district court decisions requiring an EIS for modest forestry projects, such as the Goose Project which would conduct largely thinning treatment on 2,100 acres, or the White Castle timber sale involving 187 acres of variable retention harvest.

Last month, three organizations (Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands, and Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands) filed a lawsuit against a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) timber sale called Lower Grave in southwest Oregon. Among the claims filed was that the BLM “failed to take the requisite “hard look” at the project’s potential environmental impacts to the northern spotted owl.”

Hillary killed Vince Foster. Obama was born in Kenya. Trump is going to let Big Timber cut down the Sequoias. Which one is “Fake News”? The answer is “All of the Above.”

An environmental assessment is intended to be a concise document that briefly provides sufficient evidence and analysis. The reality is quite different.

If nothing else, the results of the Fawn Two timber sale should silence the critics who claim that the BLM’s timber outputs cannot provide the monetary value necessary to keep County beneficiaries whole.

According to the USFWS, the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) population has declined 52% since 1992. At its current rate of decline, another 25% will be lost in the next 20 years even though the amount of suitable habitat is expected to increase significantly.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) states that it is unlawful to “take” any endangered species of fish or wildlife. 50 CFR Part 17.31 expands the prohibition to take endangered species to wildlife species listed as threatened.

Last week, I was at the Federal Courthouse in Eugene to observe oral arguments of a legal challenge to one of those projects. Within minutes of walking into the courtroom, I was struck by the irony of the exercise.

For many years, the Forest Service took this first step in a straightforward and tacit manner: they knew what their objectives were and they listed them in no particular order. Over the past few years I have noticed a change.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance is typically the most costly part of implementing any type of vegetation management project on federally managed land. Documents exceeding 200 pages are commonplace to comply with NEPA.

The months of December, January and February are very important to sawmills trying to get their winter decks of logs in before the rains and wet conditions of spring arrives. These months of winter logging provide sub-freezing temperatures that allows loggers to operate over frozen ground conditions in the forests and remove the timber with little damage to the soil and to the roads they are driving on.