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On December 31, 2008, the BLM released its final decision for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR, say "whopper!"). In doing so, the BLM rejected more than 260 administrative protests submitted against its whopper. In their race to finish by the New Year's Eve deadline agreed upon by the timber industry and the Bush Administration, the BLM rebuffed the governor, antagonized the environmental community, ignored the public and railroaded the objections of its own scientists.
The Bush Land Management Legacy
When the BLM released the draft WOPR plan in 2007, 30,000 members of the public commented; over 90% asked the BLM to save the remaining older forests, protect clean drinking water, and concentrate forest management on restoration and thinning small trees to protect communities from wildfire. The BLM ignored this common ground, common sense approach to forest management and instead finalized an aggressive plan that is short-sighted and inappropriate for 21st century natural resource management.
The WOPR removes BLM forests from the scientific framework of the Northwest Forest Plan, ramps up clearcut logging across hundreds of thousands of acres, removes streamside buffers that protect clean water and fish and log some of the last remaining older forests in western Oregon.
By The Numbers
The
WOPR increases logging by nearly 400% compared to current logging
levels; gets over 70% of the timber volume from clearcutting; shrinks
streamside reserves by 50%; adds 180 million tons more carbon to the
atmosphere compared to no logging (equivalent to the greenhouse gas
emissions from 1 million cars driven for 132 years) and results in 1,300
miles of new roads. In short, the WOPR takes us in the wrong direction.
TAKE ACTION TODAY: The fate of the WOPR, and Oregon's forests and salmon-bearing rivers, rests with the new Obama Administration. We are calling on people to contact the new Administration at whitehouse.gov and ask them to scrap the fundamentally flawed WOPR and start over with a plan aimed at strengthening protections for forests, species, watersheds and rural communities.
Click here for the Top Ten reasons why WOPR is a bad idea