Introduction

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages 2.6 million acres of public forestlands in western Oregon. At their best, these forests provide clean drinking water, habitat for fish and wildlife that supports hunting and fishing opportunities, diverse recreation opportunities, stunning forest scenery, and quality of life that makes Oregon a great place to live, work, and raise a family. At their worst, the BLM continues to clearcut mature and old-growth forest reducing ecological services vital to today’s Oregon economy.

For the last ten years, BLM lands have been managed under the Northwest Forest Plan, adopted to correct the mistakes of past management and to ensure federal forests provide important public values of habitat, clean water and a true Oregon forest heritage to future generations. The BLM’s forestlands can also provide timber jobs and wood products through forest restoration such as thinning dense young stands that grew after past clearcutting.

The BLM is now embarked on a process that may remove protections for old-growth forests and streams on these public lands. Potential changes to the management plans for five BLM districts that make up Western Oregon within the Northwest Forest Plan will increase logging of mature and old-growth forest and result in water pollution, degraded wildlife habitat, and a return to the increased social conflict and public controversy prevalent in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The BLM could avoid conflict and controversy by adopting the Community-Conservation Alternative for the Western Oregon Plan Revisions because it fits the realities of the early 21st century Oregon economy. This common sense vision includes:

1. Protecting all the remaining mature and old-growth forests on federal land;
 
2. Shifting the agency’s efforts toward ecological restoration of forests and watersheds; and
 
3. Achieving social and economic objectives through forest restoration activities.

The Community-Conservation Alternative advances the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem management goals of the Northwest Forest Plan by keeping intact the remaining mature and old-growth forests on federal lands in Western Oregon and by maintaining and restoring the aquatic health of forested watersheds.

The Community-Conservation Alternative advances the social and economic goals of the Northwest Forest Plan by encouraging active restoration of forests and watersheds, including road decommissioning, road maintenance, stream restoration, prescribed burning, and the careful thinning of plantations to restore them to forest health.  The need for restoration far exceeds the agency’s current capacities to accomplish needed work. The Community-Conservation alternative can be a new beginning for the BLM to service western Oregon’s real economic needs and insure the heritage of Oregon forests for future generations.

The Community-Conservation Alternative also meets the agency’s goal of simplifying project planning and reducing costs because, in most cases, surveys for species associated with old forests would be unnecessary, and pursuing less controversial projects (e.g. restoration projects to help the forest and streams, rather than clearcutting them) would lead to more public support and less conflict.

An increased focus on active restoration work will present the BLM with a number of opportunities. Besides solving real on-the-ground forest and watershed problems, restoration projects provide economic opportunities for workers and rural communities and allow the agency to practice much needed ecosystem management, work cooperatively with stakeholders, and generally create the circumstances needed to get forests working again.

The Community-Conservation Alternative:

    Protect Mature and Old-growth Forests

Protect the remaining mature and old-growth forest on publicly-owned forests. This will ensure that public values associated with older forests are conserved and protected and is the key to reducing public controversy, and increasing public support for BLM management of public forests. Mature and old-growth is defined in the Northwest Forest Plan as stands 80 years and older.

    Focus Efforts on Restoration

Restoration is already an integral component of the Northwest Forest Plan, but this important objective has not been fully implemented so the many benefits of restoration have not been realized. Effective restoration of Northwest forests and watersheds requires a combination of well-planned passive (nature knows best) and active (helping nature recover from past human activities) restoration approaches. Active restoration will also help to achieve the social and economic objectives of the Northwest Forest Plan through job creation and rural community stabilization. The Community-Conservation Alternative calls for environmentally sound restoration activities including:

 - Stream restoration and riparian planting;

 - Road maintenance to improve water quality;

 - Road decommissioning and culvert removal (where roads are no longer needed);
 
- Variable density thinning of young managed stands to enhance diversity of species, diversity of structures, and diversity of developmental pathways towards old-growth forests.

There may be as much as 750,000 acres (nearly 1,200 square miles) of plantation stands less than 80 years old on BLM lands in western Oregon. Many of these young stands may benefit from careful thinning to accelerate the development of old-growth characteristics, but the BLM is not prioritizing this effort. Instead many BLM District are continuing to focus on logging the last remaining mature and old-growth forests (trees 80-1,000+ years of age).

Planning for restoration must be comprehensive and include careful consideration of both terrestrial and aquatic ecological processes. In particular, the location, rate, and timing of terrestrial restoration efforts, such as variable density thinning and road work, must account for potential impacts to aquatic ecosystems. This can be accomplished through watershed analysis, consultation with other federal agencies as required by the Endangered Species Act, and application of the existing requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan and its Aquatic Conservation Strategy.

    Maintain the Northwest Forest Plan

For the Northwest Forest Plan to maintain its functional integrity, all current land allocations and plan requirements must not be weakened or eliminated. The BLM lands of western Oregon provide integral ecological links between national forests in the Coast Range, the Cascades and the Klamath Mountains. Scientists and land and resource managers have already considered and rejected the possibility of removing BLM lands from the Northwest Forest Plan. They concluded that nothing could compensate for the essential role that BLM lands play in the over-all conservation scheme of the Northwest Forest Plan.
 
    Fuel reduction in fire-dependent forests
    
Because of the relatively wet climate, most forests west of the Cascades burn infrequently and have not been significantly altered by fire suppression.  However, in some areas, such as portions of southwest Oregon, fire suppression has substantially altered many forest stands that were historically maintained by frequent low-intensity fire. In these “fire-adapted” forest types, the Community-Conservation Alternative calls for a cautious approach to restoration of fire-suppressed stands, placing first priority on areas closest to homes and communities.

Thinning small-diameter trees to reduce fuels and restore ecological integrity in fire-dependent stands with a long history of fire suppression may be appropriate when the primary objective is ecological restoration and environmental damage (e.g. from road building) is avoided. In addition, alternative (and often less expensive) means of accomplishing restoration (e.g. prescribed underburns) should be carefully considered.

Benefits of the Community-Conservation Alternative:

Protecting the remaining mature and old-growth forests on federal lands and refocusing the agencies on restoring forest and watershed health will yield multiple public benefits:

1. The end of public controversy over logging mature and old-growth forests,
2. Far greater public support for federal forest management;
3. Far fewer conflicts over wildlife habitat requirements;
4. Far fewer appeals and lawsuits; and
5. Far lower management costs.

Click here to download a Word version of the Community Alternative