BLM extends comment period on forest management changes
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Eugene Register-Guard
By Sue Palmer
November 3, 2007
The Bureau of Land Management, recognizing that its new 1,700- page strategy for managing Oregon forests isn’t exactly a page-turner, is giving people another month to plow through it.
The agency announced this week that it will leave open the public comment period on its proposal to increase logging on 2.2 million acres of Western Oregon forests until Jan. 11.
The BLM released a draft environmental impact statement in August on three alternatives it is considering as it revises its management plan.
It’s the second time the agency has extended the comment period to allow people more time to review the proposals.
Comments already received from the public and from elected officials prompted the extension, said BLM spokesman Michael Campbell.
The draft environmental impact statement describes the effects of the three alternatives on forests, fish, northern spotted owls, marbeled murrelets and the economies of the counties where the lands are located.
County commissioners and the staff of Oregon’s congressional delegates, as well as community members, weighed in, Campbell said.
“One of the things we heard ... is that it is a very complex document and that they wanted more time to study it,” he said.
The plan has generated intense interest not only because the revenue from logging would benefit counties struggling to meet expenses and faced with the loss of federal subsidies, but because it proposes clearcutting and targets thousands of acres of old growth.
The agency has held 70 public meetings describing its plans throughout Oregon since releasing the document. Copies of it are available at local BLM offices, in many libraries and online.
The BLM has also created an interactive Web site allowing people to both review the document and comment on it at the same time. The Web site includes maps that allow people to see the age of trees on specific BLM parcels, the kinds of fish that are found in rivers and streams running through BLM lands and how the three proposed alternatives could affect specific watersheds.
Making that level of detail available on a Web site is new for the BLM in Oregon, Campbell said.
“We haven’t ever done anything quite like this,” he said. Created by a Portland firm Daylight Decisions, it cost the agency $436,000 to develop and operate, he said.
As of Thursday, the BLM had received just under 400 comments from people using the interactive forum, 600 e-mailed and 700 postal mail comments, Campbell said.
The Web site proved to be a useful tool for Deb Call, a Springfield resident who enjoys hiking on BLM land not far from her Camp Creek Road home.
“When I’m in my kitchen, I’m looking at the BLM parcel and there are seriously tall trees there,” Call said.
She and her husband, both retired U.S. Forest Service employees, recently measured a tree on BLM land near their home that was 6 feet in diameter.
Call also attended one of the BLM’s public meetings, which helped her understand the proposals the agency is considering. After that, she checked out the Web site, and found it fairly easy to use, she said.
Call said she prefers that the BLM not adopt any of its proposals but continue managing under the Northwest Forest Plan strategy.
“I don’t want the old growth cut down,” she said.
The BLM has identified a preference for the second alternative in the document, which would almost triple the annual timber harvest to 720 million board feet.
The extended comment period won’t change the agency’s December 2008 deadline for finalizing its new management plan, Campbell said.
TALKING TO BLM To read the plan and see how it will affect specific sections of Western Oregon forest, go to: www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/index.php