USFS Withdraws Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision

by Blue Mountains Diversity Project

Dear Friends and Supporters,

In an unexpected development, the US Forest Service announced on March 14th, 2019 that they have withdrawn the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision. The objections by Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project, other environmental protection organizations, and Tribes were essentially upheld by the USFS’s withdrawal of their Forest Plan Revision decision.

The Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision was proposed to guide management direction on approximately 5.5 million acres across the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests for at least a decade. It would have approximately doubled logging, removed current protective Forest Plan standards for streams and water quality, scrapped the prohibition on logging large trees (those ≥21” diameter at breast height), and severely weakened environmental protections regarding livestock grazing. The plan also failed to protect many ecologically important potential Wilderness and Roadless Areas. The plan would have exacerbated many of the negative effects on forests associated with climate change, such as increased stream temperatures and loss of biodiversity.

Earth Rise Law Center submitted the objection to the Blue Mountains Forest Plan Revision on behalf of Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and Friends of the Clearwater in August of 2019. This detailed objection included numerous key scientific studies supporting our concerns and challenged ecologically destructive Forest Service assumptions regarding Grand fir and wildfire issues. Objections from Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and from environmental allies highlighted the Forest Plan Revision’s flawed direction and many legal vulnerabilities of the plan, and likely played a key role in the USFS’s withdrawal of the plan.

Fortunately good standards in the existing Forest Plans, including the Eastside Screen prohibitions against logging large trees and against logging within PACFISH and INFISH stream buffers, will be upheld in the interim while the Forest Service goes back to the drawing board. We hope that the future revision will strengthen ecological protections rather than gutting them as would have resulted from their withdrawn plan.

You can read more details about this update by visiting our website.

For the Wilds,

Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project

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