April 18, 2024 3:05 a.m.
A court case with potential significant impacts on the O&C lands of Western Oregon recently reached the end of its road.
A Forest Bridges release said the decision has opened the door for broader consideration of the organization’s grassroots collaborative and strategies to serve as a platform for resolving the decades old conflict on the 2.9 million acres of O&C Lands of western Oregon.
On March 25th, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it had rejected a consolidated case involving the Bureau of Land Management’s 2016 Resource Management Plans for Western Oregon O&C lands and the 2017 expansion of the Cascade Siskiyou National Monument. The case had been submitted by the Association of O&C Counties and the American Forest Resources Council, a timber industry association.
Forest Bridges Executive Director Denise Barrett said, “Some would say the Supreme Courts decision is a win for conservation and a loss for timber”. Barrett said, “But as we see it, no one won. No one is winning – not when all of us in western Oregon, across conservation, recreation, timber, Tribes, government, and the general public, continue to face the shared, daunting threats to our forests”.
Barrett believes that the threats are principally threefold: climate change heat, drought and fire decimating our forests and multi-species habitats at alarming rates, annual wildfire smoke impacting public health, especially vulnerable groups and the decline of rural economies, including those reliant on the forests.
In the last several months, Forest Bridges has submitted its Active Conservation Management proposed alternatives for the BLM and Forest Service in their planning processes, respectively for the O&C Lands on the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and on the O&C portion of six national forests in the Northwest Forest Plan area.
Barrett said the agreements, strategies and alternatives aim to shift the management paradigm on the O&C Lands setting forests on a trajectory to becoming sustainably fire resilient, diverse and healthy.
Barrett said, “Our grassroots collaborative has developed 21st Century active forest management approaches, underpinned by evidence-based science and Indigenous knowledge, that align with the O&C Act’s sustained yield, multiple use mandate while ensuring sustainable outcomes for the environment, our communities and rural economies in western Oregon”.
Barrett will talk about their ideas in-depth on Inside Douglas County Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. on News Radio 93-9 FM and 1240 KQEN.