March 30, 2026 3:30 a.m.
Forest Bridges has submitted an alternative management proposal for western Oregon Bureau of Land Management lands.
A Forest Bridges release said more than ten years of collaboration between conservation, environmental, timber, Tribal, governmental and public interests has produced nearly 500 pages of scientific deliberation and Active Conservation Management proposals forming the alternative management plan delivered to BLM officials on March 22nd.
This is in response to the BLM’s February Notice of Intent to revise the 2016 resource management plans for approximately 2.46 million acres of BLM-administered western Oregon public lands. These include BLM O&C lands and Coos Bay Wagon Road lands.
The NOI states that the BLM’s primary goal is to increase sustained-yield timber harvest to nearly 1.1 billion board feet – the average from 1960 to 1989. After significantly dropping in the 1990’s, harvest volumes on these BLM lands have ranged from 45 to 275 million board feet since 2020.
Forest Bridges co-founder and board member Rick Sohn said, “Although the BLM’s stated primary purpose is timber harvest, returning to annual harvest levels in excess of a billion board feet is just too high to sustain”. Sohn said, “We stood committed to submitting an Alternative based on our collaborative’s Active Conservation Management Principles of Agreement and strategies”.
Forest Bridges Treasurer Denise Barrett said, “Our proposed Alternative estimates an annual harvest level of around 675 million board feet annually”. Barrett said, “This is early three times what the BLM harvested and would be achieved via a 30-year Active Conservation Management program in dry, moist and transitional – mixed dry-moist, BLM forests, which is then repeated to address forest conditions out of alignment with the pre-European contact Indigenous period”.
Forest Bridges President Elin Miller said, “Its time the divisive discord ends, and all of us in conservation, timber, Tribes, community and government come together to find common ground in resolving the devastating ecological impacts to our forests”. Miller said, “And with our Alternative we will achieve that, boost rural economies and protects the health of all Oregonians”.
Read Forest Bridges full proposal for management of western Oregon BLM lands at: https://www.forestbridges.org/news