July 15, 3:30 a.m.
As the Bureau of Land Management considers public comments to finalize its draft Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Forest Bridges is urging the agency to choose a more intensive active management alternative over its current “moderate level” preferred alternative.
Forest Bridges Executive Director Denise Barrett said, “The BLM’s proposed 100-year timeline and conservative thinning and prescribed fire treatments for the Monument are insufficient in pace, scope and extent to mitigate for the unprecedented wildfire, drought and disease threats this biological wonder faces”. Barrett said, “We feel it is a moral imperative to urgently address these threats – in the right measure – to ensure the Monument is property restored and sustained for future generations”.
On July 3, the Roseburg-based 501 c 3 nonprofit charity submitted to the BLM are in-depth analysis and set of arguments, grounded in Western Science and Indigenous Knowledge, for the agency to not only choose the more intensive active management alternative – the 50-year restoration program of thinning and prescribed fire, called Alternative B – but to also consider accelerating the timeline further.
Barrett said, “We also proposed that the BLM apply a metered treatment to all areas including old forest and wildland reserves, at high risk for high-severity wildfires”. Barrett said, “All our recommendations we believe can be done legally and by applying sound indigenous cultural and ecosystem management perspectives and approaches, as well as including Tribal people in the restoration and in on-going maintenance activities”.
Barrett recalled that in August 2023, Forest Bridges had submitted its own proposed “Active Conservation Management” alternative for the Monument during the BLM’s public for what today is the draft RMP-EIS. In it, the organization proposed an aggressive five-year restoration program of thinning and prescribed fire across the Monument to achieve the goal that 95 percent of wildfires are low-to-moderate-severity. Barrett said, “Dry forests in southwest Oregon experience high-severity wildfires at a rate of 36 percent and we want to reduce that to just 5 percent, which is within the historical range when Indigenous people stewarded these lands”.
The BLM Proposed RMP/Final EIS for the Cascade-Siskiyou Monument is anticipated to be issued this fall with a Record of Decision and Approved RMP released in January 2025. Find Forest Bridges public comments on the CSNM RMP/EIS on the project and news page on the Forest Bridges website: https://www.forestbridges.org/
Denise Barrett will talk more about the topic on Inside Douglas County Monday at 12:30 p.m. on News Radio 93-9 FM and 1240 KQEN.