Updates
Victory for Large Trees Affirmed
On March 29, essential protections for large trees in eastern Oregon and eastern Washington were fully reinstated!
We won! Big trees protected across 7 million acres of national forestland
On August 31, a federal judge made a sweeping recommendation to set aside an illegal Forest Service rule change made under the Trump administration.
Press Release: Federal protections for big trees
Today, a federal judge made a sweeping recommendation to set aside an illegal Forest Service change to the Eastside Screens - a longstanding set of rules to protect old growth on six national forests in Eastern Oregon and Washington.
Press Release: Over 122,000 call on federal government to protect older forests from logging
Environmental groups, including LandWatch, delivered more than 122,000 public comments urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to protect mature and old-growth forests and trees on federal public lands from logging as a cornerstone of U.S. climate policy.
A national call to protect old-growth forests
Forests pull carbon out of the atmosphere, and it accumulates in living trees and soil. In this way, mature forests act as carbon sinks, where the world’s forests absorb a net 7.6 billion metric tonnes of CO2 per year. Let the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management know large trees are worth more standing.
Fighting a federal rollback of forest protections
This past January, just days before the inauguration of President Biden, a President Trump political appointee in Washington D.C. signed a last-minute decision to roll back protections for big trees on six National Forests in Central and Eastern Oregon.
Oregon’s Big Trees Still Need Your Voice
After 25 years of protection from logging, big trees on our public lands are once again threatened. The biggest trees make up only 3% of our forests. We should be protecting them, not cutting them down.
More time to save our big trees!
There’s still time to comment on the Forest Service’s plan to allow logging of big trees on public lands!
Speak up for big trees!
The Forest Service is moving forward with plans to weaken its rules that protect big trees on all National Forests in Central and Eastern Oregon.
Stand up for old-growth forests
The Forest Service is exploring a change in forest policy for all National Forests east of the Cascades in Oregon via what they’ve dubbed “Project 21.” This project would allow the Forest Service to cut and sell trees larger than 21” in diameter. Thanks to prior advocacy, current forest policy prevents cutting these large trees throughout the Deschutes, Ochoco, Fremont-Winema, Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests.
Nathan's Corner: Will we ever learn?
Take a drive on the highway out past Sisters a bit. Not long ago it was a striking experience to pass down along the nave of a forest cathedral, beneath colonnaded ranks of towering, girthy, Ponderosa pines.
ACTION ALERT: Support Oregon's proposed ban on tree-killing herbicide
Because of the irresponsible and destructive use of Bayer’s herbicide along Oregon’s roads and highways, the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) recently proposed new rules to ban ACP along public right of ways, in wildlife management areas, and other sensitive habitats.
More information about the Tree Kill Along Highway 20
More than 100 of the iconic, old-growth ponderosa pine trees which greet us when we arrive back into Central Oregon from the Santiam Pass or the Metolius River Basin are dying because they were sprayed with a deadly herbicide by the Forest Service and ODOT over the course of three consecutive years.
Devastating Tree Kill Along Highway 20
Many dying trees along Highway 20 between Sisters and Black Butte are planned to be cut down because they were sprayed with a deadly herbicide over the course of three consecutive years. These aren’t just any trees, but trees that the public had earlier saved, and the killing of the trees was easily avoidable.