Wild Lands
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On March 29, essential protections for large trees in eastern Oregon and eastern Washington were fully reinstated!
This past fall, we were concerned to see a series of projects proposing large tree logging across a total of 73,000 acres on the Ochoco National Forest.
What do we want Deschutes County to look like in 20 years? The County is asking for your input on its draft update to the Comprehensive Plan.
On August 31, a federal judge made a sweeping recommendation to set aside an illegal Forest Service rule change made under the Trump administration.
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.
Will the Forest Service choose to be a dedicated partner on wildlife crossing projects in Central Oregon?
Reducing hiding cover to 13% in migration corridors is a drastic loss of habitat. This is only a fraction of the necessary forest cover mule deer need to survive.
We’ve been monitoring the Green Ridge Project proposed by the Forest Service since 2017. This project involves thinning and logging on nearly 25,000 acres of national forest just north of Sisters in the Metolius Watershed.
The Cougar Rock Project is a proposed project located near Black Butte on the Deschutes National Forest that proposes to conduct “thinning, mowings, and prescribed burning” on around 3,000 acres, primarily within mule deer winter range.
After nearly a year, oral argument was held before Magistrate Judge Halmann on May 1. We were represented by Crag Law Center at the U.S District Court in Pendleton, challenging the Forest Service’s unlawful repeal of the “21-inch rule” that opened up over 7 million acres of national forest to large-tree 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.
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.
Determined to protect Oregon’s biggest trees east of the Cascades, LandWatch and five other environmental organizations filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service over its decision to allow logging of large and old trees in national forests across Central and Eastern Oregon.
For immediate release. Determined to save Oregon’s biggest trees that remain, LandWatch and five other environmental organizations filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service over its decision to allow logging of large and old trees on national forests across Central and Eastern Oregon.
What's happening behind the scenes? This week, we've got a series of on-the-ground updates for Central Oregon.
If left to age, the mature, large trees in Oregon’s eastern forests can play a big role in combating climate change. In a study on national forest land in Oregon’s forests east of the Cascade Range, large-diameter trees accounted for only 3% of trees but stored 42% of the total above-ground carbon.
What happened along Phil’s trail should never happen again in Oregon’s national forests. Despite the public outcry and demands to leave these big trees standing, the marked trees were logged last week. Like you, we are devastated by this news.
Two recently released forest service project plans have caught our eye. The Green Ridge Project and the Klone Management Project both seek to weaken protections for mule deer habitat by reducing deer hiding coverage below 30%.
We began monitoring the Green Ridge Project near the Metolius Basin in 2017. Now, the current plan preferred by the Sisters’ Ranger District would impact 19,991 acres with thinning and logging throughout the entire project landscape. Take action for the forest today!
Listen to Dirty Freehub's recent podcast episode to hear more about LandWatch's work in the Ochocos. In this episode, Rory Isbell discusses the importance of migration corridors and riparian areas for Redband Trout and elk, along with our recent victory to protect wildlife habitat in the Ochoco National Forest.
In September of 2020, we watched wildfires ignite across Oregon in one of the most devastating fire seasons on record. How can we plan for a safer future in our fire-adapted landscape?
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.
On Monday, June 14, a settlement was reached between Central Oregon LandWatch, Oregon Wild, and the U.S. Forest Service to exclude sensitive riparian habitat from a proposed logging project in the Ochoco National Forest.
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.