Today, we submitted a detailed comment letter to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) opposing the agency’s proposal to increase commercial logging and timber production across western Oregon. The agency recently announced that it would be revising the Northwestern and Coastal Oregon and Southwestern Oregon Resource Management Plans (RMPs) that were established through lengthy environmental review and public input processes a decade ago. The proposed revisions would increase logging across 2.5 million acres of western Oregon forests to “provide a sustained yield of timber production consistent with the maximum productive capacity of the lands.”

Iconic Running Landscapes

The landscapes managed under the current RMPs include iconic trails like the Rogue River National Recreation Trail, Alsea Falls trail system, Molalla River trail system, Valley of the Giants Trail, North Umpqua Trail, Sterling Mine Ditch Trail, and others. Overall, these vast areas include hundreds of miles of trails across the Klamath-Siskiyou region, the Western Cascades, and coastal Oregon. The RMP revisions could shape the future of trail access, habitat, scenery, and recreation across these landscapes for decades.

In our comment letter, we highlighted the importance of trail running and outdoor recreation to local, rural economies.

“When management shifts toward maximizing timber production across the surrounding forest matrix, the foreseeable effects include fragmentation, visual degradation, dust, noise, altered hydrology, erosion, temporary and recurring closures, and a diminished sense of refuge and wildness. Those impacts directly undermine the very values that make these places important to runners and that support repeated public use over time.”

— RPL’s Comment Letter to the BLM

We also pointed out that this new focus on maximizing timber production conflicts with the recreation framework and trail-based values the 2016 RMPs recognized. Our Policy Advisor, Jason Keith, reviewed the planning record for these RMPs and found that many significant trail systems in the region are not in areas that would be exempted from commercial logging increases, such as congressionally designated lands (e.g., wilderness areas), non-forest lands, or within relatively narrow streamside buffers.

What’s Next?

The short scoping comment period ended on March 23. The BLM has indicated that the agency will release a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in June and a final EIS in November. There will be another opportunity to weigh in after the draft EIS is released this summer. Then, RPL will once again speak up for these trails and landscapes while also providing an easy and effective way for individual runners to submit comments.

Featured image: Rainie Falls Trail along the Rogue River on BLM land