On May 6, WildEarth Guardians sued the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a controversial logging project on BLM lands southeast of Estacada. Last November, BLM approved the Hotcase Lane Salvage Logging project, which includes nearly 200 acres of salvage logging in forests within the perimeter of the 2020 Riverside Fire. BLM claims it only plans to log trees that are either “dead or dying” as a result of the fire. According to WildEarth Guardians, however, BLM’s definition of “dead or dying” is so broad that it will result in the logging of many live trees in sensitive riparian areas that provide habitat for northern spotted owls.
According to the lawsuit, the project “authorizes the removal of many large, living trees. Although nearly five years have passed since the Riverside Fire, the BLM insists that these remaining green trees are in imminent danger of dying and pose a serious hazard to public safety and access—a conclusion based on the blatant misapplication of agency guidelines.”
Those guidelines, which were developed by the U.S. Forest Service, describe the process for determining a tree’s probability of survival after a fire. Importantly, the guidelines state that they are “not applicable” after the second post-fire winter. At the time BLM approved the salvage logging, it was near the beginning of the fifth post-fire winter.
“The entire premise for this salvage logging is spurious,” said Ryan Talbott, Pacific Northwest Conservation advocate for WildEarth Guardians. “BLM knows that many of the trees in this project area, including large old-growth Douglas-firs, survived the Riverside Fire and should be left standing. But the agency wants to find a way to hit its logging quota and this is a quick and easy way to help do that.”
WildEarth Guardians specifically faults BLM for approving salvage logging in riparian areas that the agency’s own management plan prohibits.
“These riparian reserves are set aside to protect water quality and endangered fish habitat, both of which are harmed by so-called salvage logging,” said Erin Hogan, staff attorney for WildEarth Guardians. “Because of the BLM’s rushed and inadequate environmental analysis, the agency never really looked at these adverse impacts. These units represent some of the last intact riparian ecosystems in that area, much of which has been heavily logged in recent years.”
Plaintiff is represented by Erin Hogan-Freemole and Ryan Talbott of WildEarth Guardians.
