Open houses will discuss the release of the draft environmental assessment
This Friday the Deschutes and Willamette National Forests will jointly release a Draft Environmental Assessment of a project considering new management strategies for five wilderness areas in the Central Cascades region of Oregon.
Over the past year, resource specialists have been analyzing a range of management approaches for the Mt Jefferson, Mt Washington, Three Sisters, Diamond Peak and Waldo Lake Wilderness areas. The project, called the Central Cascades Wilderness Management Strategies Project, is in response to extreme growth in visitor use and the resulting impacts to the wilderness landscapes in some portions of these wilderness areas.
Five alternative strategies have been analyzed, which range from lesser to broader changes in management. The Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) on the Project will be open for a 30-day public comment period following its release on April 20, 2018. Following its release, it can be found at this link: https://bit.ly/2HHav6V or by going to either national forest’s website.
The public is invited to learn more about the project at four public open houses to be held over the next three weeks. The following are the date and locations of the open houses:
Tuesday, April 24 from 5:30-7pm at the Sisters High School, 1700 McKinney Butte Road, Sisters, OR 97759.
Thursday, April 26 from 6-7:30pm at the Deschutes National Forest Service Supervisor’s Office, 63095 Deschutes Market Road, Bend, OR 97701.
Monday, May 7 from 6:30-8pm at the Salem Convention Center, 200 Commercial St SE, Salem, OR 97301.
Thursday, May 10 from 6:30-8pm at the Campbell Community Center, 155 High St, Eugene, OR 97401.
In addition, a Wilderness Pub will be held on May 1, in Father Luke’s Room at McMenamins Old St. Francis School, 700 NW Bond Street, in Bend with doors opening at 5:30pm and a panel discussion on the future of wilderness management in Central Oregon to begin at 6:30pm. The program will end at 7:30pm. The Wilderness Pub will be considering broader issues of wilderness management in Central Oregon, but will provide an opportunity for the public to learn more about the current proposals for management changes.
For more information about the Open Houses, the public can contact Beth Peer, Deschutes National Forest (Bend) at 541-383-5554 or Matt Peterson, Willamette National Forest (Eugene) at 541-225-6421.
The Pacific Northwest Region consists of 16 National Forests, 59 District Offices, a National Scenic Area, and a National Grassland comprising 24.7 million acres in Oregon and Washington and employing approximately 3,550 people. To learn more about the USDA Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest, please visit www.fs.usda.gov/r6
