Interior Withdraws Plan for Oregon Forests, Presses For Sustainable Timber Harvests

 Because the previous Administration failed to follow established administrative procedure before leaving office, its plan to intensify logging in western Oregon – known as the Western Oregon Plan Revisions (WOPR) – is legally indefensible and must be withdrawn, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said today.

Moreover, Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Thomas Strickland said that the federal government will ask the District Court to vacate the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2008 revision of the critical habitat for the spotted owl, on which the WOPR was in part based, because Interior’s Inspector General determined that the decisionmaking process for the owl’s recovery plan was potentially jeopardized by improper political influence.

To help protect jobs and timber infrastructure in the region, Salazar directed the Bureau of Land Management-in coordination with the Fish and Wildlife Service-to identify ecologically sound timber sales under the Northwest Forest Plan that can get wood to the mills over the coming months. With the withdrawal of the WOPR, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) forests in western Oregon will again be managed under the Northwest Forest Plan, which guided BLM timber sales from 1994 until December 2008.

Department of Interior press release:  http://www.doi.gov/news/09_News_Releases/071609b.html