This is the fourth in a series of four Public Lands Blog posts regarding the infamous “O&C” lands, a variant of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Part 1 set the stage with a brief history and description of recent epochal events. Part 2 examined a recent ruling by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Part 3 examined a recent ruling by the US District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. Part 4 recommends repeal of the O&C Lands Act of 1937 and transferring administration of all BLM lands in western Oregon to either the Forest Service or the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Figure 1. A tree that was more than four hundred years old when it was felled as a result of the BLM authorizing roadside salvage of “danger” trees. This stump is within fifty feet of a dead-end spur road rarely used by the public. Source: Francis Eatherington.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a depraved federal agency, especially in regard to the administration of federal public lands in western Oregon. Since its inception in 1946, the BLM has violated the public trust for decades by exalting timber over all else. Even though the agency now takes the position that holz über alles is not what the Oregon and California Lands Act of 1937 (OCLA) says, the local bureaucracy is still in the pocket of Big Timber. The agency is lawlessly logging mature and old-growth trees in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. It has failed to recognize that a national monument is among the most special—legally and ecologically—of its holdings in western Oregon.
Figure 2. BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning. How she will be remembered is still an open question. Source: Bureau of Land Management.
The BLM’s “prescriptions” in its designated “late-successional reserves” (LSRs; “late-successional” meaning mature and old-growth forests) to “restore” old-growth forests are no different from what it is doing on lands it has dedicated to timber production. The BLM also spends much more money “administering” its western Oregon forestlands than does the Forest Service its nearby forestlands.
The BLM needs to be kicked out of western Oregon.
Most of its lands should be transferred to the National Forest System to be administered by the Forest Service. The Forest Service is far from a perfect land manager, but it leaves the BLM in the dust. Approximately a hundred thousand acres of BLM lands near the Oregon coast should become part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument should become part of the National Park System, administered by the National Park Service.
Figure 3. The Upper Rock Creek Timber Sale on the BLM’s Coos Bay District. And the BLM says it doesn’t clear-cut anymore. Source: Francis Eatherington.
The Net Utility of the O&C Lands Act in 2024
In 2024, the OCLA is of little and diminishing use to various stakeholders.
• It is no longer a shield or a spear for the Clearcut Conspiracy.
• It is no longer effective in supplying Big Timber with big timber.
• The lack of big timber means a lack of big revenues for the Timber-Addicted Counties.
• The BLM has effectively removed three-quarters of the O&C lands from the OCLA’s dominant-use timber mandate.
• What dominant-use timber mandate does exist is increasingly tempered by the BLM’s elevating the importance of other OCLA uses.
The OCLA is increasingly politically and economically irrelevant, but it is still an ecological and hydrological irritant. It should be repealed.
Figure 4. The Upper Rock Creek Timber Sale on the BLM’s Coos Bay District. Big Timber’s bread and butter these days is mature trees, which are old-growth trees in waiting. Source: Francis Eatherington.
The Net Utility of the BLM in Western Oregon in 2024
Since it was established in 1946, the BLM has proved to be untrustworthy as a steward of the O&C lands. The agency has presided over the liquidation of most of the old-growth forests on those lands. While today, on paper, it has “reserved” most of its remaining mature and old-growth forests, the BLM is nonetheless waging a stealth war on older forests by inventing other supposedly more publicly acceptable reasons to log off big trees, including within national monuments and wild and scenic river corridors.
In 2022, President Biden issued an executive order that, among other things, directed the BLM to conserve and restore mature and old-growth forest. So far, the BLM has ignored that order. The chainsaws continue to whine.
In early April, activists from Pacific Northwest Forest Defense began occupying a three-hundred-year-old ponderosa pine in the Poor Windy Project (BLM doesn’t do timber sales anymore, only “projects” that are timber sales in all but name) on the BLM’s Medford District in Josephine County. The tree sitters said some of the trees slated to be logged by Boise Cascade were up to four hundred years old; the one they were sitting in was in the way of a planned road to create access for the logging. Other activists occupied other old-growth trees. The week before that, a coalition of environmental groups filed a complaint in court against the BLM for allowing “heavy commercial logging” in another area designated as a late successional reserve. It is worth reprinting from an Oregon Capital Chronicle article two brief exchanges of proverbial soundbites about the situation between an Orwellian BLM spokesperson and one of my all-time favorite speak-truth-to-power conservationists.
Sarah Bennett, a spokesperson for the bureau in Oregon and Washington, said it is rare for officials to allow the sale of acreage with old growth trees and that environmental assessments have shown both contested harvest areas are low-risk for habitat destruction.
“We are committed to protecting trees above the age and diameter limits established,” she said in an email. “Generally, those that are greater than 36 inches in diameter and established prior to 1850.”
George Sexton, conservation director of Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, said the bureau is being dishonest.
“BLM is saying we don’t log old-growth trees. Well, they (protestors) are sitting in old-growth trees that the BLM wants to log,” he said.
Sexton said allowing old-growth trees to be cut is contrary to the Biden administration’s recent executive order to end old-growth logging on public lands by 2025.
“The BLM should be implementing Biden’s executive order to protect old-growth forests, and if the BLM wants to log those trees, the very least they should do is stop lying about it.”
Bennett said 80% of those acres are considered reserve acres, and 20% are open for logging sales. But Sexton said the “reserve” designation doesn’t necessarily prohibit logging.
“In the Medford district, they log the Late Successional Reserves just as heavily as they log in the harvest areas,” he said.
By April 23, the BLM had instructed Boise Cascade not to run a road through the stand with the ponderosa pine occupied by the tree sitters. Later, according to High Country News, “A spokesperson for the BLM said that the road cancellation was part of normal pre-harvest planning and unrelated to the occupation.” Sure it was. Why is it that in many cases it is illegal for a citizen to lie to the federal government, but not often for the federal government to lie to its citizens?
Figure 5. Barry Bushue, the BLM’s state director for Oregon and Washington. Source: Bureau of Land Management.
The supposedly greener Biden administration has been of almost no help on western Oregon forestlands. One example shall suffice. The White House, the Department of the Interior, and the directorate of the BLM have allowed BLM Oregon-Washington State Director Barry Bushue to remain on the job. A Trump appointee, Bushue is grossly unqualified for the job and has presided over the creation of more and more big stumps. That he was not sacked immediately by the Biden administration early in 2021 is inexplicable.
Bushue’s tenure as a “public servant” is a short one, having lateralled over to the job from being President Trump’s state executive director of the USDA Farm Services Agency in Oregon. Before that he was a lobbyist for farm interests. He has been vice president of the American Farm Bureau (a right-wing conspiracy that owns an insurance company). He also headed the Oregon Farm Bureau for nearly two decades. He may have a great agricultural mindset, but the public lands are not farms. The fingerprints of Bushue’s unclean hands can be found on the new draft management plan for the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and the Oregon portion of the Biden administration’s revision of greater sage-grouse conservation plans.
The BLM—a.k.a. the Bureau of Lumbering and Mining or the Bureau of Large Mistakes—is out of control in western Oregon. It is time for the agency to go. It cannot be reformed; it must be banished.
Figure 6. The Preacher Man Timber Sale on the BLM’s Coos Bay District. Leave a few trees and it doesn’t count as a clear-cut—unless you are either wildlife or a watershed. Source: Francis Eatherington.
Reasons to Transfer Management: Improve Stewardship and Save Money
The primary reason to transfer all lands in western Oregon to other federal land management agencies is to improve the stewardship of those lands. Without a doubt and on the whole compared to the BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service are better stewards of public lands and resources.
Another reason is to save money. In Oregon, the BLM is more profligate than the Forest Service. In 2014, I did an analysis and found that transferring BLM lands in western Oregon would result in a savings of $156 million in today’s dollars.
By any metric I examined, the BLM was spending more money than the Forest Service to get the same result. Some examples:
• The BLM spent $101.10 per managed-acre per year, while USFS spent $29.58—71 percent less.
• Per employee, the BLM managed 2,044 acres, while USFS managed 3,829—87 percent more.
• Considering only the timber sale line item for each agency, the BLM spent 100 percent more than the USFS did to produce a board foot for sale.
• Considering the entire budget for each agency, the BLM spent 64 percent more than USFS did to produce a board foot for sale.
Saving money is not a new idea. A 1985 study of rationalizing federal public land ownership in Oregon (assigning all the forestland to the USFS) found that such would save between $74 million and $104 million in today’s dollars.
Figure 7. What was once a mature forest on the BLM’s Northwest Oregon District east of Junction City. Not technically a clear-cut though, as a rather thin row of trees was left: Source: Doug Heiken.
What to Do with the Saved Money?
The best use of the money saved by transferring western Oregon BLM lands to the Forest Service would be to endow the Timber-Addicted Counties with a permanent fund in lieu of ever again receiving a share of timber receipts. By law, the O&C counties are entitled to 75 percent of gross timber receipts on O&C lands. However, board feet sales have declined dramatically from historical levels and are not likely to return. In addition, historic timber receipts were based on clear-cutting old-growth trees, which fetched high prices. Today’s logging is primarily thinning of second-growth stands, which involves higher logging costs and lower log values.
Of course, for this to work, the Timber-Addicted Counties would have to leave the Clearcut Conspiracy just to Big Timber.
Figure 8. The row of trees left in a BLM clear-cut so the BLM can say it is not a clear-cut. As these trees grew up as part of a stand and not standalones, they are likely to blow over in the next decent windstorm. Then the BLM can “salvage” log them! Source: Doug Heiken.
What to Do with the Saved (from BLM) Lands?
Depending on the watershed they are in, most BLM lands (totaling ~2.5 million acres) could be transferred to the Siuslaw, Mount Hood, Willamette, Umpqua, Rogue River, Klamath, or Siskiyou National Forest.
All BLM lands west of US 101 in Oregon (totaling <0.1 million acres) could be transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service to become new or expanded wildlife refuges.
The 0.1 million-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument could be transferred to the National Park Service to become part of the National Park System.
Figure 9. The Bear Grub Timber Sale on the BLM’s Medford District. In this unit, any tree marked with orange paint is to be spared from logging. Source: Luke Ruediger.
While Congress Is Legislating
In addition to upgrading the conservation status of western Oregon BLM lands in general by transferring the lands to become parts of the National Forest System and the National Wildlife Refuge System, Congress should further upgrade certain western Oregon BLM lands. I have a few ideas.
Wilderness
Designate new wilderness areas, including but not limited to Green Springs Mountain, Wellington Wildlands, Round Top Mountain, Burton-Ninemile, Berry Creek, and Dakubetede. Expand existing wilderness areas to include transferred lands: Wild Rogue, Table Rock, Clackamas, Opal Creek, and Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness additions.
Wild and Scenic Rivers
Designate new wild and scenic rivers: Crabtree Creek, North Fork Trask, Forks of Rock Creek, Willamina Creek, Parker Creek, North Fork Siletz, South Fork Alsea, Smith (Umpqua), and more. Expand existing wild and scenic rivers: Illinois, North Umpqua, Nestucca, Lobster Creek, Quartzville Creek, and Molalla.
Other Special Areas and Actions
• Establish a Rogue Canyon National Recreation Area.
• Expand the Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Sanctuary to include all of the Steamboat Creek watershed, including Canton Creek.
• Establish a Protective Corridor for the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail.
• Establish a Sandy River Watershed National Heritage Area.
• Convert 108 BLM Areas of Critical Environmental Concern in western Oregon to Forest Service Special Interest Areas.
• Extend the voluntary federal grazing permit retirement option to all former BLM lands in western Oregon.
• Impose statutory permanent protection for mature and old-growth forests.
Figure 10. The Bear Grub Timber Sale on the BLM’s Medford District. In this unit, the trees marked with white paint, which are generally the largest trees in the stand, are destined for the mill. Source: Luke Ruediger.
Take a Bow
I want to give a shout out to the cadre of protesters who recently sat in, or supported those who sat in, some old-growth trees that the BLM still insists are not old-growth trees. The BLM’s employing of the big lie to deny the existence of big trees was a big dud. The tree sits not only resulted in cancellation of a road slated to be built through one threatened stand but also have injected new life into the long struggle to save mature and old-growth forests and trees for this and future generations. This generation of young warriors reminds me of the young warriors of a generation ago who similarly sat in old-growth trees and blockaded bulldozers, a key element in the ending of most—but, alas, not all—older forest logging.
In pitched battles in courtrooms, hearing rooms, boardrooms, and old forests, the public lands conservation community is mopping up the pockets of resistance. The end of mature and old-growth logging is in sight. It is time to redouble our efforts.
Bottom Line: Oregon public lands conservationists must still deal with a local bureaucracy that thinks BLM stands for Bureau of Lumbering and Mayhem. It’s time to run the BLM out of western Oregon, particularly because all of its functions there could be done better by other federal land management agencies.
Figure 11. The Penn Butte Timber Sale on the BLM’s Medford District. In this unit, only the tree marked with red paint will not be logged. Source: Luke Ruediger.
For More Information
Baumhardt, Alex. April 5, 2024. “Activists Protest in So. Oregon Trees, File Lawsuit to Block Old-Growth Logging.” Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Higginbottom, Justin. April 24, 2024. “Activists Say More Direct Action Likely After Claiming Victory in BLM Timber Sale.” Oregon Capital Chronicle.
Kerr, Andy. 2007. “Transferring Western Oregon Bureau of Land Management Forests to the National Forest System.” Larch Occasional Paper #2. The Larch Company, Ashland, Oregon.
Riddle, Anne A. 2023. “The Oregon and California Railroad Lands (O&C Lands): In Brief.” Congressional Research Service R42951.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. July 18, 2023. American Forest Resource Council v. United States of America.
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. April 24, 2023. Murphy Co. v. Biden.
Wilson, Paul Robert Wolf, and Erin X. Wong. April 26, 2024. “Meet the Tree-Sitters Who Occupied a Ponderosa Pine.” High Country News.
Figure 12. Unit 5-1 of the Lake Mungers Timber Sale on the BLM’s Medford District. Good as gone are these two Douglas-firs at 37 and 40 inches in diameter at breast height. And the BLM says it doesn’t cut old-growth trees anymore. Source: Luke Ruediger.