By: Mossy Marblington
On May 14th, a federal judge ruled to cancel the sale of a forest containing some of the last remaining old growth forest in Oregon. Forest defenders had been closely tracking the forests after the sale, and discovered that many of the ancient trees had been illegally logged, despite protections that old growth has against logging.
The Blue and Gold timber sale, which was first proposed under Trump in 2019, targeted thousands of acres of old-growth forests on public Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land for clearcut logging. The timber sale area is located southwest of Eugene, near Yoncalla, in the Umpqua River watershed and is the traditional homelands of the Yoncalla band of the Kalapuya peoples (the word “Yoncalla” is said to mean “valley of the eagles” in the Kalapuyan language).
Since the project was first proposed, activists have put boots on the ground to monitor the proposed logging units, and found large swaths of old-growth forests. Some trees measure seven feet wide, and show multiple burn scars from past wildfires they’ve survived, with wide, moss covered branches that support wildlife.
Throughout the timber sale process, community has provided written comments, organized protests, hosted public hikes, and taken journalists out to the site. In 2024, Cascadia Wildlands filed a lawsuit against the project. Despite all of these efforts, the BLM continued pushing the project forward and sold multiple units to private mega corporations including Sierra Pacific Industries and Roseburg Forest Products. While some of the area with second growth forest had already been logged, an agreement between environmental lawyers and the agency was established so that logging would be stopped throughout the spring, while the lawsuit worked its way through the court. Then, in early May, while organizers with Climate Justice League were holding a campout, they noticed signs of active logging. Dedicated forest defenders traveled to the site to watchdog even though logging wasn't legally allowed to start yet, even as the lawsuit was being considered by a federal judge.
What they discovered was that the BLM had allowed for logging of ancient, old-growth forests in some of the last intact habitat for the threatened marbled murrelet, a quirky seabird that relies on old-growth trees for its nesting. Immediately, this information was brought to Cascadia Wildlands lawyers who turned around a restraining order within 24 hours, highlighting the logging that was taking place outside of seasonal restrictions and against the written agreement with the agency, and with trees that far exceed in age than what the agency allows by their own regional management plan.
By the end of the week, federal judge Kasubhai issued a ruling siding with environmentalists on almost all counts, emphasizing the significant community engagement and field checking. In his decision, he also said that the BLM had seemingly knowingly misrepresented to the public the age of the trees and forests that were to be logged, highlighting a FOIA-ed document submitted by attorneys that clearly showed the BLM's own data had been misrepresented and indicated that these forests were hundreds of years older than what was represented in their public documents/filings.
This is just one of many sales that the BLM has tried to ram through despite federal protections against old-growth logging and habitat protections for endangered species. There is a bipartisan consensus that public forest lands must be clearcut for private corporate profit and the only thing standing between the chainsaws and Oregon's ancient forests are grassroots organizers, advocates, and attorneys willing to stand up and fight back.
While the forest at Blue and Gold remains standing for now, the fight is far from over. The Blue and Gold timber sale is just a precursor for what the Trump administration and Big Timber want to do with the entirety of the 2.5-million-acres of BLM land in western Oregon: turn it into stumpfields. They are currently revising the western Oregon BLM’s 2016 Resource Management Plan to make logging the sole focus of these lands over other important values, such as recreation, salmon and wildlife habitat, carbon storage to mitigate climate change, clean water, and wildfire resiliency. This plan revision would turn the clock backwards in an attempt to return to logging levels not seen since the 1980s. Heroic forest defense efforts that upswelled in the 1990s are needed again - the timber wars never ended, the agencies and their corporate counterparts just got better at greenwashing - a deceptive marketing practice to present a company or product as environmentally sustainable when it isn't.
Join the fight.