Medford BLM Poised to Log Old-Growth Reserves
"Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands" (IVM) sure sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately, those flowery words are agency-speak for logging old-growth forest reserves down to 30% canopy cover and creating four-acre mini-clearcuts across the landscape in southwestern Oregon.
In 2016 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized a Resource Management Plan that established several forest land use allocations including: (1) the Harvest Land Base in which timber production was to occur; (2) Streamside Riparian Reserve forests that were to be managed to protect aquatic values; and (3) Late-Successional Reserves that are intended to provide- you guessed it—late successional old-growth habitat for at-risk wildlife species.
KS Wild' Conservation Director visits a "group selection" timber sale mark in which the BLM "selects" all of the trees and leaves none of them.
Timber planners within the BLM have never really embraced the idea that there are forests on public lands that should be reserved from timber production in order to protect wildlife and watersheds. So, to undermine the idea of forest reserves the BLM has developed the “Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands” plan that will open the reserves to logging that removes old-growth forest canopy and results in four-acre “openings.” For scale, a four-acre clearcut is approximately the size of three football fields. Such logging prescriptions remove the exact wildlife habitat and riparian forests that the reserves were designed to protect.
The BLM will not tell you that they intend to “clearcut” the reserves. What you or I would call clearcutting the BLM euphemistically refers to as creating “open seral habitat.” The BLM’s intention to convert intact late-successional forests in the reserves into “open seral habitat” renders the forest reserve system meaningless. Essentially the BLM intends to place both the old-growth and riparian reserves into the Harvest Land Base and log them with harvest prescriptions that mirror how they log in the timber base.
Given that the BLM is already engaged in widespread logging of the old-growth and riparian reserves, why are they even bothering with the IVM planning process? The answer is because they hope to do away with meaningful public review and site-specific analysis of their old-growth logging agenda. IVM is intended to provide the overarching analysis and authority for the BLM to log the reserves without the bother of writing an Environmental Assessment or consulting the public about the management of old-growth forests. Instead, the BLM would conduct a brief internal checklist called a Determination of NEPA Adequacy (DNA) for old-growth timber sales of any size within the reserves.
BLM timber planners are chomping at the bit to start logging the reserves without public involvement or environmental analysis. The agency’s single-minded focus on logging makes the forthcoming timber sale decisions under IVM inevitable. For instance, the BLM has already laid out the boundaries for the first two IVM timber sales that are located within old-growth reserves. The Penn Butte and Late Mungers timber sales are identified on the BLM’s 2022 “annual forest product sale plans” with the exact date that the BLM will offer the forests for sale and the exact amount of timber the BLM intends to log. There is no circumstance in which the environmental impacts of the proposed logging or the content of public comments can influence the BLM whatsoever.
An IVM decision was issued on March 2, 2022, and the Penn Butte and Late Mungers forest reserve timber sales are likely to follow shortly. KS Wild and our allies intend to challenge the BLM logging plans.
Read more about the project on the BLM’s project page, or take a look at KS Wild’s public comments on the environmental assessment produced in 2020: